Urban Black Research Articles

Transbordering assemblages: Power, agency and autonomy (re)producing health infrastructures in the South East of England

This paper discusses how intersecting identities, stigma and health-based infrastructures are spatially affiliated and territorialised in the South East of England through the findings of three research projects aimed at understanding health inequalities among urban Black, Asian and Ethnic Minorities including Gypsies and Travellers (BAME and GT) groups. It problematises Wacquant’s approach to territorial stigma by explaining how Butler’s notion of vulnerability and Castoriadis’ notion of autonomous agency help to expand our understanding of the interplay between stigma and health infrastructures. Moreover, it suggests that such interplay requires an intersectional approach to identity as performative and embodied practice using illustrative examples. We propose that these health settings and infrastructures can be characterised as ‘transbordering assemblages’, following Irazábal who describes its embedded notions of pluri-locality (here and there: ‘[T]Here’), pluri-identity and practices of bordering (being in or out/in and out/in between) when experiencing health needs.

Health Promotion Behaviors among Urban Black Women.

Health-promotion behaviors among urban Black women are the forefront of US health policy regarding health disparities. This cross-sectional study explored factors such as health literacy, self-efficacy, and readiness for change with health-promotion behaviors of urban Black women. Although these variables are relevant, urban Black women have identified that spirituality and history of domestic violence were also relevant. The sample consists of 152 participants from outpatient clinics, community events, and grocery stores in one Northeastern US city. The anonymous online survey contained the following Instruments: Newest Vital Sign, New General Self-efficacy Scale, Health Risk Instrument, Daily Spiritual Assessment Scale, FAST Survey, and Health-Promoting Lifestyle Profile II. Univariate statistics and bivariate/simultaneous linear regression identified significant relationships between health-promotion behaviors and the following: eeadiness for change, self-efficacy, and spirituality. Participants who engaged in health-promotion behaviors were ready to change, but these behaviors were negatively associated with spirituality, self-efficacy, and a history of domestic violence.

Review: Greening the Black Urban Regime: The Culture and Commerce of Sustainability in Detroit, by Alesia Montgomery

Review: <i>Greening the Black Urban Regime: The Culture and Commerce of Sustainability in Detroit</i>, by Alesia Montgomery

Specificity of Gender Roles in the Urban Black South Africans. History and Modernity

Specificity of Gender Roles in the Urban Black South Africans. History and Modernity

