Hailu Selamawit, Williams Chelsea D, Bravo Diamond Y, Umaña-Taylor Adriana J, Jahromi Laudan B, Updegraff Kimberly A
Department of Psychology, Virginia Commonwealth University.
Department of Psychology, University of California, Riverside.
J Lat Educ. 2024;23(5):1730-1743. doi: 10.1080/15348431.2024.2327411. Epub 2024 Mar 26.
Skin tone-based social stratification is an enduring part of the U.S. racial landscape. Despite literature finding that skin tone informs educational outcomes among adults, few studies have examined these processes in early childhood. The current study tested whether skin tone predicted Mexican-origin 5-year-old children's academic readiness (i.e., applied problems and letter-word identification) and whether relations were modified by ethnic-racial identity (i.e., positive attitudes and centrality). Findings indicated that darker skin tones predicted lower applied problems scores, an indicator of early math ability. Positive ethnic-racial attitudes did not moderate the relation between skin tone and academic readiness. However, contrary to our hypothesis, higher ethnic-racial centrality the association between darker skin tone and lower letter-word identification, an indicator of early reading skills. Findings suggest that there is early development of within-race skin tone-based disparities in education, and underscore the need for further exploration of children's ethnic-racial identity in these processes.
基于肤色的社会分层是美国种族格局中持久存在的一部分。尽管有文献表明肤色会影响成年人的教育成果，但很少有研究考察过幼儿期的这些过程。本研究测试了肤色是否能预测墨西哥裔5岁儿童的学业准备情况（即应用问题和字母单词识别），以及这些关系是否会因种族身份（即积极态度和核心地位）而有所改变。研究结果表明，肤色较深预示着应用问题得分较低，这是早期数学能力的一个指标。积极的种族态度并没有缓和肤色与学业准备之间的关系。然而，与我们的假设相反，较高的种族核心地位加剧了肤色较深与字母单词识别能力较低之间的关联，字母单词识别能力是早期阅读技能的一个指标。研究结果表明，种族内部基于肤色的教育差距在早期就已出现，并强调在这些过程中需要进一步探索儿童的种族身份。
