scholarly journals Testimony and Meaning: A Qualitative Study of Black Women with Cancer Diagnoses

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Elizabeth Lewis Hall ◽  
Grace Eun Lee ◽  
Crystal L. Park
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Black People ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
Religion And Spirituality ◽  
Specific Content ◽  
Culturally Sensitive Interventions ◽  
Cancer Experience ◽  
Constructing Meaning

Objectives: Research has established religion and spirituality as important resources for Black people in the US coping with adversity. Most research has been from an etic perspective, examining religious variables that are valid across multiple religions. In the present study, we asked what emic aspects of the Black church’s practices and theological emphases women with cancer drew on in constructing meaning-making narratives from their cancer experience. Methods: In this consensual qualitative research study, we interviewed 30 Black women with cancer histories with an average age of 64.5. Results: The religious practice of testimony emerged as the predominant theme. Testimony (a) provided a meaningful purpose to the cancer experience; (b) had a specific content of describing what God had done in their lives as well as some common theological emphases; (c) had dual desired outcomes of helping others and bringing glory to God; and (d) had an associated practice of giving testimony. Conclusions: We discuss testimony as a narrative structure and highlight its importance in informing culturally-sensitive interventions aimed at supporting Black women with cancer.

A phenomenological inquiry into the influence of crucible experiences on the leadership development of Black women in higher education senior leadership

2021 ◽  
pp. 174114322110194
Author(s):  
Nuchelle L Chance
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Leadership Development ◽  
Black Women ◽  
Black People ◽  
Senior Leadership ◽  
Women In Higher Education ◽  
Childhood Experiences ◽  
Phenomenological Inquiry ◽  
Adverse Experiences ◽  
Verbal Assault

Supported by the Crucibles of Leadership theory, this article explores how adverse experiences influence the leadership development of Black women in higher education senior leadership. I use phenomenology to explore how these leaders’ adverse lived experiences manifested as transformative crucible experiences with resilience, thus promoting leadership development. Black people have been continuously subject to adversity, while Black women have overcome the compounded adversities resulting from their intersectional identities. Reported lived adversities included physical, sexual, and verbal assault and abuse, adverse childhood experiences such as growing up in poverty, being raised by single parents, being subject to bullying, losing loved ones, discrimination, and health issues. Black women are resilient, and education has proven to be a lifeline regarding adversity, thus promoting leadership capabilities. They use adversity as fuel to overcome adverse crucible experiences, thus developing the necessary skills to prepare them for leadership. The results further reveal that Black women in higher education senior leadership experienced significant adverse experiences that manifested as crucible experiences by overcoming adversity. The findings reveal an association between their ability to develop the necessary leadership skills to advance their career and their lived adverse experiences.

scholarly journals Black feminist intersectionality is vital to group analysis: Can group analysis allow outsider ideas in?

2021 ◽  
pp. 053331642199776
Author(s):  
Suryia Nayak
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Black People ◽  
Black Feminism ◽  
Group Analysis ◽  
Black Feminist ◽  
Online Platform ◽  
Large Group ◽  
Diversity And Inclusion ◽  
Analytical Structure ◽  
The Relationship

This is the transcript of a speech I gave at an Institute of Group Analysis (IGA) event on the 28th November 2020 about intersectionality and groups analysis. This was momentous for group analysis because it was the first IGA event to focus on black feminist intersectionality. Noteworthy, because it is so rare, the large group was convened by two black women, qualified members of the IGA—a deliberate intervention in keeping with my questioning of the relationship between group analysis and power, privilege, and position. This event took place during the Covid-19 pandemic via an online platform called ‘Zoom’. Whilst holding the event online had implications for the embodied visceral experience of the audience, it enabled an international attendance, including members of Group Analysis India. Invitation to the event: ‘Why the black feminist idea of intersectionality is vital to group analysis’ Using black feminist intersectionality, this workshop explores two interconnected issues: • Group analysis is about integration of parts, but how do we do this across difference in power, privilege, and position? • Can group analysis allow outsider ideas in? This question goes to the heart of who/ what we include in group analytic practice—what about black feminism? If there ‘cannot possibly be one single version of the truth so we need to hear as many different versions of it as we can’ (Blackwell, 2003: 462), we need to include as many different situated standpoints as possible. Here is where and why the black feminist idea of intersectionality is vital to group analysis. On equality, diversity and inclusion, intersectionality says that the ‘problems of exclusion cannot be solved simply by including black [people] within an already established analytical structure’ (Crenshaw, 1989: 140). Can group analysis allow the outsider idea of intersectionality in?

