Developing Racial Centrality: Examining Impacts of Neighborhood-Level Racial Composition

Racial identity among Black Americans has been a topic of psychological study in the United States for decades (Sellers et al., 1997, Sellers & Shelton, 2003, Chin et al., 2023). However, there is not ample research on what factors are associated with racial identity. In the literature on racial identity, there is some evidence that the racial composition of a neighborhood may impact racial identity development (Banks, 1984, Franklin-Jackson et al., 2007, Hurd et al., 2013, Deangelis, 2022) however, few studies have attempted to examine this relationship across a broader national sample with a focus specifically on racial centrality. Racial centrality refers to the dominance of a person’s race to their self-concept and how close an individual holds their racial identity to the core part of their being. (Sellers et al., 1997, Cokley & Helm, 2001). Data from a larger study (n=226) were used to conduct correlational analyses between the percentage of Black Americans living in a participant's zip code and the participant's rating of their racial centrality. The measures used include the Multidimensional Inventory of Black Identity (Sellers et al., 1997), the participants’ zip-codes, and the demographic U.S. census data for corresponding neighborhoods. The results yielded a non-significant relationship between racial centrality and demographic composition of participant's zip code (r=.01, p=.90). These unexpected results indicate that there may be other, more significant, factors that contribute to racial identity. Further qualitative and quantitative research is required to identify such factors, particularly those which require various systems level interventions to support the identity development of Black Americans.