“It's a white thing”: An exploration of beliefs about suicide in the African‐American community

Abstract

Although there has been an increase in black suicides in the past decades the white suicide rate is still nearly double the black suicide rate for men and women. The question asked is, Why is there relatively little black suicide? One persuasive answer proposed in the literature is that major social institutions, particularly religion and family, in the African‐American community provide amelioration or buffering of social forces that would otherwise promote suicide. We report on a qualitative investigation designed to identify the content of beliefs and perceptions of suicide that may act as a buffer against suicide in the African‐American community. From interviews with black pastors in a southern community we identify an intermingling of religious condemnatory beliefs and secular attitudes about suicide that view suicide as unthinkable sin and define it as a “white thing” alien to the black culture.