Although research into prosecutorial and judicial decision-making has been conducted for the past three decades, a great deal still remains unknown. Most research focuses on the 'back end' of the adjudication process, leaving decision points prior to the final phases unanalyzed. Drawing on unique data from the New York County District Attorney's Office that tracks 43,971 felony complaints, this research explores racial and ethnic disparity at multiple decision points during case processing, with a focus on the prosecutor's initial bail request. A combination of regression modeling and path analysis were applied, revealing that the effects of race and ethnicity vary by decision point. Black defendants demonstrated increased bail requests and likelihood of indictment. However, together with Latino defendants, they were less likely to be detained prior to trial compared with White defendants. Despite identifying a mix of positive and negative cumulative effects, we found significant indirect effects of black defendants via bail request that contribute to the unwarranted racial disparities in both pre-trial detention and indictment outcomes. Insights gleaned from this research help prosecutors understand how their initial actions influence final outcomes, as well as contributing to the national conversation on the use of cash bail.

In the United States, hypertension is more common among individuals from racial and ethnic minority groups. Hypertension control rates are also lower for minority group members compared with White Americans. However, little research has employed well-established theoretical perspectives on health behavior, such as the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and the Model of Goal-Directed Behavior (MGB), to better understand racial differences in rates of hypertension control. The present study examines the psychological processes involved in efforts to control blood pressure, through the lens of the TPB augmented by the MGB, in hypertensive patients of three racial groups: American Indian/Alaska Native, Black/African American, and White. Participants completed measures of past efforts to control blood pressure, attitudes, norms, perceived behavioral control, intentions, and anticipated emotions. Analyses employed confirmatory factor analysis and cross-groups path analysis. Measurement of the theoretical constructs and core putative mediators of blood pressure control intentions were largely similar across racial groups. With regard to the patterns of relationships among the constructs, differences among the groups were most apparent in pathways from past efforts to both cognitive and affective theoretical antecedents of intentions. These findings contribute to the sparse literature on factors involved in racial differences in hypertension control rates and may inform future interventions aimed at increasing hypertension control behaviors. ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT03028597, registered 23 January 2017, https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03028597; ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT04414982, registered 4 June 2020 (retrospectively registered), https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04414982.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1007/s12552-022-09379-y.].

While the effects of the pandemic on the mental health of college students can vary across race and gender, few studies have explored the role of hardships and university assistance in these disparities, as well as how these disparities can manifest themselves differently across intersections of race and gender. We address this gap by using unique survey data ( = 417) from two large graduate schools of social work, public health, and social policy in the United States. Using multi-group structural equation modeling, we explore how material hardships, academic hardships, and university assistance needed mediates the relationship between race and mental health, including depression and anxiety. We also explore how gender moderates these relationships. We find that Black students are directly related to material hardships and-through these hardships-indirectly related to increased depression, indicating mediation. However, material hardships did not mediate the relationship between race and anxiety. Furthermore, while academic hardships mediated the relationships between race and depression, as well as race and anxiety, these relationships were only significant for females, indicating moderated-mediation. Moreover, although university assistance needed mediated the relationship between race and depression for females only, university assistance needed mediated the relationship between race and anxiety for both males and females. We close with implications for policy and practice.

Educational debt is an economic stressor that is harmful to mental health and disproportionately experienced by African American and Latinx youth. In this paper, we use a daily diary design to explore the link between mental health, context specific factors like "college stress" and time use, and educational debt stress, or stress incurred from thinking about educational debt and college affordability. This paper utilizes data from a sample of predominately African American and Latinx college students who provided over 1,000 unique time observations. Results show that debt-induced stress is predictive of greater self-reported hostility, guilt, sadness, fatigue, and general negative emotion. Moreover, the relationship may be partly mediated by "college stress" reflecting course loads and post-graduation job expectations. For enrolled students then, educational debt may influence mental health directly through concerns over affordability, or indirectly by shaping facets of college life. The window that our granular data provides into college experiences suggest that the consequences of student debt are manifest and immediate. Further, the documented day-to-day mental health burden for minority students may contribute to downstream processes like matriculation.

A growing body of research links interpersonal racial and ethnic discrimination to adverse youth outcomes. Yet, studies examining the relevance of neighborhood context for discrimination are sparse. This study examines neighborhood-level variation in the incidence and impact of perceived racial and ethnic discrimination on depressive symptoms, suicidal behavior, violent behavior, and substance use. Hierarchical regression models on a sample of 1333 African American and Hispanic youth (52.44% female; x̄ = 13.03 years, SD = 3.25 at wave 1) residing in 238 Chicago neighborhoods from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods indicated little to no neighborhood-level variation in the incidence and impact of discrimination. Findings suggest that the experience of discrimination among youth of color is ubiquitous.

