Historic racial disparities in the United States have created an urgent need for evidence-based strategies promoting African American students' academic performance via school-based ethnic-racial socialization and identity development. However, the temporal order among socialization, identity, and academic performance remains unclear in extant…

Three aspects of racial-ethnic identity (REI)--feeling connected to one's racial-ethnic group (Connectedness), being aware that others may not value the in-group (Awareness of Racism), and feeling that one's in-group is characterized by academic attainment (Embedded Achievement)--were hypothesized to promote academic achievement. Youth randomly…