Political Identification, Political Ideology, and Critical Social Analysis of Inequality among Marginalized Youth

This study applies multiple indicator and multiple causes modeling to examine to what extent critical social analysis of inequality, a dimension of critical consciousness (CC), may be explained by political party identification (i.e., Republican vs. Democrat) or political ideology (i.e., conservative vs. liberal). These issues were examined among 237 public high school students from a large Midwestern city, who generally came from historically marginalized groups. Analyses suggest that political party identification was only marginally associated with critical social analysis of inequality and political ideology had a small positive association with critical social analysis of inequality. Further, political identification and political ideology only explained between 2% and 4% of the variance in critical social analysis of inequality. These results suggest complexity in how youth think about political institutions and inequality, while also providing evidence that a critical social analysis of inequality is largely independent of political identification and ideology.