Many whites explicitly believe that their race has had no impact on their accomplishments in life. The current study used the contingent valuation method to implicitly measure the value of being white-or alternatively, the cost of being black-among a sample of white college students. Participants were presented with a hypothetical scenario in which their racial appearance was altered due to a medical mishap, and then asked to identify the negative consequences they would experience as a result of this change. Participants also assigned a dollar value to their race by reporting the smallest financial settlement they would accept as compensation for the mishap. Results revealed that white students who imagined being black anticipated financial consequences significantly more often than black students who imaged being white, but they anticipated psychosocial consequences significantly less often. The median financial settlement for whiteness was relatively low, while the mean value was quite large and highlighted the importance of whiteness among certain respondents. These findings are discussed, with suggestions for future research.

This study investigated the main and interactive effects of identity-based challenges, discrimination, and Multiracial pride on psychological distress in Biracial emerging adults. Additionally, we examined whether these associations may differ by Biracial sub-group (e.g., Black-White, Asian-White, Latinx-White, and minority-minority) given their unique racial experiences. Participants were 326 Biracial emerging adults ( = 19.57 years old; 75.2% female) recruited from three public universities in the United States for an online survey. For all Biracial groups, identity-based challenges were associated with greater psychological distress. After testing a series of competing multi-group regression models, results indicated that the relations between distress and our predictors: identity-based challenges, discrimination, and Multiracial pride do indeed differ across Biracial sub-group. The most apparent and unique differences were displayed by the Black-White Biracial sub-group. These findings highlight identity-based challenges as a unique risk in the Biracial population and suggest that a principled comparison between Biracial sub-groups is necessary to tease apart group-specific associations between these constructs and psychological distress.

Latinx college students are at high risk of suffering from depressive symptoms. A factor posited to influence depressive symptoms among Latinx college students is racial/ethnic discrimination. However, the which link racial/ethnic discrimination to depressive symptoms are not well understood. This study examined the mediating role of racism-related vigilance and sleep-related factors (i.e., sleep quality, sleep efficiency) on the relationship between perceived intergroup racial/ethnic discrimination and depressive symptoms.

Housing subsidies, including public housing and Section 8 vouchers, are key components of the social safety net, intended to promote family and child welfare. Studies evaluating the impact of housing subsidies on child and adolescent mental health, however, are generally inconclusive. This may reflect variation in the influence by type of subsidies to income, improved physical environment, increased access to resources, and improved perception of neighborhood safety. Further, most prior research focused on housing subsidies failed to simultaneously formally assess child psychopathology. In the present study, we examine, among adolescents (ages 9-17) from a low-income, urban minority area, the association of housing with psychiatric symptoms and disorders, as well as with their social functioning. The data were obtained from the Stress & Justice Study (S&J) baseline survey, an investigation designed to examine impact of parental criminal justice system involvement (CJSI) on their children's mental health. Housing type during the past year was categorized from parental report as public housing, section 8, both, or neither. Child mental health was assessed with the Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children (DISC). Additionally, family resources and physical quality of the housing environment by housing type was assessed, and we tested whether these dimensions mediated associations of housing type with the adolescent's current mental health outcomes. We found that while internalizing and externalizing disorders and impairment were attenuated by individual characteristics (e.g., SES, CJSI), internalizing and externalizing symptom counts were significantly more prevalent among children in subsidized housing, compared to those in non-subsidized housing, after controlling for individual characteristics. These findings have the potential to inform whether, and through which mechanisms, housing subsidies are associated with adolescent mental health.

Residential area characteristics and discrimination have been associated with psychological distress. Differences in these relationships across racial groups are not well understood. We examined the relative role of perceived discrimination, neighborhood problems and neighborhood cohesion/trust in explaining differences in psychological distress (indicated by anxiety and depressive symptoms) between 224 African American and 225 White smokers (income ≤ 400% federal poverty level) in a smoking cessation intervention study. Surveys were linked to US census-tract data. We conducted random intercept Poisson multi-level regression models and examined interactions between race and neighborhood experiences. African Americans had greater risk of anxiety and depressive symptoms and greater individual and neighborhood disadvantage than Whites. Controlling for objective neighborhood characteristics, when perceived discrimination and perceived neighborhood characteristics were added to the regression models the association between anxiety symptoms and race were no longer statistically significant; the association between depressive symptoms and race decreased but remained statistically significant. Lower neighborhood social cohesion/trust and greater neighborhood problems increased depressive symptoms for African Americans, but not for Whites. Perceived discrimination and neighborhood social cohesion/trust outweighed the importance of race in explaining anxiety symptoms. These findings underscore the need for multi-level interventions addressing social and environmental contexts.