Creative Introduction

Creative Introduction Walidah Imarisha "But in their own way, the new generation—to whom so much had been given, from whom so much was being stolen, for whom so little would be promised—would not settle for the things previous generations had been willing to settle for. Concede them a demand and they would demand more. Give them an apocalypse, and they would dance" (Chang 19). Jeff Chang's words above were written about the youth who created hip hop in 1970s South Bronx. And yet it feels timeless and absolutely relevant today. This is partially because the same structural inequalities, staggering disparities, and systemic oppressions that shaped the lives of late 20th century poor/working class urban Black and Brown kids still sculpt the present. But likewise, this same spirit of creative resistance, righteous rebellion, and innovative audacity pervade the art of those who are metaphorically dancing through this current apocalypse. The ability to dance through an apocalypse is something communities of color have honed and perfected over the countless generations of destruction they have survived, in this nation and globally. Having lived through so many historic and ongoing assaults, communities of color have made themselves into fire-activated seeds, like the eucalyptus. The eucalyptus understands the world it lives in, understands fire is inevitable, and plans for it. The heat releases the seed, allowing new life to be birthed in an inferno. As Black feminist science fiction writer and luminary Octavia E. Butler wrote, "In order to rise / from its own ashes / A phoenix / First / Must / Burn" (137). The rise of so many movements for justice and liberation within communities of color is the seed sprouting in the blaze, the phoenix ever rising from previous [End Page 17] generations' pyres. Amidst the literal fires ravaging our planet, along with so many other climate catastrophes, Indigenous communities continue to be the warrior caretakers for us all. Through the decades and centuries of onslaught against Black communities by law enforcement, again and again resistance movements like Black Lives Matter have exploded forth. And of course all of these movements are not only connected, they breathe deeply as one, exhaling liberation dreams. Those in these movements hold hope even in the face of the unimaginably brutal. "Let this radicalize you rather than lead you to despair," prison abolitionist Mariame Kaba instructed us. Art is a powerful arena for this alchemic process of transmuting pain and horror into hope. Art allows us to not only sustain ourselves through trauma, but also allows us to imagine a way through it. When we cannot see beyond the abyss beneath our feet, we cling to the edge. But what if the abyss is actually a portal? As A.J. Hudson writes in the essay "The End of the World, for Whom?": "One way or another Climate Change will end our world. But not all endings are bleak." The "Curating At the End of the World" exhibit shows that apocalypse has happened before. It is sometimes necessary for the new to be born. Created to respond to the multitude of intersecting "existential threats" to Black people in the diaspora, the first section of the exhibit opened online during the beginnings of the pandemic, when so much felt terrifying and unknown, dystopic and devastating. The three art pieces reprinted here show the breadth of the response to that ongoing crisis, which of course is connected to all other crises. The images capture the horror but also the hope not just of these artists but also Black communities. It helps recenter the historic certainty of Black visionary survival rooted in Black creativity that is our birthright. As Reynaldo Anderson and Sheree Renee Thomas write in their essay, "This work is remembrance and resurrection, resistance and restored hope in a social, economic, and political landscape of uprisings and upheaval, strange fruit buried in scorched earth." This is the charge of the artist in all times but especially these times. If artists of color are truly honest about themselves, their communities, and this world, they have to be disruptors and subversives. In a country rooted in white supremacist hetero-patriarchal capitalism (word to bell hooks), to see people of color...

Measuring Intrapersonal Psychological Empowerment and Ethnic Identity: Highlighting Strengths of Urban Black Girls.

Limited research has examined intrapersonal psychological empowerment (PE) among Black girls solely. This study aims to fill a gap in empowerment literature by examining the factor structure of the Sociopolitical Control Scale for Youth (SPCS-Y) among Black girls (N = 377) between the ages of 14-17 years old. We also examine the association with ethnic identity as a conceptually related variable. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to examine the factorial validity of the abbreviated, eight-item SPCS-Y among Black girls. Results support the two-dimensional factor structure of the abbreviated SPCS-Y among Black girls, as well as the association intrapersonal PE has with ethnic identity. Findings provide preliminary support for the empirical and theoretical relationship between intrapersonal PE and ethnic identity among Black girls.

The Correlation Between Parental Perceptions and Readiness to Change with Participation in a Pediatric Obesity Program Serving a Predominantly Black Urban Community: A Retrospective Cohort Study.

This study assessed whether maternal BMI and perceptions about weight and reported level of readiness to change was correlated with compliance to a pediatric lifestyle modification program targeting a hard-to-reach urban population with a high prevalence of severe obesity. The Parental Readiness Questionnaire (PRQ) was administered to the child's mother at program entry. The PRQ consisted of forty-seven multiple-choice and 10-point Likert scale questions regarding family demographics, exercise and eating habits, attitudes about health, body image, and weight, and the desire to improve nutrition and physical activity. Analysis was performed on PRQs of participants to compare parental perceptions and readiness for change with compliance to program requirements. Analysis was conducted on 596 questionnaires and compliance was categorized into three groups based on attendance to follow-up visits. Significant differences were found between short-term and long-term follow-up groups in regards to parental perception of one's health as well as the health, weight, and body image of their child. Differences were found in perceptions of one's own weight and body image as well as the health of one's self and child between the group with a maternal BMI < 35 and the group with a maternal BMI ≥ 35. A lower maternal BMI was associated with a better perception of one's own weight, body image, and health, as well as the health of the child. Positive parental perceptions on weight were correlated with improved compliance to a pediatric lifestyle modification program.

