Numerous articles, essays and studies have been written on racism and policing; the need for reform, accountability and transparency. Continuous coverage of questionable shootings of black men, women and children by police has provided a platform for not only the hopes of black communities in terms of justice and equitable treatment, but also their fears. Fear is a very real thing. It is also a stressful thing. How that fear/stress affects black adults has also been the subject of articles, essays and studies. But what of youth/children? A recent study has taken a look at how the stress of racism affects learning and contributes to the achievement gap:
Emma Adam, a professor of human development and social policy at Northwestern and the study’s senior author, said prior research had established racial differences in levels of cortisol—a hormone that increases when the body is stressed—between black and white youth, and linked this to the impact of discrimination. In the current research review, she and her co-authors set out to connect the dots. “We had observed these [dissimilarities] and knew that sleep and stress hormones have strong implications for cognition … we also knew that there was a strong racial gap in academic attainment.”
Two sources of stress encountered by black and Latino students and examined in the report are perceived discrimination—the perception that you will be treated differently or unfairly because of your race—and stereotype threat, the stress of confirming negative expectations about your racial or ethnic group. According to the paper, among this population of students, perceived discrimination from teachers was “related to lower grades, less academic motivation … and less persistence when encountering an academic challenge.” The study also found that the anxiety surrounding the stereotype of academic inferiority undermined students performing academic tasks.
Over time, Adam said, children develop strategies to reduce the racial stressors, but these, too, have consequences for academic success. Students might devalue the importance of doing well on tests or decide that doing well in school isn't a part of their identity—“If you don’t care, then you're not going to feel as stressed in those academic circumstances,” she said, “but obviously that [affects] your performance.”
Information is readily available about how the school-to-prison pipeline, police officers in schools, and the high rates of suspensions and expulsions of black students contributes to the criminalization of black youth and their over-representation in the criminal justice system. But how does the stress of knowing that you may be criminalized; of knowing that you or your behavior may be perceived as criminal affect you as you sit in a classroom? The Atlantic’s article gives us a glimpse of the answer with Zolo Agostino:
For 15-year-old Zion Agostini, the start of each school day is a new occasion to navigate a minefield of racial profiling. From an early age, walking home from elementary school with his older brother, Agostini took note of the differential treatment police gave to black people in his community: “I [saw] people get stopped … get harassed … get arrested for minor offenses.” Almost a decade later, Agostini said he now faces the same treatment as a sophomore at Nelson Mandela School for Social Justice in Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. “Me being a black male, I'm more likely to be stopped and frisked by a cop. Then, [I’m] going to school with more cops … [messing] with me at 7 in the morning.”
The strain of these interactions is heightened by the daily routine of passing through a metal detector, emptying pockets, and removing clothing that frequently makes him late to his first-period class. “The fact is now I’m [tardy] because I’m being scanned four times because of the metal in my necklace or my keys. I missed whatever [the teacher] was explaining … a lot goes on in [chemistry], and because of that I'm behind.” All of this combined takes a toll on his schoolwork, he said. “It does make it extremely hard to focus on the classwork … You're upset, or sad, or just emotional about what just happened. It takes a while to settle.”
You can find the abstract and link to the original study here.