The Effects of Significant Others on the Racial Self-Attitude of Afro-American Children

Michelle A. Brittain, The College of Wooster

Abstract

This thesis explores the racial self-attitude of Afro-American children. Over the past thirty-five years there have been many studies that have initiated this phenomenon in hopes of bringing a better understanding of what causes a particular self-attitude of the child. This is my focus. I hope to bring another aspect of this phenomenon into play. The way the child perceives himself through the eyes of those significant people in his life, has a great deal to with the development of the child's attitude. My focus is to get a general idea of how the child feels about what the teacher expects from him. Gather a better understanding of what the parent/family is transmitting to the child in respect to racial selfattitude. Understanding how the child feels about being a part of the Afro-American community. This information was obtained from questionnaires given to a randomly selected population of Afro-American 7th graders. The overall results indicated that in 1990, Afro-American do have a positive racial self-attitude and the influence of the significant others does have a great deal to do with the formation of the child's attitude. Further research is suggested, focusing on the effects of the parent/family on the child's development of racial self-attitude.