scholarly journals Racism as a Leading Cause of Death: Measuring Excess Deaths in the US

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daisy Massey ◽  
Jeremy Faust ◽  
Karen Dorsey ◽  
Yuan Lu ◽  
Harlan Krumholz
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Mortality Rate ◽  
Black Men ◽  
Cause Of Death ◽  
White Women ◽  
Black People ◽  
Mortality Rates ◽  
White People ◽  
The Us ◽  
Excess Deaths

Background: Excess death for Black people compared with White people is a measure of health equity. We sought to determine the excess deaths under the age of 65 (<65) for Black people in the United States (US) over the most recent 20-year period. We also compared the excess deaths for Black people with a cause of death that is traditionally reported. Methods: We used the Multiple Cause of Death 1999-2019 dataset from the Center of Disease Control (CDC) WONDER to report age-adjusted mortality rates among non-Hispanic Black (Black) and non-Hispanic White (White) people and to calculate annual age-adjusted <65 excess deaths for Black people from 1999-2019. We measured the difference in mortality rates between Black and White people and the 20-year and 5-year trends using linear regression. We compared age-adjusted <65 excess deaths for Black people to the primary causes of death among <65 Black people in the US. Results: From 1999 to 2019, the age-adjusted mortality rate for Black men was 1,186 per 100,000 and for White men was 921 per 100,000, for a difference of 265 per 100,000. The age-adjusted mortality rate for Black women was 802 per 100,000 and for White women was 664 per 100,000, for a difference of 138 per 100,000. While the gap for men and women is less than it was in 1999, it has been increasing among men since 2014. These differences have led to many Black people dying before age 65. In 1999, there were 22,945 age-adjusted excess deaths among Black women <65 and in 2019 there were 14,444, deaths that would not have occurred had their risks been the same as those of White women. Among Black men, 38,882 age-adjusted excess <65 deaths occurred in 1999 and 25,850 in 2019. When compared to the top 5 causes of deaths among <65 Black people, death related to disparities would be the highest mortality rate among both <65 Black men and women. Comment: In the US, over the recent 20-year period, disparities in mortality rates resulted in between 61,827 excess deaths in 1999 and 40,294 excess deaths in 2019 among <65 Black people. The race-based disparity in the US was the leading cause of death among <65 Black people. Societal commitment and investment in eliminating disparities should be on par with those focused on other leading causes of death such as heart disease and cancer.

Protesting the Privilege of Perception

2018 ◽  
pp. 194-227
Author(s):  
Scott L. Matthews
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Black Women ◽  
Black People ◽  
James Agee ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Private Lives ◽  
Walker Evans

This chapter explores how Hale County, Alabama became an iconic site of documentary representation during the twentieth century and why some its poor black and white residents resisted the attempts of documentarians to turn their private lives into public symbols. The chapter begins by examining the collaboration between two local white documentarians, amateur folklorist and poet, Martha Young and photographer J.W. Otts, who recorded the lives and customs of Hale County’s rural black people in the early 1900s. It focuses on Young’s dialect poems that speak from the perspective of black women who refused to be photographed by whites and who saw photography as an exploitative medium. Next, the chapter demonstrates how this narrative and tradition of resistance to documentary continued during the 1930s. It explores the resistance writer James Agee and photographer Walker Evans faced in the 1930s from some of the white tenant families they documented for their book, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, and it shows how their descendants often found new ways to resist documentarians and journalists in succeeding decades. These acts of resistance transformed poor black and white residents into actors rather than just icons in the documentary process.

