Black children and youth disproportionately encounter systemic discrimination, racism, stereotypes, and academic streaming [1-3], which are challenges that lead to disparities in education, health, and economic opportunity. These disparities include low educational attainment, overrepresentation in the criminal justice system and welfare system, and poor physical and mental health [4-6]. Collectively, these negative outcomes reinforce persistent socioeconomic disparities between Black youth and their peers from other racial and ethnic backgrounds.

Despite these challenges, research shows that Black children and youth often hold high aspirations for their future [7,8]. However, systemic discrimination and racism can hinder their ability to pursue and realize these goals. One study found that students belonging to visible racial or ethnic minority groups were more likely to aspire to attend a university compared to their peers belonging to nonvisible racial or ethnic minority groups [9], a finding that has been replicated in other studies [10]. Even as they strive to achieve their aspirations, Black children and youth are often subjected to deficit-based narratives that reinforce negative stereotypes [8,11].

In response to these barriers and challenges, many Black children and youth engage in strategies that foster resilience, which is the capacity to thrive amid adversity [12]. Resilience has been conceptualized in multiple ways, including the ability to access and effectively use psychological, social, cultural, and physical resources [13] as well as a set of interconnected processes between individuals and systems that enable the use of these resources to achieve positive outcomes [14]. These conceptualizations align with the biopsychosocial model of human development proposed by Bronfenbrenner [15]. While some of the definitions mentioned earlier emphasize individual capacities, others highlight the systemic and relational processes involved in fostering resilience. For this study, we define resilience in Black children and youth as (1) a dynamic process; (2) a set of capacities; and (3) a range of outcomes that enable them to adapt, cope, and flourish despite ongoing exposure to systemic adversity. This highlights the role of cultural identity, community support, and lived experience in shaping how resilience is expressed and sustained among Black children and youth.

Although there is a growing body of research focused on the experiences of Black children and youth in Canada and the United States [10,16-18], targeted studies on resilience remain relatively sparse. In the Canadian context, especially, there is a notable lack of synthesized evidence on the factors that support or hinder resilience. While recent reviews have explored mental health and general health among Black youth [19-21], these studies represent only a subset of the broader social, structural, and cultural conditions shaping resilience. On the basis of a preliminary review of the literature and to the best of our knowledge, no existing literature, no existing literature reviews have systematically examined the factors influencing resilience among Black youth in Canada. This represents a critical gap. Accordingly, this review aims to fill that gap by synthesizing evidence on the complex and intersecting dynamics that shape resilience in this population.

Due to the limited Canadian literature, we expand the scope of this review to include the United States, providing a broader base of evidence to inform policy, practice, and future research in both countries. While Canada and the United States differ in population size, health care systems, immigration pathways, and social policies [22-24], they share critical historical and structural features [25]. Both are settler-colonial states with enduring legacies of anti-Black racism and face parallel challenges in advancing racial equity in health, education, and social services. Their geographic proximity, common language, and history of cross-border policy exchange further support the value of reviewing literature from both contexts. In light of these contextual differences and similarities, there are opportunities to illuminate resilience processes that may be transferable or adaptable to the Canadian context.

By examining findings from Canada and the United States while attending to their distinct systemic and cultural environments, this review aims to inform Canadian policy through both context-specific and comparative insights.

Therefore, this review aims to identify, describe, and synthesize existing evidence on the facilitators of and barriers to resilience among Black children and youth in Canada and the United States. Importantly, we recognize the heterogeneity within Black populations, including the diverse experiences of first-, second-, and later-generation migrants from continental Africa and the Caribbean as well as descendants of survivors of the trans-Atlantic slave trade [26]. While their backgrounds are varied, shared racialization and phenotypic similarities often expose them to similar patterns of discrimination and exclusion.

This scoping review will be guided by an intersectionality-based theoretical lens, which provides a critical framework for understanding how overlapping systems of oppression, such as race, class, gender, immigration status, and age, interact to shape the lived experiences of Black children and youth [27-29]. This lens enables a more nuanced exploration of resilience by recognizing that it is shaped not only by individual or cultural factors but also by the intersections of structural and systemic inequities. By applying this approach, we will be sensitive to the complexity and diversity within Black communities, moving beyond one dimensional analyses and highlighting how multiple identities and contexts contribute to both vulnerabilities and sources of strength [30,31].

