Most ethnic minority teens don't hang out with ethnic school crowds

Peer relationships are an important part of adolescence for most American adolescents. As teens find their places in the peer system in most high schools, crowds define most students’ status and reputation. Today, schools and communities are growing more ethnically diverse and types of crowds have expanded to include ethnically oriented groups. A new study finds that ethnic minority teens tend not to hang out with crowds made up of their ethnic peers.

The study also found that being part of an ethnically oriented crowd at school is, for most Asian students, associated with mostly positive characteristics (such as pride in one’s ethnic background). For most Latino students, being part of an ethnically oriented crowd is associated with a mixed group of characteristics (some pride, but also some feelings of discrimination and stereotyping).

The study was conducted by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Dartmouth College, and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. It is published in the May/June 2008 issue of the journal Child Development.

The researchers sought to determine what factors explain whether ethnic minority teens are associated with ethnically oriented school crowds (for example, Blacks, Asians, or Mexicans) or with crowds based on individual abilities and interests (such as so-called jocks, druggies, populars, Goths, brains, loners, and nerds). In addition, they sought to understand whether crowds foster discrimination and stereotyping, or affirm young people’s positive ties to their ethnic background.

Researchers polled 2,465 African American, Asian American, and Latino teenagers ages 14 to 19 attending seven public high schools in the midwestern and western United States. The students were given a list of the crowds most commonly mentioned by other teens at their school and asked to indicate the one they identified with most closely. In addition, a group of students placed all their classmates (including those initially polled) into crowds; the researchers then looked for characteristics that distinguished adolescents who were part of ethnically oriented crowds from adolescents who were part of non-ethnic crowds.