Negotiations of Women’s Black and Activist Identity Through Dress on the College Campus, 2013–2019

2020 ◽  
pp. 0887302X2096880
Author(s):  
Dyese L. Matthews ◽  
Kelly L. Reddy-Best
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
Black Women ◽  
Predominantly White ◽  
Black People ◽  
College Campus ◽  
Predominantly White Institutions ◽  
White Institutions ◽  
Women College Students ◽  
White Campuses ◽  
Embodied Practice

Black people, especially Black women, have used dress to reject racism and discrimination and as a means for negotiating their Black and activist identities. Building on past work, we examine how Black women use dress as an embodied practice to negotiate both their Black and activist identities. We focus on a particular space and time: campus life at predominantly White institutions during the Black Lives Matter movement era from 2013 to 2019.To achieve this purpose, we conducted 15 in-depth, semistructured wardrobe interviews with current Black women college students. Overall, we identified three themes relating to Black women college students: experiences on predominantly White campuses, negotiating Black identity through dress, and negotiating activist identity through dress. Examining how Black women negotiate identity through dress recognizes their stories as important through counter-storytelling, allowing Black women to write their own history in their own voices.

scholarly journals Revisiting the Jezebel Stereotype

2018 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 461-476 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joel R. Anderson ◽  
Elise Holland ◽  
Courtney Heldreth ◽  
Scott P. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Eye Tracking ◽  
White Women ◽  
Black People ◽  
Western World ◽  
Body Parts ◽  
Specific Component ◽  
Association Task ◽  
Interpersonal Level ◽  
Tracking Technology

The overt objectification and dehumanization of Black people has a long history throughout the Western world. However, few researchers have explored whether such perceptions still persist implicitly and whether Black women are sexually objectified at an interpersonal level. We sought to address this gap by exploring whether Black women are sexually objectified to a greater extent than White women and whether target sexualization exacerbates this effect. In Study 1, using eye-tracking technology ( N = 38), we provide evidence that individuals attend more often, and for longer durations, to the sexual body parts of Black women compared to White women, particularly when presented in a sexualized manner. In Studies 2a ( N = 120) and 2b ( N = 131), we demonstrated that Black women are implicitly associated with both animals and objects to a greater degree than White women with a Go/No-Go Association Task. We discuss the implications of such dehumanizing treatment of Black people and Black women in U.S. society. We hope that this evidence will increase awareness that objectification can happen outside the realm of conscious thought and that related interventions ought to include an ethnicity-specific component. Additional online materials for this article, including online slides for instructors who want to use this article for teaching, are available on PWQ's website at http://journals.sagepub.com/page/pwq/suppl/index

Defining Religion and Spirituality

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. Balboni ◽  
Tracy A. Balboni
Keyword(s):  
Common Ground ◽  
Religion And Spirituality ◽  
Specific Content ◽  
Pluralistic Society ◽  
Spiritual But Not Religious ◽  
Ultimate Concern ◽  
Spirituality And Religion ◽  
Functional Understanding ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter notes two general approaches, the substantive and functional, in how spirituality and religion may be conceptualized. A functional understanding is less focused on the specific content that comprises religion, such as the superhuman or the gods, and instead concentrates on the ultimate concern or greatest love of said religion. Within this functional approach, spirituality and religion are closely related but not identical. Spirituality refers to the immaterial connection between the lover and the object chiefly loved. Religion concerns the external structures that support and enable an ultimate concern or greatest love. Both conceptual approaches hold scholarly legitimacy, but functional understandings, unlike substantive definitions, open innovative ways within an increasingly pluralistic society to interpret the relationship of spirituality and religion within medicine, so that traditional “religious,” “spiritual but not religious,” and deeply “secular” persons may uncover shared values and common ground in the care of the sick.

