Black adolescent altruism: Exploring the role of racial discrimination and empathy

We examine whether empathy and racial discrimination occurring in schools and communities contribute to altruism among Black¹ adolescents (n = 1,362). Using R and multigroup structural equation modeling, we adjusted for school-level differences and examined: 1) gender differences on empathy, racial discrimination in schools and communities, and altruism, 2) the associations between empathy, discrimination, and altruism, 3) the potential moderating effect of empathy on the associations between discrimination and altruism, and 4) whether gender had a significant impact on all the examined associations. Black girls reported more frequent altruism and empathy, while Black boys reported more frequent racial discrimination. Empathy and community-based discrimination are positively related to altruistic behaviors. Empathy did not significantly moderate the relations between discrimination and altruism. Further, the model comparison suggested that gender did not moderate the associations between community-based racial hassles, school-based discrimination, and empathy with altruism. Empathy may be an important point of intervention to support prosocial behaviors among Black youth.