The Learning Race Lab at NYU
We call our research lab at New York University THE LEARNING RACE LAB. It’s name reflects the fact that all of our projects focus on the variety of ways that children and adolescents in the United States come to make meaning of “racial” groups. Although race is not biologically real in any sense, we in the United States have made it real. We attach meaning to differences in physical appearance (skin color, hair texture, facial features) and assume that people who look more alike on the outside have DNA that looks more alike on the inside (which is not the case). Therefore, in all of our projects we seek to understand how children and adolescents make meaning of race based on what they observe, experience, hear, and are told in the varieties of spaces they enter (family, school, neighborhood, church, etc), combined with what their developmental competencies and tendencies are.
The Work.
How Black Mothers Train Their Boys to Resist Racism and Oppression
Lead: Sohini Das
Black mothers provide lessons of how to resist Anti-Black oppression (for both survival and liberation) in racial socialization messages to their Black adolescent boys. Resistance for liberation embodies a long-term interest of recognizing the self within the collective rooted in the refusal to accept the mistruths, distortions, and dehumanization of oppression, while resistance for survival serves the short term interest of individual survival in a hostile and oppressive environment (Robinson & Ward, 1991). In this project, we use qualitative and Q-sort methodology to analyze racial socialization messages of resistance for liberation and survival in longitudinal data of Black mothers’ of boys interviews.
Racial Socialization in White Families
Lead: Blair Cox
Within the system of white supremacy, white people hold privilege and power in perpetuating systems of racial inequity. White parents transmit a variety of messages about such systems of racial inequity, as well as white racial identity and white privilege, to their children. For this project, we use qualitative methods to analyze themes of racial socialization around whiteness within white families in a longitudinal study of interviews white adolescents and their parents. The manuscript is currently under preparation.
School Racial Climate Website
Lead: Trenel Francis
In this project, funded by the Spencer Foundation, we are building a public facing website for school administrators, teachers and other education professionals to provide tools for understanding and evaluating the racial climate of their schools. The website includes video interviews with scholars, practicioners, and family members bout different aspects of School Racial Climate as well as resources and assessment tools that education professionals can use as they work towards creating anti-racist inclusive school environments for all youth.
2021 SRCD Biennial Awardee
Dr. Diane L. Hughes for Distinguished Contributions to Understanding International, Cultural, and Contextual Diversity in Child Development Award
Society for Research in Child Development
Senior Research Team Members
Olga Pagán is a Ph.D. candidate in the Psychology and Social Intervention Program at NYU, and a four-year fellow in the Institute of Education Sciences-funded Predoctoral Interdisciplinary Research Training (IES-PIRT) program. She is originally from the New York area, but has lived and taught in California, Colorado, and Venezuela before returning for doctoral studies. Olga's research focuses on the creation of racially just and equitable schools and learning environments, and the impacts of such environments on the students and staff within them.
Blair Cox (she/her) is a first year PhD student in Psychology and Social Intervention at NYU. She was born and raised in Downingtown, Pennsylvania. Her research explores the ways white youth learn about white supremacist systems and the way such socialization shapes their engagement in both perpetuating and resisting white supremacy.
Trenel Francis is a fifth-year doctoral student in the Psychology and Social Intervention (PSI) program at NYU Steinhardt. Her current research interests include understanding how parental academic socialization practices influence adolescents' academic outcomes for low-income, racial-ethnic minority families. She has contributed to literature on immigrant families' access to health and human services, as well as literature on hook up behavior and emerging adults' relationship attitudes and expectations. Trenel is originally from Staten Island, NY, and holds a Bachelor's of Science with Honors degree in Human Development and minor in Education from Cornell University.
Alex Watford is an aspiring researcher, change-maker, and mentor. Through rigorous research, careful strategic planning, strong interpersonal relationships, and collaboration with local organizations, he seeks to improve the circumstances of individuals who have faced systematic disadvantage in the United States. he’s pursuing three primary research interests. First, the contextual factors that drive positive development for adolescents from marginalized groups. Second, ways to improve the design and implementation of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in the workplace. Finally, the design and evaluation of culturally-responsive measurement tools. He has extensive training and experience in both quantitative and qualitative methods, as well as their related software including in SPSS, R, Stata, Mplus, Excel, and NVIVO.
Sohini Das is a Bengali-American woman from Cincinnati, Ohio. She is a lab manager and incoming first-year PhD student in Dr. Diane Hughes’ Learning Race Lab. Her research focuses are two-fold: 1. explore how youth of color negotiate, and particularly resist, intersectional stereotypes within their settings and 2. support the development and sustainability of critically caring, resistance-fostering spaces for youth.
Jessica Pitts will be a first year Ph.D. student in developmental psychology at the University of Michigan. She was born in Manhattan and raised in Queens, NY. Her research interests center around the internalization of stereotypes by youth of color and the gendered ethnic and racial socialization messages parents use with their children and adolescents.
Caitlin Keryc grew up in a small CT shoreline town and is now raising her young daughter in NYC. She is currently an MA student in psychology at Hunter College and is supporting the White Families Racial Socialization Lab and Black Mothers Resistance Lab at NYU. A long-time educator and instructional coach, her interests include developmental equity, supporting students who have experienced trauma and ongoing minority stress, and racial socialization in schools.
JūLondré Brown was born and raised in Flint, Michigan. JūLondré earned a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Anthropology from Yale University and a Master of Arts Degree in Educational Leadership, Politics and Advocacy from New York University. JūLondré's research interests include: social reproduction, learning, social inequality and oppression, and cultural resistance.
Junior Research Team Members
Kristina Arevalo
Kristina Arevalo is a Masters student in Experimental Psychology at Brooklyn College. She is a proud Filipino-American who was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. Her research focuses on minority populations and their experiences with ethnicity/race and discrimination, and how it shape their developmental outcomes.
Tessa Blood
Tessa Blood recently earned her Bachelors of Arts in Psychology and Anthropology from University of California, Santa Cruz. She is currently spending her time working a full time job and volunteering as a lab research assistant. She is interested in research about socialization and discourse with specific focuses on gender and race.
Vallone Coulanges
Vallone Coulanges is an undergraduate studying Applied Psychology at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. She was born and raised in Queens, NY. Her subfield research includes community psychology and neuropsychology and she is interested in how communities and cultures help shape people's understanding of the world around them.
Madison Akles
Madison Akles is an undergraduate research assistant in Dr. Diane Hughes’ Learning Race Lab. She was born and raised in Los Angeles County, and is currently a sophomore in the Applied Psychology program at NYU. Her interests include LGBTQIA+ psychology as well as how parental socialization influences their child’s beliefs. In her free time, Madison is an amateur stick and poke tattoo artist and radio host for WNYU 89.1 FM.
Ariadna Manzo
Ariadna Manzo (she/her), is a graduate student in the Higher Education and Student Affairs program at New York University. Ariadna was born in Guadalajara, México and raised in Southern California. Her research and career interests are in areas that address access to and persistence in higher education for students from marginalized communities.
Marie Jolanda Kaiser
Marie Jolanda Kaiser is a doctoral student in social psychology at University Duisburg-Essen, Germany. She is interested in how context influences socialization of whiteness.