The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been reported to disproportionately impact racial/ethnic minorities in the USA, both in terms of infections and deaths. This racial disparity in the COVID-19 outcomes may result from the segregation of minorities in neighborhoods with health-compromising conditions. We, thus, anticipate that neighborhoods would be especially vulnerable to COVID-19 if they are of present-day economic and racial disadvantage and were redlined historically. To test this expectation, we examined the change of both confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths from April to July, 2020, in zip code tabulation areas (ZCTAs) in the New York City using multilevel regression analysis. The results indicate that ZCTAs with a higher proportion of black and Hispanic populations are associated with a higher percentage of COVID-19 infection. Historically low-graded neighborhoods show a higher risk for COVID-19 infection, even for ZCTAs with present-day economic and racial privilege. These associations change over time as the pandemic unfolds. Racial/ethnic minorities are bearing the brunt of the COVID-19 pandemic's health impact. The current evidence shows that the pre-existing social structure in the form of racial residential segregation could be partially responsible for the disparities observed, highlighting an urgent need to stress historical segregation and to build a less segregated and more equal society.

During the last decade, a number of athletes began engaging in social activism. In the aftermath of George Floyd's death, that wave of protest became a tsunami, energizing collegiate and professional athletes and reverberating across society. But baseball, once in the vanguard of sports activism, remained on the sidelines. As the national pastime, it reflected the country's turn toward social Darwinism and segregation at the turn of the 20th century. After World War II, when Jackie Robinson reintegrated the major leagues, it was a catalyst to change off the field. This essay addresses that politicized past and its more quiescent present.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, news media are expected to play a critical role in reducing health disparities. However, we know little about whether and how disparities in COVID-19 have been covered in national and local U.S. newspapers. This study examined whether minority health gained news attention and whether partisan bias affected related coverage in the early stages of the pandemic. Results indicate that minority groups have been underrepresented in COVID-19 news articles. Left-leaning newspapers were more likely to discuss minorities in COVID-19 news than least biased media. Left-leaning and right-leaning newspapers did not differ in the number of articles mentioning racial/ethnic minorities. COVID-19 news exceeded the average U.S. reading comprehension level and require some college education to understand but did not differ in readability levels among partisan newspapers. Left-leaning newspapers used significantly more medical terms and affiliated scientific facts to describe COVID-19 than right-leaning newspapers. Implications include avoiding potential failures in informing the public (especially the racial/ethnic minorities) essential scientific facts about disease prevention and increasing public trust in health news coverage.

Scholars have offered a range of perspectives on the twenty-first century racial landscape with little consensus about either the current state of the U.S. racial hierarchy or its future trajectory. We offer a more comprehensive assessment, using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) to study racial stratification across a number of socioeconomic outcomes. We pay particular attention to the robustness of results across different categorization schemes that account for self-identification and interviewer classification, as well as racial fluidity. Although we observe that White and Asian Americans generally have the best socioeconomic outcomes, on average, while Black Americans and American Indians have the worst, we also find meaningful differences in patterns of stratification both across outcomes and depending on how race is operationalized. These differences in stratification are reflected in the estimated number of strata as well as the rank order of racial categories. Our results suggest that ongoing debates about the nature of the U.S. racial hierarchy can be partly explained by methodological decisions about which outcomes to study and how best to measure race.

This paper examined how sources (experienced and media) and forms (overt and subtle) of discrimination were associated with emotional response and behavioral coping among Asians and Asian Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic. Data were collected in June 2020 from 249 Asian and Asian American adults living in 20 U.S. states. We used hierarchical regression for data analysis, controlling for age, gender, and the length of residence in the U.S. Results showed that experienced discrimination, especially in the overt form, was associated with both emotional responses (i.e., emotional distress and vigilance) and behavioral coping (i.e., using avoidant behavior to protect oneself). Media discrimination was associated only with emotional response. The relationship between experienced discrimination and emotional response was less pronounced among those who frequently observed discrimination in the media. Notably, subtle discrimination through personal experience or media exposure was positively associated with behavioral coping. The results suggest the need to address the rising anti-Asian acts with more initiatives in policy and practice, with special attention paid to the parallel influences from personal experience and media exposure to violence.

Although an emerging body of literature has advanced our knowledge of how monoracial parents can support their multiracial children in understanding the ethnic-racial identities they hold, there is a dearth of research exploring how parents socialize their children towards antiracism. Drawing from ten interviews with monoracial parents of multiracial children, this paper illuminates how parents leverage multiracial socialization practices, as identified in previous academic research, to instill an antiracist orientation in their children. Using consensual qualitative analyses, we find that although all parents had a vested interest in the wellbeing and identity development of their multiracial children, parents qualitatively differed in their ability and willingness to instill an antiracist orientation in their children. Specifically, parents in our sample exhibited five approaches to multiracial socialization, ranging from those that reinforced dominant racial ideologies to those that explicitly aimed to prepare youth to become antiracist activists. We also describe how monoracial parents' lived experiences are implicated in their engagement in multiracial socialization practices, especially those that better position them to prepare their children to engage in antiracism. Our findings illuminate how monoracial parents may engage in a repertoire of strategies in order to foster antiracism in multiracial children, molding the next generation of "antiracist disruptors."