Our research team includes Black Ghanaian, Nigerian, and Canadian scholars with disciplinary backgrounds in nursing and health geography, representing diversity across gender and generational age. The project is supervised by a Canada Research Chair in Black and Racialized People’s Health with recognized expertise in the well-being of Black children and youth. Two undergraduate Black and racialized youth research assistants are actively involved in the project, contributing lived experience and critical reflections that inform this study’s design and focus. We have established a Black youth advisory committee for stakeholder consultation and feedback on data interpretation and synthesis. Our intersecting positionalities as racialized, migrant, and health equity scholars enable us to critically engage with the structural conditions shaping the well-being of Black youth and children. We recognize the complexities of our proximity to and distance from this population and will engage in reflexive dialogue to address how our identities and assumptions shape the research process. We reject claims to absolute objectivism and instead embrace a standpoint rooted in care, equity, and justice.

This review will be guided by the methodological framework for scoping reviews proposed by Arksey and O’Malley [32] and advanced by Levac et al [33]. This framework involves five key stages: (1) formulating a research question; (2) identifying relevant studies; (3) selecting studies; (4) organizing and extracting data; and (5) compiling, summarizing, and reporting the findings.

This study did not require ethics approval because data will be obtained from already published sources and does not include direct involvement of human participants. However, we recognize that ethical considerations remain important, especially given the sensitive nature of topics such as childhood trauma, racism, mental health, sexual orientation, disability, and other marginalized social identities. We are mindful of the potential for research to inadvertently reinforce stigma, a risk we seek to mitigate by emphasizing community strengths. Our approach aims to present the evidence with respect and sensitivity, centering the lived experiences of Black children and youth within their broader sociohistorical contexts.

This protocol has been submitted for registration and will be embargoed on the Open Science Framework. This will become publicly accessible upon journal publication [41].

This scoping review is expected to identify and synthesize key facilitators of and barriers to resilience among Black children and youth in Canada and the United States. We anticipate identifying a broad range of individual, relational, community, and structural factors that enable or constrain resilience. These factors include, but are not limited to, cultural identity, family cohesion, mentorship, experiences of racism, and systemic barriers in education and health care. We also expect that resilience processes and outcomes will vary based on intersecting social identities (eg, gender, immigrant status, and socioeconomic position), revealing the need for nuanced and tailored interventions.

Unlike previous reviews, which focused primarily on mental health and general health outcomes among Black children and youth [19-21], this review positions resilience as both a process and an outcome, incorporates an intersectionality lens, and situates findings within structural and cultural contexts, offering a more holistic understanding of resilience. By situating resilience within structural and cultural contexts, this work addresses critical gaps in the literature and builds on earlier efforts to understand how systemic inequities shape Black youth resilience. Finally, this review aligns with ongoing national efforts to improve outcomes for Black communities in Canada, particularly in response to enduring racial inequities and those highlighted during the COVID-19 pandemic [42].

A key strength of this review is its comprehensive and multidisciplinary approach, informed by health, education, social science, and community perspectives. This study is also strengthened by its grounding in Black-led research, community engagement, and critical theoretical frameworks, including intersectionality and the biopsychosocial model developed by Bronfenbrenner. Our study has a few limitations. Excluding articles published in French may limit the comprehensiveness of this scoping review, given that Canada is a bilingual country. Consequently, the findings will primarily reflect evidence available in English-language studies. In addition, the concept of resilience is inherently complex and interpreted differently across various disciplines [43]. This inherent variability could pose challenges during the screening and data extraction phases when identifying resilience facilitators and barriers. To mitigate this, we will apply operationalized dimensions of resilience (Table 2) and use a reflexive, consensus-driven approach within the research team during data screening and extraction.

Future research should adopt bilingual or multilingual approaches to incorporate Francophone communities and perspectives, thereby enhancing inclusivity and representativeness. Expanding resilience research across diverse cultural and structural contexts will be critical for developing effective, equity-driven policies and programs.

To maximize the impact and accessibility of our findings, we will disseminate results through both academic and community channels. These include publication in a peer-reviewed journal, presentations at relevant conferences (eg, the Black Child and Youth Summer Institute), and cocreated knowledge translation products (eg, podcasts and summary briefs). Our Black youth advisory committee will play an active role in codeveloping these outputs to ensure they are accessible, culturally resonant, and action oriented for advocacy organizations, educators, community groups, and policymakers.

By moving beyond deficit-oriented frameworks, this scoping review protocol centers the strengths, strategies, and structural contexts that shape how Black young people navigate systemic adversity. Guided by intersectionality and grounded in community-engaged scholarship, this review will offer a multidimensional synthesis of the processes, capacities, and outcomes that support or hinder resilience. In doing so, this study will inform culturally responsive, equity-driven policy and practice interventions that reflect the lived realities and aspirations of Black youth. The findings will contribute critical knowledge to disrupt systemic inequities and advance health, educational, and social justice for Black children and youth.