Black Youth and Psychosocial Development

While there exists a massive literature on the characteristics and problems of black Americans, few studies exist which take as the main focus of attention the black adolescent or youth and the problem of psychosocial development. Moreover, while there has been considerable genuine interest and concern for the psychosocial developmental problems of black youth, there has been little actual systematic or theoretically guided research in this area (Pettigrew, 1964; Proshansky and Newton, 1968). Indeed, a perusal of that small corpus of research which does exist suggests that many of the more fundamental and significant questions have not even been broached, much less subjected to empirical investigation. For example, the way in which black youth construct or cultivate their identities through the use of others as models has been virtually ignored, despite evidence from psychological, clinical, and sociological studies on the