Black Teenagers Research Articles

Teenagers’ risky health behaviors and time use during the great recession

This paper uses individual-level data from both the 2003–2011 American Time Use Survey and Youth Risk Behavior Survey along with state-level unemployment rates to examine the effects of a weakening economy during the Great Recession on U.S. teenagers’ activities. Black male teenagers had less sex and spent more time with their parents. Hispanic male teenagers spent less time playing sports and more time watching time TV, and were more likely to be obese. Female teenagers, on the other hand, spent less time working, but made greater investments in their education. However, there were signs that female teenagers were stressed by the weak economic conditions, because they slept less and were more likely to smoke daily. Black females also consumed more alcohol.

Identifying psychosocial and social correlates of sexually transmitted diseases among black female teenagers.

Black teenagers have relatively high rates of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), and recent research suggests the role of contextual factors, as well as risk behaviors. We explore the role of 4 categories of risk and protective factors on having a biologically confirmed STD among black, female teenagers. Black teenage girls (14-19 years old) accessing services at a publicly funded family planning clinic provided a urine specimen for STD testing and completed an audio computer-assisted self-interview that assessed the following: risk behaviors, relationship characteristics, social factors, and psychosocial factors. We examined bivariate associations between each risk and protective factor and having gonorrhea and/or chlamydia, as well as multivariate logistic regression among 339 black female teenagers. More than one-fourth (26.5%) of participants had either gonorrhea and/or chlamydia. In multivariate analyses, having initiated sex before age 15 (adjusted odds ratio [aOR], 1.87) and having concurrent sex partners in the past 6 months (aOR, 1.55) were positively associated with having an STD. Living with her father (aOR, 0.44), believing that an STD is the worst thing that could happen (aOR, 0.50), and believing she would feel dirty and embarrassed about an STD (aOR, 0.44) were negatively associated with having an STD. Social factors and attitudes toward STDs and select risk behaviors were associated with the risk for STDs, suggesting the need for interventions that address more distal factors. Future studies should investigate how such factors influence safer sexual behaviors and the risk for STDs among black female teenagers.

Abstract 30: High Intra-Individual Variation in Urinary Sodium Excretion in Teenage Girls on a Fixed Sodium Intake

Introduction: According to traditional understanding of sodium homeostasis, nearly 100% of daily sodium (Na) intake is excreted in urine, with intra-individual variability attributed to variability in dietary Na intake and non-adherence with urine collection procedures. However, a recent report from a Russian space flight simulation documented unexpectedly high day-to-day variability in urine Na excretion on a fixed intake. Objective: To analyze daily urinary Na excretion from a balance study that was conducted in black and white girls on both low and high levels of dietary Na. Methods: Sodium balance was assessed in 22 black and 13 white adolescent girls, (11-15 y, BMI 15-29 kg/m 2 ) in a randomized, crossover design with controlled diets containing either low (57 mmol/d) or high (167 mmol/d) Na, each for three weeks. Participants collected all urine in acid washed containers. Urine was pooled as 24-h samples and analyzed for sodium by atomic absorption spectrophotometry and creatinine by automated colorimetric method. Coefficients of variation (CV) for urinary Na were calculated for each teen. A mixed model was used to describe the effects of dietary Na and race. Results: The figures below give an example of the Na variability of one black teen on both the high (left) and low (right) Na diets. The horizontal line represents the Na intake. The CV analysis indicated higher variation about the mean on low (vs high) Na (40% vs 32%, p=0.02) and in black (vs white) girls (42% vs 30%, p<0.001). There was no diet x race interaction. Excretion of 50 mmol/d or less was documented on 6.6% of the days during the high Na dietary period. Conclusions: The high intra-individual variability in urinary Na excretion on a fixed diet highlights the potential for substantial error in (a) using a single 24 hour urine collection to estimate usual Na intake and (b) relating Na excretion from a single 24 hour collection with outcomes.

Teens and gun trafficking: a call for pediatric advocacy.

