Plain Talk and Clear Guidance on Anti-Black Racism from a Council of Adolescent Scientists

Karen Pittman, Co-Founder & Senior Fellow

Too often, when academic researchers are asked to explain why the science of adolescence should be taken into account in the development of strategies to address a specific policy or practice challenge, the ratio of research summaries to specific recommendations is about 80/20. This is one of the reasons I opted out of academia.

As one of the governing advisors for the Center for the Developing Adolescent (CDA), I cannot tell you how proud I am, to recommend from a new report from the National Scientific Council on Adolescence (NSCA) which is housed at CDA.

The Intersection of Adolescent Development and Anti-Black Racism is the first of what I am confident will be a series of must-read reports from these 15 distinguished researchers from diverse fields and cultures.

This group does not mince words. Here are a few lines from the four-paragraph introduction:

• Racism and related inequities have shaped the experiences and trajectories of young people in the United States since before our country’s founding.
• Adolescence is a key window during which the effects of racism are amplified and deeply felt. Thus, adolescence is a unique time of life when healthy development and experiences with racism intersect within the contexts and spaces where we develop, creating different experiences along racial lines.
• We cannot fully support the formation of identity and belonging and increasing agency and exploration for Black youth without considering the impact that anti-Black racism has on these developmental milestones.
• Fortunately, the monumental growth and learning that occur during adolescence make these years a time when interventions and anti-racist approaches can make a real difference.

Here are a few more reasons why you should not only read but share the full 28-page report:

• They explain, but are unapologetic about, their decision to focus on Black adolescents.
• They resist the temptation to start with an explanation of adolescent development and lead off with a discussion of the types of racism.
• They zoom in on two key areas of adolescent development — identity formation and increases in agency — and offer clear, explicit descriptions of how being Black in America makes these developmental tasks more challenging and more complex.
• They acknowledge adolescents’ remarkable resilience (giving us reasons to be optimistic that Black adolescents can succeed with support), but rather than focus on personal resilience they zoom out to describe the explicit and situationally specific roles that peers, families, schools and communities can play to help Black adolescents find safe spaces and learn culturally appropriate ways to deal with racism.
• They highlight the unique challenges associated with each context, provide specific practice and policy takeaways and offer concrete, audience-specific recommendations for increasing supports in each.

All of this is wisdom is presented in clear, jargon free language. There is even a one-page glossary of terms (mostly to clarify terms associated with discussions of race and racism). Most importantly, the entire report is presented from a perspective of stony optimism that is inspiring. Here is the last paragraph from the introduction:

“Fortunately, the monumental growth and learning that occur during adolescence make these years a time when interventions and anti-racist approaches can make a real difference. Insights from developmental science remind us to focus on the adolescent years as an important time to promote anti-racism in ways that can positively impact young people today, their futures, and the communities and country that they will come to lead. We can begin to dismantle not only the effects of racism, but also the system of racism itself, so that adolescents can become the healthy, compassionate, free-thinking adults of tomorrow that our nation and world need to thrive.”

The concrete recommendations in the report look across a young person’s learning and development ecosystem, not asking one group (families or schools for example) to take on the responsibility, but acknowledging that adolescents engage in four key social contexts and that all adults, all settings, and all learners in each context have a role to play.

While the recommendations focus on developmental supports with an emphasis on understanding the unique needs of Black adolescents, they also recognize and lift up that changing the odds so that young people and the world can thrive is dependent on our ability not just to support learning and development or our moves to be more anti-racist systems and organizations, but how the interplay between the two is multiplied by the power of relationships and connections.

From Thriving, Robust Equity and Transformative Learning & Development

Join us on September 24 at 12:30 ET for a Making the Invisible Visible session in which we will explore this critical report more deeply and allow you time to grapple with how these findings and recommendations amplify the role schools and youth-serving organizations can play in optimizing learning and development and intentionally countering inequities to ensure thriving for Black adolescents. This session will couple research highlights with real life examples of how youth-serving organizations and adolescents themselves are orienting themselves toward science-informed strategies that promote thriving. Register Today!