Skin Tone and Academic Readiness Among Young Mexican-Origin Children: Testing the Moderating Role of Ethnic-Racial Identity Attitudes and Centrality

ABSTRACT

Skin tone-based social stratification is an enduring part of the U.S. racial landscape. Despite literature finding that skin tone informs educational outcomes among adults, few studies have examined these processes in early childhood. The current study tested whether skin tone predicted Mexican-origin 5-year-old children’s academic readiness (i.e., applied problems and letter-word identification) and whether relations were modified by ethnic-racial identity (i.e., positive attitudes and centrality). Findings indicated that darker skin tones predicted lower applied problems scores, an indicator of early math ability. Positive ethnic-racial attitudes did not moderate the relation between skin tone and academic readiness. However, contrary to our hypothesis, higher ethnic-racial centrality strengthened the association between darker skin tone and lower letter-word identification, an indicator of early reading skills. Findings suggest that there is early development of within-race skin tone-based disparities in education, and underscore the need for further exploration of children’s ethnic-racial identity in these processes.

KEYWORDS:

• Skin tone/color
• ethnic-racial identity
• academic readiness
• hispanic/Latino

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by grants from the Department of Health and Human Services (APRPA006011; PI: Umaña-Taylor), the Fahs Beck Fund for Research and Experimentation of the New York Community Trust (PI: Umaña-Taylor), the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (R01HD061376; PI: Umaña-Taylor and 1F31HD085772-01; PI: Chelsea Derlan) and the Challenged Child Project of the School of Social and Family Dynamics at Arizona State University. Chelsea D. Williams’ efforts on this article were partially supported by Virginia Commonwealth University’s Institute for Inclusion, Inquiry & Innovation (iCubed). We thank the adolescent mothers and female family members who participated in this study. We also thank Edna Alfaro, Mayra Bámaca, Diamond Bravo, Emily Cansler, Lluliana Flores, Melinda Gonzales-Backen, Elizabeth Harvey, Melissa Herzog, Sarah Killoren, Ethelyn Lara, Esther Ontiveros, Jacqueline Pflieger, Alicia Godinez, and the undergraduate research assistants of the Supporting MAMI project for their contributions to the larger study.