About this srcd poster session

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Panel information
Panel 17. Race, Ethnicity, Culture, Context

Abstract

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Racial identity is a foundational aspect of adolescent development, shaping one’s self-concept, sense of belonging, and worldview. The Multidimensional Inventory of Black Identity (MIBI; Sellers et al., 1998) has been pivotal in advancing our understanding of racial identity through constructs such as private regard—one’s personal feelings about their racial group—and public regard—one’s perception of how society views their racial group. These dimensions offer valuable insights into racial identity. Yet, the MIBI, like other quantitative tools, operates within predetermined paradigms that may constrain the depth and complexity of identity experiences. Specifically, traditional scales often fail to account for the intersectional realities that Black girls face in navigating both internalized and external perceptions of their racial identities within a white-patriarchal, anti-Black society. In this current study, we ask: When adolescent Black girls are qualitatively asked about their racial identity, how do private and public regard emerge (if at all), and are these dimensions mutually exclusive?

To answer this question, we analyzed data from the “Black Girl Magic” (BGM) project, a longitudinal mixed-methods study of Black girls’ social and academic lives and how they navigate societal expectations. The present analysis used semi-structured interviews conducted during 2018-2019 with 40 Black girls (grades 9-12) at a predominantly Black all-girls high school in the Midwest.

We followed Wolcott’s three-level analysis framework (1994). First, the descriptive phase focused on whether and how Black girls discuss racial private and public regard. Second, a thematic analysis uncovers patterns in how these dimensions of racial regard were articulated and intersected in girls’ identity narratives. Finally, our interpretation explores how Black girls’ racial identity narratives complicate existing paradigms of racial identity and emphasize the value of listening to Black girls.

We found that Black girls articulated their racial identities in ways where private (self) and public (others) regard were not separate but deeply intertwined. Specifically, when asked about what they think about being Black (i.e., private regard), Black girls invoked a “collective” (not only individual) voice, indicating that their personal sense of Blackness extended beyond themselves to include shared identity experiences (see Table 1). Additionally, when asked about private regard, an “external” voice emerged as girls’ perceptions of the value and meaning of Blackness were shaped by an awareness of their positioning within a racist and sexist society (Table 1). In other words, the “private” was inseparable from “public” (Rogers, 2018). Interestingly, when Black girls were asked what others think of Blackness (i.e., public regard), we heard an “internal” voice, which involved a more private critique of Black individuals and communities, where girls connected internal struggles within the Black community as a consequence of societal oppression. In sum, traditional conceptualizations of “private” and “public” regard did not fully capture the lived realities of Black girls, as these two dimensions were often not mutually exclusive, complicating the binary structure that is often imposed by quantitative measurement. We discuss the broader implications of listening to and learning from Black girls to deepen and strengthen developmental science and its impact.

Author information

Author	Role
Amanda-Joy Wright, The University of Chicago	Presenting author
Leoandra Onnie Rogers, The University of Chicago	Non-presenting author

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