The Effect of Nature Based Environmental Education on the Health Related Quality of Life of Low Income Black and Hispanic Youth

The Effect of Nature-Based Environmental Education on the Health-Related Quality of Life of Low-Income Black and Hispanic YouthNadav Sprague1, Christine C. Ekenga11 Brown School, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO 63130, USABackground: Urban, low-income, Black and Hispanic youth experience multiple health and educational disparities. These youth also experience disparities in nature contact, an environmental exposure that has been associated with enhanced physical and emotional well-being. Nature-based education (NBE) uses nature contact to promote healthy behaviors and academic success in youth. However, few studies have evaluated the health outcomes of NBE. In this prospective study, we evaluated the impact of NBE on the health-related quality of life (HRQoL) of low-income, urban Black and Hispanic youth.Methods: Participants were recruited from four schools in St. Louis, Missouri, USA. The sample consisted of 378 children, ages 9-15 years old, assigned to an intervention group or a school-matched control group. The 15-week intervention included weekly environmental in-class lessons and monthly nature-based trips. Study participants completed pre- and post-intervention questionnaires that included demographic questions and six validated HRQoL domains (Physical Health Functioning, Emotional Health Functioning, School Functioning, Social Functioning, Family Functioning, and overall HRQoL). Logistic regression models were used to evaluate the intervention’s influence on HRQoL.Results: Approximately 61% of the intervention group and 17% of the control group experienced a clinically significant improvement in overall HRQoL. After adjusting for age and past environmental education and nature-contact experiences before entering the intervention, the NBE intervention was associated with a clinically significant improvement in overall HRQoL (OR = 1.70, 95% CI = 1.01, 2.43).Conclusion: Nature-based education is a low-cost method for improving HRQoL and for low-income, urban, Black and Hispanic youth.

Transformation of Urban Black America into a Free Enterprise System

This article presents personal reflections on a vision to move the Blacks in America from a state of despair to one of prosperity. It is a bold attempt to present the experience of 50 years of activism, teaching, and writing on the subject. I have a clear vision of how the community, local government, and the university can join forces in a social and economic development project that would help poor Blacks form and own “tenant Organizations” and make them “Stockholders,” through carefully planned and executed cooperation. It is a real game changer in the lives of the American Blacks since the days of Black Wall Street.

Promoting Interdisciplinary, Participatory Approaches to Address Childhood Asthma Disparities in an Urban Black Community.

Black children are twice as likely as non-Hispanic white children to have asthma due to an interplay of socioeconomic, historical, and industrial factors. The underlying socio-economic and structural inequities result in poor adherence to recommended asthma management treatments. National guidelines suggest asthma action plans (AAPs) as a tool for patient self-management, yet they remain underutilized. Boot Camp Translation (BCT), rooted in community-based participatory research, provides a method for engaging communities to improve health literacy. This article describes the successful use of BCT to develop a culturally relevant AAP promotion campaign in West Louisville, a predominantly Black community that experiences social and health disparities.

Trajectories of cannabis use and risk for opioid misuse in a young adult urban cohort

BackgroundAlthough much of the attention surrounding the opioid epidemic has focused on rural and suburban Whites and prescription opioids, heroin overdoses among urban Blacks are on the rise. While some argue that legalization of cannabis will combat the epidemic, there are concerns it ignores the shift in the epidemic and could increase vulnerability to opioid misuse. The goal of this study is to examine the association between cannabis use from adolescence to young adulthood with opioid misuse in a primarily urban Black cohort. MethodsData are from a study of 580 youth (87 % Black and 71 % low SES) residing in Baltimore City followed from ages 6−26. Cannabis trajectories were identified between ages 14–26 using group-based trajectory modeling. Logistic regressions were conducted to examine the impact of trajectories on opioid misuse in young adulthood adjusting for individual, neighborhood and peer factors. Opioid misuse was defined as using heroin or narcotics or painkillers without a prescription between ages 19–26. ResultsFour cannabis trajectories were identified: Low/Non-Users (59.7 %), Adolescent Onset Limited (19.5 %), Young Adult Onset (10.8 %), and Adolescent Onset Chronic (10.0 %). Adolescent Onset Chronic cannabis users had the highest rate of opioid misuse (44.8 %) followed by Adolescent Onset Limited (18.8 %), Young Adult Onset (14.8 %) and Low/Non-Users (8.3 %). Prevalences were significantly higher for Adolescent Onset groups relative to Low/Non-Users even after adjustment for individual, neighborhood and peer factors. ConclusionsAdolescent onset cannabis use is associated with opioid misuse in young adulthood among urban Blacks even after adjustment for socioecological factors associated with opioid misuse.

