Coping With Discrimination Among Mexican Descent Adolescents

The current research is designed to explore the relationship among discrimination stress, coping strategies, and self-esteem among Mexican descent youth (N = 73, age 11-15 years). Results suggest that primary control engagement and disengagement coping strategies are positively associated with discrimination stress. Furthermore, self-esteem is predicted by an interaction of primary control engagement coping and discrimination stress, such that at higher levels of discrimination stress, youth who engaged in more primary control engagement coping reported higher self-esteem. The authors’ findings indicate that Mexican descent youth are actively finding ways to cope with the common experience of negative stereotypes and prejudice, such that their self-esteem is protected from the stressful impact of discrimination and prejudice. Implications of these findings for Latino/a youth resilience are discussed