The Black Lives Matter Movement: A Call to Action for Couple and Family Therapists.

2020 Rise to the challenge

Still Here

Researchers have illustrated the deleterious psychological effects that racial discrimination has exerted on Black Americans. The resulting racial stress and trauma (RST) from experiences with discrimination has been linked to negative wellness outcomes and trajectories for Black youth and families. Racial socialization (RS)-defined as the verbal and nonverbal messages that families use to communicate race to their children-can be a cultural strength and has been associated with positive outcomes in Black youth. Furthermore, the Racial Encounter Coping Appraisal and Socialization Theory (RECAST) encourages the frequent and competent use of RS between family members to cope with the negative impact of RST. Guided by RECAST, the purpose of this article is to describe the development of the Engaging, Managing, and Bonding through Race (EMBRace) intervention targeting the RS practices between Black adolescents and families. The authors explore current research on RST, discuss why traditional coping models for stress are inadequate for racially specific stressors, highlight RECAST as a burgeoning racial coping and socialization model, and describe how RS can be used as a tool to intervene within Black families. This is followed by a detailed description of the development and use of the EMBRace intervention which seeks to reduce RST through RS psychoeducation and practice, stress management, and the promotion of bonding in Black families. This article aims to serve as an example of a culturally relevant RS intervention for Black families who may benefit from clinical treatment for psychological distress from racially discriminatory encounters.

In the US, Black parents and children are regularly exposed to multiple forms of racism, including interpersonal experiences of discrimination and structural inequities that disproportionately affect Black Americans. A sizeable body of evidence has established that these exposures can have detrimental consequences for child health and well-being, and may do so by altering individuals' physiological functioning. However, an understanding of how racism experienced by parents and children impacts developmental parent-child processes is lacking. A comprehensive view of the mechanisms through which racism may impact child and family functioning is critical for promoting health and well-being in Black communities. This review proposes an interpersonal physiological pathway framework for conceptualizing the ways in which parent and child exposure to interpersonal and structural racism may impact physiological functioning, with implications for lifespan health and well-being. Specifically, racism is proposed to impact parent-child physiological coregulation (i.e., how dyads influence and regulate one another's physiology during interpersonal interactions), which may contribute to racial disparities in child health and well-being over time. Special consideration is given to unique parenting and sociocultural factors in Black families that may reflect coregulatory processes. Advancing research on the links between racism and coregulation could further our understanding of adaptive approaches to coregulation in Black families, with potential implications for culturally-informed family intervention and the promotion of well-being in Black youth.

The impact of being Black while living with a chronic condition: Inpatient perspectives.

BackgroundRacism and discrimination are among the factors perpetuating the persistent disparities within the Canadian health sector and related social and community services. Addressing issues of racism in Canada is crucial to reducing the mounting mental health disparities that subsequently impact the psychological well-being of diverse groups of people, particularly racialized and Black individuals. While some research has been conducted on mental illness–related stigma, very few peer-reviewed studies have attempted antistigma interventions to address mental health disparities in Black families and communities in Canada.ObjectiveThis study aims to generate critical knowledge to reduce mental health disparities and mental illness stigma experienced by Black families and communities and engage them in cocreating a best-practice model to guide policy and programming. Our study intends to engage individuals living with or affected by mental illness, service providers, and community leaders in Black communities who are interested in stigma reduction activities and advocacy in Ontario, particularly in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), including Durham and York Regions, London, Ontario, Brampton, and Ottawa.MethodsInformed by population health promotion approaches, critical race theory, and an intersectionality framework underpinned by social justice principles, this mixed methods study will engage individuals of Caribbean and African descent in 5 cities in Ontario. We will use online self-reported surveys with Black individuals (335/431) to assess depression, anxiety, stress, mental health knowledge, racial discrimination, and mental health stigma. We will also engage Black individuals (40/431) and service providers and community leaders (16/431) in focus groups and individual interviews (10/431). Results from the survey and focus groups will inform concept mapping activities with cross-sector leaders, decision makers, and community advocates (30/431) to cocreate a best-practice model to improve mental health outcomes in Black families and communities. Quantitative data will be analyzed using descriptive and inferential analyses through SPSS (IBM Corp). Qualitative data will be transcribed verbatim, and NVivo software (Lumivero) will be used for data management. We will apply Braun and Clarke’s framework of 6 phases in thematic analysis.ResultsAs of September 2024, the study has received ethical approval in Canada. We have completed data collection for phase one of the study and plans are far advanced to start recruitment for phases 2 and 3. Results from the study are expected in the last quarter of 2025 and the first quarter of 2026.ConclusionsThis project will generate a novelty of knowledge to contribute to effective ways of addressing mental illness stigma and promoting mental health literacy in Black families and communities and other vulnerable populations. In addition, the knowledge gained from this study will be taken back to Black communities to empower affected individuals and their families.International Registered Report Identifier (IRRID)DERR1-10.2196/66851