At a meeting of the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization in April 2013, Mirna Luz Ramos takes the microphone. With a cracking voice and tears, she talks about her 19-year-old son, Jorge. He was shot and killed while walking the dog outside of her home. She found him dying on the sidewalk. As she talks, many in the audience are weeping with her. Statistically speaking, this young man is the face of pediatric gun death. Homicides account for close to two-thirds of all gun deaths of young people 19 years and younger. Gunshots (from both suicide and homicide) are the second biggest killer of teens and the top killer of black teens. Yet, stories like Jorge’s garner far less attention in the popular press than do the unintentional shooting deaths of children. Unintentional shootings—which sometimes involve very young children who find a gun in a parent’s or friend’s home—account for only 4% of pediatric gun deaths. Language: en

Common Law Marriage and Teen Births

Using microdata from Current Population Survey Fertility supplements 1990-2010 we examine whether Common Law Marriage (CLM) laws in the US affect teen birth rates. CLM effects are identified through cross-state and time variation, as four states repealed the law over the period of study. We find that in the states where CLM laws were first available but then repealed the odds that teens would become new mothers increased, with a larger increase among young black teens. When we include dummies for CLM at various times around the timing of the repeal, it turns out that the likelihood of becoming a mother is most affected by availability of CLM between 1 and 4 years prior to the repeal. There is a small negative effect of CLM on older women becoming mothers. To the extent that they reduce teen births CLM laws are socially desirable and worthy of further study.

Thomas L. Bynum. NAACP Youth and the Fight for Black Freedom, 1936–1965.

Thomas L. Bynum's book examines the youth councils and college chapters of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), moving from the formal organization of NAACP youth activities under Juanita Jackson in the late 1930s through the sit-in movement of the 1960s. Bynum describes how “youth chapters staged antilynching demonstrations, campaigned for equal educational and employment opportunities, challenged discrimination and segregation in public facilities, and called for full civil liberties” (p. xiii). These young NAACP members engaged in grassroots organizing and nonviolent direct-action protests in the decades before the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) brought national attention to black youth activism. NAACP Youth and the Fight for Black Freedom surveys dozens of different NAACP youth protests across the country, including demonstrations that targeted movie theaters, skating rinks, and barbershops. The book is at its best when it offers detailed examples regarding local protests. The Youth Council in East Chicago, Indiana, for example, challenged the segregated seating policies at local movie theaters. To avoid desegregation, the owners of two of the theaters began showing Spanish movies, which they thought would drive away the black teenagers. In response, the Youth Council members “picketed the theater using Spanish placards and distributed Spanish leaflets.” After six weeks of picketing, they successfully desegregated the theater (p. 55). Similarly, the NAACP chapter at Pennsylvania State College staged a mass demonstration to protest the fact that the school's barbershops refused to serve black students. “The boycott of the state college barbershops symbolized more than the students' fight to get a haircut at the local barbershop,” Bynum writes. “The boycott revealed their fight for human dignity and their sincere efforts to be fully integrated into all aspects of campus life at white colleges and universities” (p. 57).

Ethnic Identity and Positive Youth Development in Adolescent Males: A Culturally Integrated Approach

The present study examined the relation between ethnic identity and indicators of positive youth development (PYD) in a sample of low-income, urban Black and Latino male youth (N = 254; 66% Black, mean age = 14). Using structural equation modeling, a two-factor model of PYD and ethnic identity was found to provide the best fit to the data with a significant, positive relation between the two factors. At age 14, PYD was positively related to concurrent involvement in prosocial activities, and negatively related to criminal and externalizing behaviors; ethnic identity was related to lower levels of internalizing symptoms. The PYD factor was also related to higher prosocial activity involvement and lower criminal offending at age 15. The findings suggest that male Black and Latino teens living in urban poverty have intrapersonal competencies that promote healthy outcomes and that integration of culturally-relevant factors can enhance our understanding of positive youth development.

Maintaining the Mechanisms of Colorblind Racism in the Twenty-First Century

The events of February 26, 2012 in Sanford, Florida will be remembered by man for years to come. That night, George Zimmerman, a 26-year-old half-Peruvian, phenotypically white man was on neighborhood watch and spotted Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old black teenage boy who was staying in the area at the time and walking back to the house of his father’s girlfriend. The following events took place over the span of approximately 8 minutes. First, Zimmerman called 911 to report the suspicious activity. On the recording, we heard the 911 operator tell Zimmerman not to take action against the individual, but Zimmerman did anyway. Unidentified yelling follows. After that, the details of what transpired differ. Zimmerman claimed that he responded in self-defense. Witnesses claimed that they saw a fight between the two individuals, but it is unclear how or why it started. What is known is that an altercation between the two men ensued, and ended in Martin’s murder. The State of Florida charged Zimmerman with the murder, and the case went to trial on April 11, 2012. Zimmerman’s supporters pointed to the ‘‘stand your ground’’ policy, a law in Florida that permits anyone who perceives great bodily harm or death to use deadly force in order to protect themselves. However, even though Zimmerman’s lawyers did not use the ‘‘stand your ground’’ policy in their defense, their counterarguments led the jury to rule against the prosecution. On July 13, 2013, Zimmerman was acquitted of second-degree murder and manslaughter charges in Martin’s murder. Regardless of the nuances of legal policies and judicial debates, it is likely that this crime was motivated by racial attitudes and racist assumptions. As Rachel