Online Media and Religion in America

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Bajan ◽  
Heidi A. Campbell
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Structural Changes ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Third Space ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
Cultural Practice ◽  
Paradigm Shifts ◽  
Current Form ◽  
Christian Churches ◽  
Sociocultural Development

New and emerging media has played a pivotal role in Christianity throughout history. In early times, the Christian message was disseminated directly from Jesus and his followers to growing numbers of worshippers in the ancient world. This unmediated form of Christianity, while effective as a method of proselytization due to its immediacy and intimacy, was limited by how far its early disciples could travel to spread the Gospel of Christ. As communication technology developed through a series of paradigm shifts spread over several centuries of human sociocultural development, Christianity capitalized on these shifts in a variety of ways. This fostered significant structural changes to the religion due to steadily increasing levels of technologically rooted mediation over time. In its most current form, Christianity is mediated through a variety of secular digital media with online capabilities. Media are utilized by increasing numbers of Christian churches throughout America due to their potential as platforms for efficient dissemination and ability to reach large numbers of worshippers with relative ease. As churches integrate secular digital media into their structures, a third space of interconnectivity emerges in which the boundaries between on and offline lived religious practice are bridged; blended; and at times, blurred, depending on the context and level of mediation. This third space that emerges is quantified as a digital religion in which Christianity becomes redefined as a cultural practice and site of collective and individual meaning making.

scholarly journals Christianity’s Last Stand: Visions of Spirituality in Post-1970 African American Women’s Literature

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 369
Author(s):  
Trudier Harris
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Women Writers ◽  
African American ◽  
Black Women ◽  
African American Women ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Religion And Spirituality ◽  
American Women Writers ◽  
Black Women Writers ◽  
The Moment

Christianity appealed to writers of African descent from the moment they set foot on New World soil. That attraction, perhaps as a result of the professed mission of slaveholders to “Christianize the heathen African,” held sway in African American letters well into the twentieth century. While African American male writers joined their female counterparts in expressing an attraction to Christianity, black women writers, beginning in the mid-twentieth century, consistently began to express doubts about the assumed altruistic nature of a religion that had been used as justification for enslaving their ancestors. Lorraine Hansberry’s Beneatha Younger in A Raisin in the Sun (1959) initiated a questioning mode in relation to Christianity that continues into the present day. It was especially after 1970 that black women writers turned their attention to other ways of knowing, other kinds of spirituality, other ways of being in the world. Consequently, they enable their characters to find divinity within themselves or within communities of extra-natural individuals of which they are a part, such as vampires. As this questioning and re-conceptualization of spirituality and divinity continue into the twenty-first century, African American women writers make it clear that their characters, in pushing against traditional renderings of religion and spirituality, envision worlds that their contemporary historical counterparts cannot begin to imagine.

scholarly journals Religion across Axes of Inequality in the United States: Belonging, Behaving, and Believing at the Intersections of Gender, Race, Class, and Sexuality

Religions ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 296
Author(s):  
Landon Schnabel
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Black Women ◽  
Sexual Minorities ◽  
The United States ◽  
Racial Groups ◽  
Religion And Spirituality ◽  
College Degree ◽  
Sexual Minority Women ◽  
Intersecting Identities ◽  
Race Ethnicity

Much research considers group differences in religious belonging, behaving, and/or believing by gender, race, ethnicity, class, or sexuality. This study, however, considers all these factors at once, providing the first comprehensive snapshot of religious belonging, behaving, and believing across and within these axes of inequality in the United States. Leveraging unique data with an exceptionally large sample, I explore religion across 40 unique configurations of intersecting identities (e.g., one is non-Latina Black heterosexual college-educated women). Across all measures considered, Black women are at the top—however, depending on the measure, there are different subsets of Black women at the top. And whereas most sexual minorities are among the least religious Americans, Black sexual minorities—and especially those with a college degree—exhibit high levels of religious belonging, behaving, and believing. In fact, Black sexual minority women with a college degree meditate more frequently than any other group considered. Overall, whereas we see clear divides in how religious people are by factors like gender, education, and sexual orientation among most racial groups, race appears to overpower other factors for Black Americans who are consistently religious regardless of their other characteristics. By presenting levels of religious belonging, behaving, and believing across configurations of gender, race, ethnicity, class, and sexuality in the contemporary United States, this study provides a more complex and complete picture of American religion and spirituality.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document