Black Dignity: The Struggle against Domination, by Vincent W. Lloyd

Introduction: Black Laughs Matter

Teaching (Cooperative) Business: The “Bluefield Experiment” and the Future of Black Business Schools

Racism Is a Modifiable Risk Factor: Relationships Among Race, Ethnicity, and Colorectal Cancer Outcomes

WALTER R. ALLEN * and ANGELA D. JAMES ** During past three decades, well over a thousand publications have been added to research record on African American families in United States (for detailed reviews of literature, see: Staples and Johnson,1993; Hill et al., 1993; Billingsley, 1992; Taylor et al., 1990; McAdoo, 1988; Staples and Mirande, 1980; Allen, 1978; Staples, 1971). literature on Black families across African Diaspora has also grown exponentially (Allen et al., 1986). Despite this enormous volume of research on Black life, we are very uneasy about nature and consequences of past research, as well as our own attempts to enter fray. This uneasiness is caused by continued references to The Black Family. Such references ignore extensive regional, ethnic, value, and income differences among Black families. It is an uneasiness with theoretical and methodological assumptions underlying so many published, widely circulated studies of Black families. This uneasiness is bred by entrenched, stereotypic portrayals of Black life which not only persist, but dominate popular as well as academic discourse about Black families. It is an uneasiness due to a frequently demonstrated ignorance concerning internal dynamics and motives of Black life in this society. We are uneasy that our own attempt to tell story of African American life will err too much in one direction or another. On one hand, statistical and ethnographic data on Black families present a picture of tremendous changes in manner in which men, women and children organize themselves into and household arrangements. We recognize that these changes have been accompanied by widespread concern of community members and often, feelings of social dislocation and personal difficulty among individual Black men, women and children. On other hand, we also want to keep at forefront of any discussion of dislocating effects of recent changes in Black organization understanding that these families continue to be community mainstays. The Black Family is in no danger of disappearing, even as families change in response to increasingly difficult economic, social and cultural circumstances. We seek to balance concern with what has been lost in midst of current transformations, with an accurate telling of varieties of African American stories emerging from storm's midst. DIVERSITY AND STEREOTYPES IN THE STUDY OF BLACK FAMILY LIFE Much that is written about Black American families is flawed by tendency of researchers to gloss over within-group differences. While prior research has extensively explored Black/White differences, information is relatively sparse regarding differences among African American families of different structure, incomes, regions, life-cycle stages, and value orientations. record comparing African American families to Black families across African Diaspora is also woefully inadequate (Allen et. al., 1986). Although this Special Issue's primary focus is on African American families, of necessity we incorporate studies of African, West Indian, and other racial ethnic families. rationale for examining African American experience (i.e., values, institutions) within context of larger African Diaspora is certainly well established (Du Bois, 1990; Drake, 1987). It is our premise that one best understand Africa American families by exploring both their specific and universal features. By focusing so much attention on comparing experience of among Blacks with Whites, much of richness, complexity and subtleties of African American systems have been ignored. This has resulted in widespread academic and popular acceptance of crude categories, poorly defined concepts, and negative stereotypes. Apparent in literature are abundant references to family disorganization, underclass, culture of poverty, and the Black Matriarchy. …