The Place of Institutions in Urban Black Communities

The Place of Institutions in Urban Black Communities

Mechanism of Urban Black Odorous Water Based on Continuous Monitoring: A Case Study of the Erkeng Stream in Nanning

Black odorous water seriously endangers urban ecological functions. The "Water Pollution Prevention Action Plan" promulgated by the State Council has attached great importance to this issue and set a timetable for achieving the goal of pollution remediation of the urban black odorous water problem. However, in the process of managing the city's black odorous water, we found that the apparent governance effect is not sustainable. Many of the urban waters that have been treated to become clear have returned to a black odorous state. This problem has constrained the completion of the black odorous water control plan, and urgently needs to be resolved. To explain the reason for this phenomenon, we chose the Erkeng Stream in Nanning as the research object, which is a water body that returns to a black odorous state after treatment. We used a multi-parameter water quality tester and chemical analysis method to carry out daily continuous monitoring for 24 h and monthly dynamic monitoring of the water body. The results showed that the rainfall process was significantly correlated with the ammonia nitrogen concentration in the water (P<0.01), and the temperature was positively correlated with the trend of ammonia nitrogen concentration in the water (r=0.23, P<0.05), which in turn was negatively correlated with the change trend of water transparency (r=-0.33, P<0.01). The above results show that the return of the black odorous state may be related to the microbial degradation of endogenous pollutants and the input of external pollutants. The reason may be:① The microorganisms are driven by light and temperature to promote the development of water in the direction of the black odorous state; ② Contaminants carried by rainfall promote the formation of black odor in water bodies. In short, in the context that internal pollution cannot be completely eradicated and external pollutants are difficult to control effectively, to prevent the treated urban water body from returning to a black odorous state, attention should be paid to endogenous pollutants such as river sediment and its control technology. Moreover, ecological control measures should be comprehensively adopted to reduce the input of external source indicators.

The Anti‐Black City: Police Terror and Black Urban Life in Brazil

The Anti‐Black City: Police Terror and Black Urban Life in Brazil

Comparative Perspectives on the Urban Black Atlantic on the Eve of Abolition

AbstractBy investigating the place of enslaved Africans and their descendants in the cities of the Atlantic world, this article explores many of the themes of this Special Issue across empires, with an emphasis on the Americas in the late eighteenth century, the eve of abolition. The article finds that, in nearly every manual occupation, slaves were integrated with free laborers and, not infrequently, slaves who had reached the level of journeyman or master directed the work of free apprentices. The limited number of slave insurrections in cities may be explained by the fact that they often worked semi-independently, earning money to supplement the livelihood provided by the master, or sometimes almost entirely on their own. To them, city life offered advantages that would have been inconceivable for their rural counterparts, especially the scope of autonomy they enjoyed and the possibilities to secure manumission.

Discussion on Urban Black Odor Water Body Treatment and Long-term Management and Maintenance

In view of the increasingly serious pollution of urban rivers, seasonal or end-age black odor, not only affects the urban landscape, but also affects the daily life of the surrounding residents, in order to eliminate urban black and smelly rivers and improve the quality of urban water environment. This paper proposes the treatment technology of urban black and odorous water from the aspects of controlling source pollution, water pollution control and ecological restoration technology. Strengthen management from the long-term improvement system of water quality and policy guarantees to achieve the long-term clear effect of urban water bodies.

