Why Do People Act Differently to People With a Different Skin Color? Filed under ( Adolescence News ) by edy-koerniawan

adolescence in girls ~ Why Do People Act Differently to People With a Different Skin Color? : During the last few decades, the collective efforts of women psychologists and the feminist movement have established and legitimized the psychological study of women and girls, and have created an intellectual climate in which it is now commonplace to conceptualize gender as a social construction of enormous influence in individual psychology and female self-definition.

Within these movements, however, there has been a marginalization of women of color. One third of the 18.5 million girls between the ages of 10 and 18 living in the United States are Black, Hispanic, Asian/Pacific Islander, Native American, Eskimo, or Aleut. They remain virtually invisible in the psychological literature on adolescent girl development.

In examining recent research studies, the lack of data and information about the psychological development and lives in general of adolescent girls of color is of great concern. Major studies on adolescent development are flawed by the presence and absence of certain groups of girls of color, a lack of reliable data on the economic status of the households of some groups of adolescent girls of color, a failure to address the roles of race and gender, and a lack of information regarding the racial-ethnic identity of research participants.

Just as the notion that males and females differ in their development toward self-definition has become accepted, professionals and others who work with adolescent girls must move toward the fuller recognition of the contribution of race, ethnicity, culture, class, and sexual orientation to development in general and to the understanding of adolescents in particular.

Research Agenda: Adolescent Girls of Color

• What components of racial-ethnic culture are critical for the development of positive identities in girls of color? Do the components vary across racial-ethnic groups?
• What is the impact of economic status on the development of adolescent girls of color in terms of education, motivation, and behavior? Is the impact the same or different across racial-ethnic groups?
• Do race-ethnicity and social class have the same impact for adolescent girls and adolescent boys of color? Do the differences, if any, suggest different intervention strategies?
• What factors explain the drop in self-esteem in Black and Hispanic adolescent girls? What is the role of context in the examination of self-esteem for these two groups of girls?
• Do Asian American and American Indian girls experience changes in self-esteem during adolescence? What factors may contribute to this change, if any, within the subgroups of these two large "racial" categories?
• What are the direct and indirect effects of the oppressive and exploitative historical legacies on the identities, attitudes, and aspirations of adolescent girls of color?