Using a Master Narrative Framework to Examine Conversations About Race and Ethnicity

OBJECTIVE: Systemic racism, reinforced by color-evasive ideology, shapes the ways that emerging adults process and discuss race/ethnicity. In this preregistered and mixed methods study, we used a master narrative framework to examine narratives about race/ethnicity among U.S. emerging adult friend-pairs. METHOD: Participants consisted of 107 friend-pairs (N = 214 total) who provided individually written racial/ethnic narratives and engaged in an unstructured conversation with each other in which race/ethnicity was brought up. RESULTS: Using quantitative methods, we found that meaning making of racial/ethnic experiences was higher in written relative to spoken narrative contexts. Additionally, using qualitative methods, we identified specific conversation dynamics capturing how young people discussed race/ethnicity, including subthemes of mitigation and encouragement, finding that encouragement dynamics were related to higher meaning making. CONCLUSION: Our discussion centers on the value of integrating qualitative and quantitative methods to explore how the meaning of race/ethnicity is silenced or encouraged, and to reveal how master narratives perpetuating racial inequality may be disrupted.