CONGRUENCE 1 The Congruence Between African American Students’ Racial Identity Beliefs and their Academic Climates: Implications for Academic Motivation and Achievement

Over the past two decades, research and popular discourse have taken up the question of whether strong racial group identification inhibits or promotes achievement motivation among African American students. However, scant attention has been paid to contextual variation in roles and functions of racial identity. In this chapter, we considered how the congruence between students’ racial identity beliefs and their experienced racial climates related to their motivation and engagement. A congruence perspective suggests that, in settings that are congruent with individuals’ racial identity beliefs, individuals feel greater connection to the setting and valued outcomes within that setting. We present data from a high school and a college sample as illustrations of the congruence perspective. In both samples, we examined three dimensions of students’ racial identity beliefs: the importance of their racial group membership (racial centrality), affective feelings about their group membership or group pride (private regard) and perceptions of societal views of their racial group (public regard). Students’ perceived academic racial climates included assessments of intergroup association, intergroup tensions, institutional support for diversity, and equal treatment across racial groups. Using multiple regression analyses, we demonstrated that academic racial climate moderated associations between students’ racial identity beliefs and engagement with their proximal school contexts (intrinsic school motivation and academic satisfaction). Students with strong and positive racial identity beliefs that were consistent with their experienced racial climates showed more positive engagement, while students whose strong and positive racial identity beliefs were less congruent with their perceived racial climates showed lower academic engagement. This chapter offers a perspective on racial identity that complicates the discussion and debate around racial identity’s effects on academic motivation by explicitly considering the role of youth’s daily contexts.