Western's Center for Cross-Cultural Research hosts Onnie Rogers Feb. 7 for 'It's Just a Color'

Western's Center for Cross-Cultural Research will host Onnie Rogers from 4-5 p.m. on Wednesday,  February 7,  in Academic West 210 for “It’s Just a Color; A master narrative analysis of racial identity in middle childhood.”

This event is free and open to the public.

Research on racial identity in middle childhood examines the content of children’s racial knowledge, but rarely attends to the types of narratives children tell about race. Narratives are personal and cultural tools for identity-making.

“Master narratives” are shared cultural stories that reinforce structural inequalities (e.g., colorblindness) and guide how individuals construct their own identity narratives. This talk analyzes the race narratives of 219 Black, White, and Mixed-Race children. Its data came from one-on-one, semi-structured interview questions about race (“How important is being [race] to you?” “What are some good/bad things about being [race]?”).  Rogers identified two narratives that reinforced racial inequality: repeating stereotypes (12 percent of sample) and downplaying race (40 percent). Two additional narrative types disrupted the master narrative (38 percent) by acknowledging and/or resisting inequality. In this presentation, Rogers will discuss variation in narratives by child age, race and gender, and implications of our findings for identity development and stereotypes in childhood. 

Onnie Rogers is an assistant professor of Psychology at Northwestern University (http://www.psychology.northwestern.edu/people/faculty/core/profiles/onnie-rogers.html). 

For more information on this presentation, contact Kate McLean, director of the Center for Cross-Cultural Research at kate.mclean@wwu.edu.