Reviewed by: Living With Lynching: African American Lynching Plays, Performance, and Citizenship, 1890–1930 by Koritha Mitchell Courtney Marshall (bio) Mitchell, Koritha. Living With Lynching: African American Lynching Plays, Performance, and Citizenship, 1890–1930. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 2011. Koritha Mitchell’s Living With Lynching: African American Lynching Plays, Performance, and Citizenship, 1890–1930 is a timely work that proposes a key paradigm shift in critical studies about lynching and African American performance. According to Tuskegee Institute research, almost 4,000 African American women, men, and children were murdered by extralegal mob violence between 1882 and 1968. Far from its euphemism, “death at the hands of persons unknown,” this violence lived on after the act in photographs disseminated through periodicals and postcards. In these mute representations, gleeful mob members surround the lynching victim’s corpse. Mitchell brilliantly reads lynchings as performance rituals through which whites dramatize their absolute power over black communities. From the hanging of the bodies, the dismemberment of the corpse for souvenirs, and the taking of photographs, lynch mobs carefully monitored, crafted, and scripted every detail of the process. Mitchell argues that the academy has too long privileged the depiction of the lone, mute, mutilated black bodies in the photograph, citing the publishing success of Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America (2000). The unintended consequence of these inquiries, according to Mitchell, is that “the nation has again allowed the archives left by perpetrators to eclipse all others” (6). Rather than photographs, a form which is complicit in the mob’s triumph, Mitchell analyzes black-authored lynching plays from the period for their representations of black bodily integrity and community ties. She argues that “lynching plays served as mechanisms through which African Americans survived the height of mob violence—and its photographic representation—still believing in their right to full citizenship” (2). For Mitchell, black-authored dramas about lynching suggest that while black families and communities are damaged by lynch law, they are not destroyed. Mitchell uses the phrase “lynching drama” rather than “anti-lynching drama” to show that artists “were not simply reacting against lynching; they were working to preserve community insights” (7). She begins by giving a history of black performance, arguing that while minstrelsy promoted buffoonish depictions of black people, early black-authored [End Page 490] musical comedies elicited race pride. Newspapers like The New York Age promoted black participation in drama by reviewing performances by black-theater troupes like The Lafayette Players and in places like the Lafayette Theater, the first Harlem theater managed by African Americans. Periodicals like The Crisis publicized black achievements alongside reports of lynching. Her second chapter, “Redefining Black Theater,” analyzes Angelina Weld Grimke’s Rachel, the first black-authored lynching play. Mitchell situates Washington, DC, as a contested symbol of democratic values and the site of literary activity. In asserting the primacy of Angelina Weld Grimke’s place in black drama history, Mitchell challenges the notion that women do not create literary traditions. Grimké wrote Rachel (1914) as a corrective to earlier focuses on comedy; “she chose to represent African American life through its connection to mob violence and ‘living with lynching’” (54). In Rachel, Mrs. Loving reveals to her children Rachel and Tom that their father and older brother were lynched ten years ago. Grimké emphasizes Mr. Loving’s courage as an honest newspaper editor who openly critiqued lynching violence and his love for his family, characteristics that would not be a part of the lynching narrative. Therefore, lynching does not stamp out black crime; it is targeted at noble black fathers who enjoy domestic success and influence in their communities. The Loving family is weakened and forced to move to the North, and once Rachel hears the truth about her father’s death, she decides not to have children, thus showing the ripple effect that lynching has. Mitchell reads the play’s power in its ability to show white theatergoers the ways that lynching stunts the development of noble black characters and families. Mitchell argues that lynching plays stored African American community knowledge during an era of racialized terror. Grimke’s successors kept Rachel’s depiction of black domestic life, but instead of writing for the...

POLICE REFORM IN DIVIDED TIMES

“There Is No<i>New</i>Black Panther Party”: The Panther-Like Formations and the Black Power Resurgence of the 1990s

Review: <i>The Making of Black Lives Matter: A Brief History of an Idea</i>, by Christopher J. Lebron