城市黑臭水体整治公众满意度影响因素研究

城市黑臭水体整治公众满意度影响因素研究

Media in Postapartheid South Africa: postcolonial politics in the age of globalization by Sean Jacobs

Reviewed by: Media in Postapartheid South Africa: postcolonial politics in the age of globalization by Sean Jacobs Keyan G Tomaselli (bio) Sean Jacobs (2019) Media in Postapartheid South Africa: postcolonial politics in the age of globalization. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press Jacobs provides a panoptic view of the South African media and how in its broadest sense such media negotiated, shaped and debated the political transition (chapter 1). He starts from the multiracial TV adverts flighted on SABC-TV for Castle Lager that anticipated – and/or pushed – for impending social change after 1976 (chapter 2). New kinds of socially-referenced sitcoms, soap operas and the forging of a national identity through appealing to the notion of the 'aspirational viewer' contextualises these shifts (chapter 3). These were driven by the emergence of black urban class-mobile consumers, identified by the international advertising agency, J Walter Thompson, a firm that responded most alertly to the conditions that were developing from the smoky aftermath of Soweto '76. Discussion follows on the idiosyncratic Africa-wide public sphere enabled by Big Brother. On a broader scale were MultiChoice's forays into Africa on the back of the PAS4 satellite that enabled Big Brother's appeal as an alternative pan-African public sphere (chapter 4). The way that the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) mobilised as a civil society organisation to defeat the liberation government's bizarre and genocidal denialist policy on HIV/AIDS, is the case study comprising chapter 5. Chapter 6 moves in a different direction, exploring the relationship between media and especially white Afrikaner political identities after apartheid. New media technologies will have shaped these on the one hand, while appropriation by Afrikaners of the global human rights discourses [End Page 134] of 'minority rights' and 'victimhood' after ceding political power in 1994, were imported into public discussion. The book's conclusion offers some insights into the demise of mass parties, mass media, the rise of new mediascapes and associated identities that centre on mobile technologies. Jacobs evokes national allegories that decentre media as the direct focus, while examining broader issues read through the media in general. As mentioned, the new allegory actually starts with the rebranding of Castle Lager, based on a longitudinal study of the beer's TV adverts conducted by Alex Holt during the 1980s period of apartheid reform. Holt's benchmark study underpins Jacobs' analysis of the wider trends buffeting the late apartheid political economy, and the ensuing contradictions that would contribute to its demise. Holt's analysis of advertising practices and new consumption patterns brought about by the growing black urbanisation, and the need for single advertising campaigns aimed at identifying new and growing multiracial class-based markets that no longer responded to 'separate' messages, underpin Jacobs's analysis. The idea of 'nation' thus emerged from the advertising industry as their most effective marketing strategy (41). Similar trends were evident in SABC-TV programming with a growing African-American presence prior to 1994 and in commissioned sitcoms like Suburban Bliss and Going Up, as analysed elsewhere by Dorothy Roome. The strength of chapter 2 (Branding South Africa in Prime Time) is that it extends Holt's until now neglected but visually and sonically rich approach in constructing a narrative on South African emergent national branding. Allied to these advertising messages, was their multiracialisation of characters and notable Castle's anthemic unifier. Chapter 3 (The Aspirational Viewer) on locally made dramas and soap operas draws links between early 'whites' or 'blacks'-only examples (ie after 1976 when TV was first introduced). The programmes made during the transition aimed at promoting the idea of a kind of unified but classless multiracial nation adopting free market capitalism. The entertainment education imperatives that influenced the SABC commissioning editors is mentioned, but not developed, though such a methodology was very strongly at work via national public health communication programmes and programming, which also involved very intensive audience response and behaviour-change analysis. This corpus of research led by Soul City and Johns Hopkins Health and Education in South Africa and its university affiliates might have been highlighted. [End Page 135] Chapter 4 (Big Brother MultiChoice) examines how reality TV challenged entrenched cultural values and sexual...

The Third Revolution

The Third Revolution

Jaime Amparo Alves, The Anti-Black City: Police Terror and Black Urban Life in Brazil (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2018), pp. 324, $108.00, $27.00 pb.

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