Abstract
African American history is often taught poorly in high school U.S. history courses. However, we know little about how Black students perceive and experience this situation. I use a refined racial socialization framework and interview data with 32 Black college students in the Northeast to investigate how familial racial socialization shapes their perceptions of and experience learning about African American history in high school. Findings indicate that Black students socialized into critical and colorblind interpretations of race and racism, respectively, interpret, engage with, and respond to African American history in their high school U.S. history courses in different ways.