The impact of home, community, school, racial discrimination, and race-related stress on African American adolescent psychosocial identity development

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore how African American adolescents develop psychosocial identity and manage racism and minority stress. Research influenced by Cross's Theory of Nigrescence and Phinney's 3-stage Black Identity Model indicates that for modern day African American adolescents, strategies for coping with race-related stress are derived more from the values and beliefs of America's majority culture in messages received at home, in school, within communities, and mass media than from traditional African values. The research question addressed by this study was how exposure to such messages and a lack emphasis on African heritage influence African American adolescent identity development. Audio and videotaped interviews of 5 African American female adolescents were conducted and individual narratives that tell the story of how participants integrated these messages into their own identities were generated. The constant comparative method of analysis, which involves iteratively comparing specific messages and interpretations of those messages within and across all individuals, was used to identify themes. Findings reflect a need for participants to obtain wealth, status, and power within the context of internalized negative stereotypes about being Black and rejection of their African heritage. This was reflected in at-risk behavior grounded in feelings of self-hatred, fear, frustration, anger, and oppression. This study has the potential to affect social change by identifying key developmental and motivational factors that converge to predict self-identity and risky behavior. This information can be used to inform a variety of formal and informal interventions targeting positive self-identity aligned to positive African cultural values.