Racial-Ethnic Self-Schemas

Abstract

Racial-ethnic minorities are at risk of academic disengagement: pulling back effort in school. Our model focuses on implications of content of racial-ethnic self-schemas (RES) for disengagement. We postulate that risk increases when individuals are either aschematic (do not have an RES) or in-group only RES schematic (when RES incorporates only the in-group without reference to membership in larger society), and that risk decreases when RES contains both in-group and larger society. This latter RES can take the form of a dual identity, in which one is a member of both in-group and larger society, or a minority identity, in which one is a member of an in-group that must fight to overcome obstacles to attain larger societal resources. Three studies involving African American, Hispanic, American Indian and Arab-Palestinian Israelis corroborate the positive effect of dual and minority RES versus in-group only RES or RES aschematic status.