Assistant Professor Bethel University mounds view, Minnesota, United States
Overview: This study explored the perception of racial discrimination among first-generation Korean American parents and reactions to their children’s experiences with discrimination. The findings indicated that parents underestimate racial discrimination, lack open-communication and resources to support their children, and believe high socioeconomic status and fluency in English mitigates the issues.Proposal text:
Purpose: The study explored the perception of racial discrimination among first-generation Korean American parents and their reactions to children's experiences with discrimination in the American education system. Racism and racial discrimination can be everyday life events among ethnic minority children in the United States (Juang & Kiang, 2019; Pachter et al., 2010). A growing body of evidence indicates that experiences of racism impact the psychological well-being of children, and those stressors lead to adverse changes in health status and increased behavioral issues (Benner et al., 2018; Liu & Suyemoto, 2016). Parental support for children who have experienced discrimination is important to buffer their negative outcomes of discrimination(Atkin et al., 2019). However, minority children are less likely to receive parental support for coping with discrimination (Richardson et al., 2015). Among Korean immigrants, few studies have been conducted to understand parent’s attitudes about discrimination and their attempts to support their children. In this regard, understanding Korean parents’ perception of discrimination and their efforts to cope with their children’s experiences is important to support children’s psychological well-being.
Methods: This qualitative research used snowball sampling and conducted in-depth interviews with 21 participants who are first-generation Korean immigrants and have resided in the U.S. for at least ten years. All interview transcripts were coded and analyzed using a grounded theoretical framework.
Results: Emerging themes indicated that first-generation Korean parents had a low perception of racial discrimination, underestimated frequency and severity of racial discrimination relative to children's actual experiences, reacted passively to racial discrimination, and lacked knowledge about available resources to address discrimination. The findings also indicated that parents lacked dialogue with their children regarding racial discrimination and only realized their children’s difficulties after children had become adults. They also believed that fluency in English, living in a wealthy neighborhood, and obtaining higher education would decrease the likelihood of racial discrimination.
Conclusion: The results suggest that social work professionals and educators need to be aware of parents’ lack of concern about discrimination and provide resources to support parents advocate for their children and to increase communication within households.
