Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jappdp Relations between racial stress and critical consciousness for black adolescents Elan C. Hope a, ⁎ , Chauncey D. Smith b , Qiana R. Cryer-Coupet c , Alexis S. Briggs a a Department of Psychology, NC State University, USA b Curry School of Education & Human Development, University of Virginia, USA c Department of School, NC State University, USA ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Black youth Critical consciousness Racism Racial stress Sociopolitical development ABSTRACT Black adolescents may use critical consciousness to cope with stress from experiences of racism. In the current study (n = 594; M age = 15.4), we used structural equation modeling to examine how stress from individual, institutional, and cultural racism may directly and indirectly relate to critical reflection, critical agency, and critical action for Black adolescents. Analyses indicated that individual and cultural racial stress were positively related to critical reflection and critical agency. Further, all three types of racism were directly related to critical action. Individual and cultural racial stress were also related to critical action indirectly through critical re- flection – perceived inequality and critical agency. Altogether, these findings provide empirical evidence for how experiences of racism motivate critical consciousness development for Black adolescents. In efforts to bolster critical consciousness, practitioners may consider providing space and time for Black youth to discuss their own experiences of racism. Racism is a common and normative experience for Black adoles- cents (Lanier, Sommers, Fletcher, Sutton, & Roberts, 2016; Seaton, Caldwell, Settles, & Jackson, 2008). Black youth experience racism in neighborhoods and schools (Benner et al., 2018; Hope, Skoog, & Jagers, 2015), making the management of these experiences a part of their everyday lives. For Black adolescents, one theorized response to racism is to engage in critical action as an act of self-preservation to mitigate the negative effects of stress caused by racial oppression and as an act of resistance to change the very conditions that sustain racial oppression (Hope & Spencer, 2017; Watts, Diemer, & Voight, 2011). This conten- tion is documented through the historic youth resistance against anti- Black racism of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee of the Civil Rights Movement (Stoper, 1977) and the contemporary Black Lives Matter movement (Garza, 2014). Critical action to resist oppres- sion is a part of critical consciousness, which also includes critical re- flection, dialectic understanding of how systems of oppression work, and critical agency, belief in one's ability to affect change toward social justice (Freire, 1970; Watts et al., 2011). Previous research has typically examined Black youths' critical reflection, without investigating how Black youth's own experiences of racism impact that understanding and subsequent action (e.g., Diemer & Rapa, 2016; Godfrey, Burson, Yanisch, Hughes, & Way, 2019; Seider, Clark, & Graves, 2019). As such, in the current study, we contribute to this line of research and investigate how experiencing stress from racism at multiple levels is related to critical consciousness for Black adolescents. We investigate whether racial stress is directly related to critical reflection, critical agency, and critical action for Black adolescents. We also examine whether there are indirect paths from racial stress to critical action through critical reflection and critical agency. We contend that, for Black adolescents, experiences of stress from racism may relate to cri- tical reflection of racial oppression, and thus promote critical agency, and critical action to dismantle systems of racial oppression. Racism & adolescence Racism manifests via individuals, institutions, and culture (Jones, 1997; Pincus, 1996). Individual racism includes bigotry, racial pre- judice, and racial microaggressions (Jones, 1997; Sue, 2010). Institu- tional racism is the manifestation of racist beliefs that are indelible in institutional policies and practices and result in inequitable outcomes between racial groups (Jones, Dovidio, & Vietze, 2014). Cultural racism includes the laws and cultural practices that uphold the historic and modern dominance of the majority group over minority groups (Jones, 1997; Utsey & Ponterotto, 1996). During adolescence, race becomes more salient and Black adolescents then are better able to recognize and report racism (Hughes, Del Toro, Harding, Way, & Rarick, 2016). In one https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appdev.2020.101184 Received 8 November 2019; Received in revised form 22 July 2020; Accepted 4 August 2020 ⁎ Corresponding author at: Department of Psychology, North Carolina State University, Campus Box 7650, Raleigh, NC 27695-7650, USA. E-mail address: ehope@ncsu.edu (E.C. Hope). Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology 70 (2020) 101184 0193-3973/ © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. T