Journal of Black Psychology

The study focuses on the relationship between racial identity and academic achievement for African American college students. The Multidimensional Model of Racial Identity (MMRI) was used to assess the relationship between racial centrality, racial ideology, and academic performance. A total of 248 participants were recruitedfrom a predominantly Black college and a predominantly White college and were administered the Multidimensional Inventory of Black Identity (MIBI) to assess their racial ideology and racial centrality. Participants also were asked to report their cumulative grade point averages (GPAs). Consistent with the MMRI, racial centrality moderates the relationship between racial ideology and academic performance such that assimilation and nationalist ideologies were negatively associated with GPA and a minority ideology was positively associated with GPA for students who scored high on racial centrality. Racial ideology was not a significant predictor of GPA for participants who scored low on racial centrality.

This study examined group differences in the academic achievement beliefs of African American adolescents. The participants (N = 102) were involved in an academic enrichment program. Analyses of variance assessed gender and achievement level differences in the early adolescents' achievement beliefs regarding math and science. Results showed that boys had more positive beliefs about their abilities and expectancies for success in math and science than did girls, and boys valued science more than did the girls. In math, lower achieving females stated that they tried harder than did lower achieving males, and higher achieving males believed they tried harder than did higher achieving females. Higher achieving students valued math and science more than did the lower achieving students. For science, higher achievers believed they tried harder and held more positive beliefs about their science abilities. Students earning higher grades in science were more likely to attribute it to their efforts.

The fear of real and imaginary calamity is a detrimental strain on the emotional adjustment of America's urban youth. This study investigated the relationship of African American adolescent perceptions of calamity fears, kinship social support, and neighborhood social capital to various aspects of depression. Findings indicate that adolescents from urban neighborhoods, where they felt safe and were fearful of potential calamity, showed lower levels of global depressive symptoms. Some interesting gender differences were noted, with adolescent girls from high-risk neighborhoods benefiting the mostfrom high levels of neighborhood social capital and high levels of calamity fear Implications for integrating ecological factors into violence prevention and mental health promotion programs are discussed.

AfricanAmerican undergraduates evaluated two language guises: BlackEnglish and Standard American English. The speaker in these guises described activities in a weekend (informal) and in a business (formal) setting. Based on their scores on the African Self-Consciousness Scale, 55 respondents were categorized as having either a low or high commitment to an African American identity. Results showed that persons without a committed Black identity evaluated Black English as lower on status than those with a committed Black identity. Black English was not perceived as reflecting higher social solidarity.

Industrial/organizational (I/O) psychologists are becoming increasingly interested in race in the workplace, especially given the numerous reports touting the changing demographic makeup of new entrants in the labor market. Past studies that have examined race in the organizational arena have often developed without theoretical grounding as well as relied on nominal definitions of race. Furthennore, race research in the organizational sciences has also relied on deficit models of difference to discuss results of studies that have mostly used comparative designs. This article encourages the use of ethnic identity theory by I/O psychologists to open the field to new ways of thinking about race and studying it in organizations.