The Friendships of Racial-Ethnic Minority Youth in Context
An extensive theoretical and empirical literature suggests that friendships are an important, if not essential, micro-context of adolescent development – shaping youth identity, school and civic engagement, and psychological and physical wellbeing. Friendships are also themselves embedded within, and shaped by, the larger macro-context of culture (Bronfenbrenner, 1979), including racial-ethnic stereotypes (García-Coll et al., 1996; Spencer, 1995). Yet, the study of friendship rarely examines the influence of the macro-context or includes racial-ethnic minority youth despite the fact that such youth represent half of the American youth population. In this chapter, we review research on the friendships of racial-ethnic minority youth and focus specifically on how the macro-context of social-identity based stereotypes shapes the micro-context of friendships.