Analysis of Perceptions and Prenatal Medical Records of Black Teens Girls in a São Paulo Hospital

This paper studied pre-natal black teenager girls in a public hospital in Santos, state of Sao Paulo, Brazil. We discussed the strategies of the professional staff members, and the conceptions of reproductive and sexual health for teenagers. We noticed, among other things that medical records had not been completely filled, the item color had subdivisions, total lack of familiarity with public policies directed toward the Black population, and some discrete signs of institutional racism. We considered that specific attention to black teens was not given during work as part of a public policy; the lack of medical prevention leads to a referral hospital that does not articulate, on triage, the integral health policy for the Black population, the institutional care and equity.

Come Closer to Feminism: Gratitude as Activist Encounter in Women’s and Gender Studies 101

© 2015 by the board of trustees of the university of ill inois There are many things that can impede teaching and learning in the Introduction to Women’s and Gender Studies undergraduate classroom. Most teachers can probably rattle them off in five seconds. A well-known challenge is teaching students about “bad news”: rape on college campuses; shooting deaths of unarmed black teenagers; aggressive social control of women’s lives and bodies through legislation and court rulings; stigmatization of immigrants; escalating violence against trans women; and the entrenched racial and class system that has led to the extraordinary rise in mass incarceration of people of color and women. To make matters worse, the introductory course, which is typically offered as a general education requirement at many institutions, attracts students with “open hostility to the subject matter” (National Women’s Studies Association 10). For many teachers of introductory women’s and gender studies, we are in the position of introducing bad news to an already hostile audience. To deal directly with this dilemma, I have been rereading Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, and taking inspiration from bell hooks’s Feminism is for Everybody, but a profound influence on my teaching recently is the voice of an American teenager, Julie Zeilinger, the author of A Little F’d Up: Why Feminism Is Not a Dirty Word. Zeilinger addresses young women’s negative emotions about feminism in a clear, humorous, and relaxed way. She analyzes foundational feminist issues and women’s history, and she covers contemporary media and body image, bullying, human trafficking, hook-up culture, cyber-stalking, racism, and the challenges of global feminism. Some have correctly pointed out that Zeilinger does not go into sufficient depth about these topics, nor does she thoroughly explore the implications of her own background. She refers to herself as a “privileged white girl” from Pepper Pike, Ohio, and she mentions that her racial and economic privilege is “definitely something that’s shaping this book” (83). Others complain that A Little F’d Up lacks historical and theoretical nuance, making it too simplistic for university and college classrooms. And some find Zelinger’s use of teen vernacular distracting and, at times, disrespectful. While these misgivings must be taken seriously, the author’s book—which was Come Closer to Feminism: Gratitude as Activist Encounter in Women’s and Gender Studies 101

"We Live in the Shadow": Inner-City Kids Tell Their Stories through Photographs by Elaine Bell Kaplan

