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The Impact of Racism in the Early Years

Special issue of ECRQ focused on raising awareness co-edited by CEED researchers

While much of what we know about racism is from the vantage point of adults, not children, a new supplemental issue of a top early childhood research journal, Early Childhood Research Quarterly (ECRQ), aims to raise awareness—among researchers, policymakers, advocates, and health and education practitioners—about the effects of racism on the development of infants, toddlers, and preschoolers.

The supplemental issue, “Advancing Developmental Science on the Impact of Racism in the Early Years,” is a collection of scholarly papers about the strengths, cultural assets, and tenacity of racially, ethnically, and linguistically marginalized children and families who thrive despite facing injustice throughout their daily lives.

The issue was co-edited by Stephanie M. Curenton, executive director of the Center on the Ecology of Early Development (CEED) and CEED Research Scientist Jacqueline Sims, along with Iheoma U. Iruka of the Equity Research Action Coalition at the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Nneka Ibekwe-Okafor of the University of Texas at Austin. This work advances CEED’s mission of planting seeds of racial justice and equity for children ​in Boston and beyond. 

The papers in the supplemental issue expand the knowledge base on how both interpersonal and structural racism limit the health, learning, and social-economic advancement of racially and ethnically marginalized families and children. Importantly, the collection of research papers also uplifts the strengths of these marginalized communities, highlighting the ways in which parents, families, and children have persevered and resisted unjust conditions by leaning into these cultural values, assets, and strengths.

The supplemental issue is open access, so the articles are freely available online for anyone to read and access without a subscription fee. The co-editors were intentional in making the content of the supplemental issue open access to increase the reach and impact of these articles.

In addition, a new white paper, “How Racism Affects Children in the Early Years,” summarizes the supplemental issue’s research articles across topical areas related to anti-Blackness, neighborhood and community environments, COVID, parenting, and learnings from Indigenous communities and Black families’ spiritual traditions.