The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately impacted health and social outcomes for people of color in the United States. This study examined how local TV news stories attributed causes and solutions for COVID-19-related racial health and social disparities, and whether coverage of such disparities changed after George Floyd's murder, during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. We systematically validated keywords to extract relevant news content and conducted a content analysis of 169 discrete local TV news stories aired between March and June 2020 from 80 broadcast networks within 22 purposefully selected media markets. We found that social determinants of COVID-19 related racial disparities have been part of the discussion in local TV news, but racism as a public health crisis was rarely mentioned. Coverage of racial disparities focused far more attention on physical health outcomes than broader social impacts. Stories cited more structural factors than individual factors, as causes of these disparities. After the murder of George Floyd, stories were more likely to mention Black and Latinx people than other populations impacted by COVID-19. Only 9% of local news stories referenced racism, and stories referenced politicians more frequently than public health experts.

Relatively little psychology research has investigated racial-ethnic socialization processes in multiethnic-racial families despite the fact that more than 1 in 7 children born in the United States today have parents from different ethnic-racial backgrounds. The present study seeks to contribute to the extant research by exploring how parents in multiethnic-racial families seek to help their children access and benefit from two (or more) sets of cultural assets. Accordingly, this study considers key themes about cultural socialization that emerged in qualitative interviews with parents in multiethnic-racial families ( = 37). Key themes emerging from these interviews included the importance of both co-parents: (a) putting in the time and effort to learn about each other's cultures and cultural practices; (b) being reflective about the practices, values, and traditions that were and were not important to them to share with their children; and (c) protecting their children from racial micro-aggressions in a variety of settings by advocating for the recognition, inclusion, and appreciation of their children's multiple ethnic-racial heritages. There is such a paucity of research on cultural socialization approaches in multiethnic-racial families that these perspectives from parents offer both valuable building blocks for future research efforts as well as practical guidance to the growing number of multiethnic-racial families in the United States and elsewhere.

The racial and ethnic disproportionality and disparity in the child protective system (CPS) has been a concern for decades. Structural factors strongly influence engagement with the child welfare system and families experiencing poverty or financial hardship are at a heightened risk. The economic factors influencing child welfare involvement are further complicated by structural racism which has resulted in a greater prevalence of poverty and financial hardship for families who are Black, Native American or Alaska Native (Indigenous), or and Latino/Hispanic (Latino) and their communities. The multiple decision points within CPS are an opportunity to reify or correct for bias in child welfare outcomes. One major effort to eliminate racial disparities and disproportionalities has been to enact standardized decision-making procedures that aim to control for implicit or explicit bias in CPS. The Structured Decision-Making Model's (SDM) actuarial-based risk assessment (RA) is the gold-standard of these efforts. In this conceptual article, we ask (1) How are structural factors accounted for in assessment of risk within CPS? and (2) What are the consequences when structural factors are left out of risk assessments procedures? We posit that the exclusion of race, ethnicity, and economic factors from the RA has inflated the importance of variables that become proxies for these factors, resulting in inaccurate assessments of risk. The construction of this tool reflects how structural racism has been overlooked as an important cause of disproportionality in CPS, with interventions then focused on individual workers and cases, rather than the system at large. We suggest a new framework for thinking about risk, the structural risk perspective, and call for a revisioning of assessment of risk within child welfare that acknowledges the social determinants of CPS involvement.

The role of family members in racial identity development is often constrained to conceptualizations of parental socialization, with a focus on socialization during childhood and adolescence. However, parents may continue to play a role in racial identity development as youth enter young adulthood and continue to explore who they are. Our study investigates how parents feature in the racial identity meaning-making of multiracial Black college students to understand the role that parents may continue to play for youth's identities as they age. We invoke a critical m(ai)cro perspective to fully consider how parent influence necessarily intertwines with macrosystem dynamics of anti-Blackness, white supremacy, and monoracism for multiracial Black youth's identity meaning-making in the context of Black Lives Matter. Through inductive analysis of semi-structured interviews with 11 multiracial Black ("Black + ") college students, we found that young adults mention parents or familial adults when discussing their racial identity to (1) recount parental guidance on racial identity, (2) illustrate the racial politics of multiracial identification, and (3) expose the nuances of navigating (un)shared identity spaces within the family. Our findings highlight the relevance of parental socialization in the adulthood years, and that parents are inextricably implicated in how youth are making sense of macrosystem dynamics of anti-Blackness and monoracism. We end with a discussion of takeaways for parents of multiracial youth.