 2014 Children, Youth and Environments Children, Youth and Environments 24(1), 2014 “We Live in the Shadow”: Inner-City Kids Tell Their Stories through Photographs Elaine Bell Kaplan (2013). Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 208 pages. $25.95 USD (paperback). ISBN #978-1-4399-0790-0. In the book We Live in the Shadow, Elaine Bell Kaplan demonstrates the value that can come from directly engaging in dialogue with youth about their lives. Through photographs and interviews, middle- and high-school students living in South Central Los Angeles provide an important and often overlooked insight relevant to a wide range of professionals: these youth see and articulate the neglect and disparaging attitudes that pervade the “ghetto” environment that also happens to be their home. Elaine Bell Kaplan is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Southern California. She is also author of Not Our Kind of Girl: Unraveling the Myths of Black Teenage Motherhood and has published numerous articles about race, class and education. Through this research she seeks to understand how youth experience and respond to living conditions, family life, and school and neighborhood dynamics in South Central Los Angeles. Kaplan begins the book by framing her questions and introducing the Photovoice method as a participatory research tool to understand youth experiences and their motivation for participating in after-school programs. She then describes the historic, social and economic context of South Central L.A. and finally shares youths’ stories of their school and neighborhoods. Her research subjects are primarily youth involved with the Neighborhood Academic Initiative Program at the University of Southern California (USC), as well as youth from the Willard after-school program, tutors and students from USC, parents, school teachers, and administrators. Kaplan helps unveil the tragedy inner-city youth face when no one believes in them or provides appropriate care or support. Through her research, youth share the lack of respect they feel because of filthy school toilets and teachers who would rather eat burritos than teach, as well as the violence and danger most youth face in school and in their neighborhoods. Youth also give voice to their desire for better education and for teachers, administrators and city officials who care about them and their future. This book will appeal to educators and trainers of teachers who may work with racially and ethnically diverse youth in inner-city or other urban environments. It may help budding teachers understand that many inner city youth do not want to be stigmatized as “gang-bangers” and that they have a desire to learn and improve their lives. Kaplan offers new insights into social theories of inner-city youth, urging that youth Book Review: “We Live in the Shadow”: Inner-City Kids Tell Their Stories… 190 have more sophisticated understandings of their circumstances than previous research articulates. Kaplan helps shed light on ways that youth themselves look to larger social and structural causes for their life circumstances. In this vein, the book is helpful also to urban sociologists, planners, and community-based organizations who want to understand and make a difference in blighted urban neighborhoods. While South Central L.A. is perhaps one of the most extreme urban environments in the United States in terms of gang influence and violence, the lessons shared and approach taken by Kaplan apply to many other cities, both within the U.S. and internationally. Kaplan’s approach clearly emerges from ethnography and sociological research, yet there are other applications and uses of participatory photography that differ slightly from Kaplan’s approach. In other contexts, Photovoice methods have been used not only to promote photography training and dialogue but also to share this work through public forums. For example, Hilfinger Messias and colleagues (2008) used Photovoice not only to help youth articulate issues within their South Carolina community but also to promote youth as positive social change agents. Similarly, in the case of the Youth Services Initiative Photovoice project, the process of exhibiting work and receiving feedback helped change youths’ perceptions of themselves and also broadened the adult community’s perception of youth and their lives (Derr et al. 2013). I couldn’t help but wish that the...

Black Teenage Mothers' Understandings of the Effects of Maltreatment on their Coping Style and Parenting Practice: A Pilot Study

This article discusses a qualitative pilot study conducted with Black teenage mothers affected by maltreatment histories, exploring the feasibility of researching how they develop insights into the effects on their parenting skills. The results indicate key impact areas, including their relationships with their carers, perceptions of significant relationships and increased vulnerability to relationship abuse. As the young mothers resisted seeing themselves as victims and utilised an avoidance-centred coping strategy, their ability to recognise the impact of harmful childhood experiences was limited. The article concludes with reflections on the pilot study's implications and limitations.

Demographic and Socioeconomic Status, Child Support Grant, and Teenage Pregnancy among Blacks in South Africa

While the evidence is internationally inconclusive, social protection systems have been blamed for various perverse incentives or unintended consequences. This article explores one particular case in point. The South African Constitution and the Social Assistance Act of 2004 provide a child support grant (CSG) to low‐income single parents/caregivers. There is nevertheless concern regarding possible perverse incentives of the grant, sparking debate that it may encourage teenage pregnancy. Several studies have examined the validity of the claim, yet methodological weaknesses cast doubt on their conclusions. This article examines the probability of being pregnant with another child among black teenagers receiving the CSG in South Africa compared with black teenagers who are not recipients. Results indicate that black teenagers aged 15‐18 years receiving the grant have significantly lower odds of being pregnant with another child compared with their peers who do not receive the grant, controlling for demographic and socioeconomic factors.Related Articles Flavin, Patrick, Alexander Pacek, and Benjamin Radcliff. 2011. “.” Politics & Policy 39 (): 251‐269. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1747‐1346.2011.00290.x/abstract Coan, James. 2008. “.” Politics & Policy 36 (): 806‐833. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1747‐1346.2008.00136.x/abstract Luccisano, Lucy, and Amy Romagnoli. 2007. “” Politics & Policy 35 (): 716‐751. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1747‐1346.2007.00082.x/abstract Related Media . 2010. “.” August 20. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDo‐EuyFYSg . 2011. “.” October 10. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vjdd41VbNvk . 2009. “.” June 24. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rb4u46f9fS8

Community-Wide Job Loss and Teenage Fertility: Evidence From North Carolina

Using North Carolina data for the period 1990-2010, we estimate the effects of economic downturns on the birthrates of 15- to 19-year-olds, using county-level business closings and layoffs as a plausibly exogenous source of variation in the strength of the local economy. We find little effect of job losses on the white teen birthrate. For black teens, however, job losses to 1 % of the working-age population decrease the birthrate by around 2 %. Birth declines start five months after the job loss and then last for more than one year. Linking the timing of job losses and conceptions suggests that black teen births decline because of increased terminations and perhaps also because of changes in prepregnancy behaviors. National data on risk behaviors also provide evidence that black teens reduce sexual activity and increase contraception use in response to job losses. Job losses seven to nine months after conception do not affect teen birthrates, indicating that teens do not anticipate job losses and lending confidence that job losses are "shocks" that can be viewed as quasi-experimental variation. We also find evidence that relatively advantaged black teens disproportionately abort after job losses, implying that the average child born to a black teen in the wake of job loss is relatively more disadvantaged.

