Racial Regard and Physical Health Among Low-Income Black Caregivers of Children With and Without Asthma

The purpose of this study was to examine the associations between child health, parent racial regard, and parent physical health in 87 African American and Black parents/caregivers of children with and without asthma from a low-income, under-resourced urban area. Participants completed the Private and Public Regard subscales of the Multidimensional Inventory of Black Identity (MIBI) and 12-item Short Form Health Survey (SF-12). Parents of children with asthma reported having poorer physical health, while those with higher public and private racial regard reported better physical health. The association between public regard and physical health was surpassed by an interaction of child asthma status and public regard: as public regard decreased, so did physical health, but only for parents raising a child with asthma. Findings suggest that the stresses associated with raising a child with chronic illness and perceiving lower public racial regard may together confer additional risk for poor physical health in African American and Black parents.

Race-Based Stress Reactions and Recovery: Pilot Testing a Racial Trauma Meditation

Twenty-six Black collegians were exposed to a vicarious racial harassment stimulus (VRHS) then randomized into a Black Lives Matter Meditation for Healing Racial Trauma condition or a silence control condition. Heart rate (HR) was recorded throughout the experiment. Semi-structured interviews were then conducted to elicit participants’ appraisal of the VRHS and meditation. Using a Qual:Quan mixed methods experimental design, this pilot study qualitatively categorized how participants (1) described their reactions to the VRHS and (2) appraised the meditation. Participants described three types of race-based stress reactions and reported mostly positive appraisal of the meditation, although some indicated that it would not be a preferred coping strategy. To triangulate the quantitative findings, we found a significant increase in HR during VRHS. The meditation group displayed statistically significant reductions in HR from stimulus to the end of meditation; however, there were no statistically significant differences between the control and meditation groups. Results have implications for understanding and facilitating race-based stress recovery.

“AmeriKenyan”: Lived Acculturation and Ethnic Identification of Kenyan Natives During Their Youth

This qualitative study investigated the immigration, acculturation process, and ethnic identity experiences of six Kenyan emerging adults who immigrated to the United States during their adolescent years. Themes emerged from the data to describe their (a) immigration experience, (b) acculturation process into an individualistic culture with more of a Western worldview, (c) ethnic and racial identity, and (d) emotional response and coping. Subthemes and additional factors illustrated their experience as it relates to social life, academics, cultural context, family values, and more. Implications for multicultural psychology research and practice are addressed.

“Our Family’s Path:” Couples’ Perspectives on the Developmental Trajectories of Families in Urban Southern Angola

The aim of the present study was to explore and to understand how 36 urban Southern Angolan couples perceived their family’s development across the lifetime. The study sought to compare those results with three systemic approaches of family development, two Western and another indigenous. Through semi-structured interviews, the existence of two trajectories of family life, with similar life events, were identified. The life events of these two trajectories were organized in a different chronological order, based on the religious commitment of the individuals. The results showed discrepancies with the Western models on the composition of the household (i.e., big backyard families and families with a third element) as well as the type of events considered to be important milestones within the family trajectory (e.g., the inexistence of the empty nest). This study provides support for the indigenous framework proposed by Simões and Alberto (2015) and contributes to a better comprehension of the family functioning of the urban Southern Angolan families.

Social Support as a Mediator of the Personality-Physical Functioning Relationship in a National Sample of African Americans: A Two-Wave Longitudinal Study

The present study investigates whether social support mediates the relationship between personality traits and physical functioning among African Americans over 2.5 years. Data were collected from a national probability sample of African American adults (analytic sample N = 312). Telephone surveys included measures of the five-factor model personality traits, social support, and physical functioning. Personality traits were assessed at Time 1 (T1), and social support and physical functioning were assessed 2.5 years later at Time 2 (T2). Physical functioning was assessed using the SF-12 at T2. Results indicated that T2 social support mediated the relationship between T1 personality traits and T2 physical functioning for the traits of conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism, but not for openness to experience. This information may be useful to healthcare providers and community members in developing strategies targeting personality traits in cultivating social support for health promotion.

Depression and Suicide Ideation: The Role of Self-Acceptance for Black Young Adults

Suicide is a leading cause of death for Black young adults. Though depression is commonly linked to increased risk for suicide, empirical literature examining the depression–suicide association and intrinsic buffers for this association remains limited among Black young adults. This study sought to address this gap in the literature by examining the relationship between depression and suicide ideation among Black young adults. Importantly, this study assessed the moderating role of self-acceptance, an index of how content one is with oneself. Study participants included 123 Black young adults (63.5% female, Mage = 20.91 years, SD = 2.45 years) who completed measures evaluating symptoms of depression, suicide ideation, and psychological well-being. Multivariate regression analyses revealed that self-acceptance moderated the association between depressive symptomatology and suicide ideation ( β = −0.05, p < .01, 95% CI [-1.01, −0.11]), such that the depression–suicide ideation association was not significant for individuals who reported high levels of self-acceptance. These findings suggest that self-acceptance may be an important treatment target for interventions aimed specifically at reducing suicide vulnerability among Black young adults.

Living in Between: A Grounded Theory Study of Depression Among Middle-Class Black Women

Empirical evidence consistently has linked the identification and treatment of depression among low-income Black women. Research on depression and Black women also suggests Black women are a monolithic group who experience depression similarly. The purpose of this qualitative study was to gain a deeper understanding of how the identity of middle-class Black women may shape their experiences with depression. Using grounded theory as the guiding method, I conducted 30 in-depth, semistructured interviews with Black women between 30 and 45 years old who self-identified as middle class. The core experience of depression among middle-class Black women was “living in between” because they straddled two worlds—one Black world and one White world—with competing sociocultural messages about depression. Two major categories emerged that informed the experiences of depression among the middle-class Black women in this study: (a) strategies to deal with depression and (b) minimizing depression. Each of these categories highlighted consequences for the women’s mental health. The women also described coping strategies for managing these experiences. Implications for research and practice are included.

Black Psychology and Whiteness: Toward a Conceptual Model of Black Trauma through the Prism of Whiteness

The main objective of this article is to introduce and examine whiteness as a source of trauma for Black people. We explore Black psychology scholarship to conceptually ground whiteness as the impetus for racism, while identifying it as an interpersonal, psychosocial, and contextual phenomenon that informs the race-based traumatic experiences of Black people. The primary factors constituting whiteness are ethnocentric monoculturalism, White standardization, ontological expansiveness, White emotions, attitudes, reactions to race, and White privilege. While racism operates through oppression and exclusion to produce trauma among Black people, we argue that whiteness operates similarly to produce race-based traumatic stress. With this premise, we offer and explain a conceptual model to promote empirical research that identifies and operationalizes whiteness and its components as observable contributors to the traumatic experiences of Black persons.