Highly public anti-Black violence is associated with poor mental health days for Black Americans

Highly public anti-Black violence in the United States may cause widely experienced distress for Black Americans. This study identifies 49 publicized incidents of racial violence and quantifies national interest based on Google searches; incidents include police killings of Black individuals, decisions not to indict or convict the officer involved, and hate crime murders. Weekly time series of population mental health are produced for 2012 through 2017 using two sources: 1) Google Trends as national search volume for psychological distress terms and 2) the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) as average poor mental health days in the past 30 d among Black respondents (mean weekly sample size of 696). Autoregressive moving average (ARMA) models accounted for autocorrelation, monthly unemployment, season and year effects, 52-wk lags, news-related searches for suicide (for Google Trends), and depression prevalence and percent female (for BRFSS). National search interest varied more than 100-fold between racial violence incidents. Black BRFSS respondents reported 0.26 more poor mental health days during weeks with two or more racial incidents relative to none, and 0.13 more days with each log10 increase in national interest. Estimates were robust to sensitivity tests, including controlling for monthly number of Black homicide victims and weekly search interest in riots. As expected, racial incidents did not predict average poor mental health days among White BRFSS respondents. Results with national psychological distress from Google Trends were mixed but generally unsupportive of hypotheses. Reducing anti-Black violence may benefit Black Americans’ mental health nationally.

The More Divided Academy: Did the Fall of the Faculty and the Rise of the All-Administrative University Increase Racial Conflict in Higher Education?

Despite efforts to redress racial grievances, American’s most progressive institutional sector, higher education, suffers racial incidents with disturbing frequency. We hypothesize that one explanation lies in the bureaucratization of higher education. Various trends have led to what Benjamin Ginsberg calls “the fall of the faculty” and “the all-administrative university.” We hypothesize that insulated from students and responsive to national employment markets, administrators adopt policies promoting the short-term appearance of successful integration, and driven by ideology. Faculty, in contrast, may focus on long-term student well-being, acknowledging policy tradeoffs. Using the North American Academic Survey Study ( n = 1,643 faculty and 808 administrators), we construct statistical models of attitudes toward race-based undergraduate admissions and faculty hiring. Contrary to predictions, both faculty and administrators offer nuanced support for affirmative action acknowledging potential tradeoffs. Further, ideology better explains faculty than administrator support. Implications are discussed.

Race in Everyday Life

This chapter explores the power of race and colour in everyday life. Relying heavily on contemporary anthropological and sociological studies, it first of all explores the socialisation of Jamaican children into the meanings of race and the rule not to talk about race. It then moves on to assess how as grown-ups, they navigated race and colour in the private sphere of the home and in hotels, churches and other semi-private spheres. And finally, through an examination of several racial incidents – events that sparked an island-wide discussion about race – , it explores how those socialised into the rule not to talk about race, talked about race. In doing so, the chapter conveys the coexistence of colour consciousness and colour blindness.

Racial Incidents at the University of Missouri

A series of incidents in 2015 escalated racial tensions at the University of Missouri that ultimately contributed to the departure of the university president and chancellor. This case highlights the importance of focusing attention on competent leadership communication, which includes the development and maintenance of strong relationships with key stakeholder groups; the ability to predict, recognize, detect, and address issues that may rise to the level of crisis as defined by stakeholders; and the skill to craft timely, sensitive messages and effectively use interpersonal and mediated channels of message distribution and retrieval, especially social media, so that there is adequate information flow to and from institutional leaders allowing them to learn of, understand, and address stakeholders’ concerns as they emerge.