The Nicest Kids in Town: American Bandstand, Rock ‘n’ Roll, and the Struggle for Civil Rights in 1950s Philadelphia

The Nicest Kids in Town: American Bandstand, Rock ‘n’ Roll, and the Struggle for Civil Rights in 1950s Philadelphia

Resilience and Survival: Black Teenage Mothers ‘Looked After’ by the State Tell their Stories About their Experience of Care

‘Looked after’ young people are among the most disadvantaged members of our society. While their disadvantaged status should not be ignored, poor outcomes are often emphasised at the expense of good ones. This article reports a study that adopts the concept of resilience to understand the narratives of the participants’ experience of care and foster care. A total of 15 young mothers, aged 16–19 and mainly from black African backgrounds, were interviewed. Despite lacking a ‘secure base’, informants invested in a sense of moral identity and a source of self‐directedness, which enabled them to move from victim of circumstances to individuals who overcome their circumstances.

Race, Social Bonds, and Juvenile Attitudes toward the Police

Relying on survey data collected from over 1,300 students of 13–18 years old across multiple US cities, this study attempts to integrate race into social bond theory to explain the variation in juvenile perceptions of the police. Results indicate significant differential outlooks between white and black teenagers, and to a lesser extent, between white and Hispanic juveniles. Social bonds, especially commitment to school and conventional beliefs, have significant effects on juveniles’ attitudes. The effects of race and social bonds are more independent and social bonds do not mediate the race-attitudes relationship. Other factors, such as juvenile delinquency, victimization, and sense of safety, are also related to juvenile assessments of the police. Implications of the findings are discussed.

A Visual Critique of Racism: African American Art from Southern California

A Visual Critique of Racism: African American Art from Southern California

Exposure to Smoking in Movies and Smoking Initiation Among Black Youth

Black adolescents see more substance use in mainstream media but seem less responsive to it than other U.S. adolescents. Black-oriented media may be more personally relevant to them. To determine smoking exposure separately for black-oriented (BSME) and mainstream (MMSE) movies and assess their longitudinal relationships with smoking among black and other-race adolescents. Two-wave (2007-2009) national cohort survey of 2341 nonsmoking (at baseline) U.S. adolescents (aged 13-19 years), analyzed in 2012. The surveys determined BMSE and MMSE based on respondents' exposure to random subsets of 50 movies from a contemporary sample of 95 black-oriented and 288 mainstream movies previously content-coded for smoking. Outcome was smoking initiation. Black teens had significantly more BMSE and MMSE than other teens (p's <0.001). At follow-up, 23.5% of black and 29.0% of nonblack respondents had tried smoking. Among black respondents, BMSE was related to smoking initiation at follow-up but MMSE was not. For other adolescents, both BMSE and MMSE were related to smoking initiation. A prospective relationship was found between exposure to smoking in movies and smoking initiation. Among black adolescents in the U.S., this was only for black-oriented movies, suggesting the importance of personal relevance of the exposures. Parents, practitioners, and producers should be aware of these potential influences of media on black teen viewers.

Ethical Issues in Researching Black Teenage Mothers with Harmful Childhood Histories: Marginal Voices

This paper highlights a number of ethical dilemmas encountered in a pilot study with a hard-to-reach group of research participants with harmful childhood histories. Drawing on a project exploring black teenage mothers' understandings of their own childhood experiences of abuse, it is argued that in asking young mothers to talk about such an emotionally sensitive topic as their own harmful childhood, a number of challenges are posed about how to deal with number of key ethical principles. The paper begins by outlining the context of the pilot study, including the research literature on this subject. It then discusses three key ethical principles that were considered during the process of the research: issues of gaining consent; and when the principle of confidentiality ought to be breached when a duty of care prerogative emerges. The paper explores these tensions in operationalising these principles when dealing with the competing needs and rights of gatekeepers, the young women and their carers, using occasional extracts from research findings to illustrate these tensions. The paper concludes with a discussion of the ethical challenges in accessing marginal voices in social research.