CSSS Seminar: Racial Discrimination, Racial Socialization, and Street Crime – A Life-Course Social Schematic Theory Model
Posted: 4/10/2017 (Local Events)
Abstract: Recent studies suggest that interpersonal racial discrimination increases the risk of crime among African Americans, and familial racial socialization provides resilience to discrimination’s criminogenic effects. This study seeks to advance knowledge by elucidating how racialized experiences–in interactions and socialization–influence crime for African Americans over time. Elaborating Simon’s and Burt’s social schematic theory of crime, this study aims to trace the effects of childhood and adolescent discrimination and familial racial socialization on adult offending through cognitive and social mechanisms and their interplay. The present study tests this life-course SST model using data from the Family and Community Heath Study (FACHS), a multisite panel study of African American youth and their families followed from ages 10 to 25. Consistent with the model, analyses reveal that the criminogenic consequences of childhood racial discrimination are mediated cognitively by a criminogenic knowledge structure and socially through the nature of social relationships and ties in concert with ongoing offending and discrimination experiences. Specifically, by increasing criminogenic cognitive schemas, interpersonal racial discrimination decreases embeddedness in supportive romantic, educational, and employment relations, which influence social schemas and later crime. Consonant with expectations, findings also suggest that familial racial socialization practices provide enduring resilience by both compensating for and buffering discrimination’s criminogenic cognitive and social effects.
This talk will be delivered by Callie Burt, CSDE Affiliate and Assistant Professor of Sociology at UW.
Date: 04/12/2017
Time: 12:30 - 1:30 PM
Location: University of Washington, Savery 409