In Their Own Words: The Meaning of the Strong Black Woman Schema among Black U.S. College Women

Black girls are socialized to be “strong” under the premise that strength will serve as a means of psychological resistance to oppression prevalent within American society. Although research demonstrates that Black women who internalize ideals of strength (independence, emotional restraint, and self-sacrifice) reap some psychosocial benefits, strength is linked to several psychological consequences. The growing understanding of these consequences have put Black women at a crossroads—forced to reconcile the wisdom of matriarchs with the detriments of being strong. This tension has pushed Black women, especially young women, to reconsider their relationship with strength and redefine its meaning for themselves. The current study sought to qualitatively examine Black U.S. college women’s (n?=?220; M_age?=?21.88, SD?=?3.96, range?=?18–48) varying perceptions of strength, specifically focusing on the meaning women attributed to being a strong Black woman and their attributions to others’ perceptions of strength. Our results revealed that although Black college women recognize that strong Black women may be perceived negatively (e.g., angry) by others, they continue to perceive strength as a relevant aspect of Black womanhood and have redefined strength in novel ways. We conclude by discussing how researchers may advance our understanding of strength and the ways clinicians may support women in defining strength for wellness.

     

The Meaning of Black Music

Donald Byrd is an internationally acclaimed jazz musician and has recorded over twenty albums. In this article he clearly states that Black music is an expression of the Black experience or the reality of Black life. Counseling, a process that engages the experience of the person(s) counseled, ignores an important expressive outlet Blacks have used in their struggle for survival. Dr. Byrd's article also outlines the dimensions of the Black aesthetic inherent in Black music. Black music is a manifestation of Black people, and if counselors are to understand Black people and facilitate their growth, they must listen to and understand the love, hurt, joy, despair, loneliness, pride, anger, and consciousness in Black music.     

Examining African self-consciousness and Black racial identity as predictors of Black men's psychological well-being

This study investigated African self-consciousness and Black racial identity as predictors of psychological distress and self-esteem for Black men. One hundred thirty Black men from a college and community sample completed the African Self-Consciousness Scale, the Racial Identity Attitude Scale-B, the Symptom Checklist 90-Revised, and the Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory. Canonical correlation analysis found 2 significant roots with the 1st root indicating that Black men whose attitudes reflected Preencounter and Immersion racial identity attitudes and who do not resist against anti-African/Black forces reported greater psychological distress and less esteem. Results from the 2nd root suggested that Black men whose attitudes reflect greater Internalization racial identity attitudes, greater resistance to anti-African/Black forces, and less identification with Blacks reported greater self-esteem.     

Underneath the Mask of the Strong Black Woman Schema: Disentangling Influences of Strength and Self-Silencing on Depressive Symptoms among U.S. Black Women

Sex Roles - Recent investigations have elucidated the influence of the Strong Black Woman (SBW) Schema on the mental health and treatment seeking behaviors of Black women in the United States....     

Not Only Whites: Racial Priming Effect for Black Faces in Black People

Black people are widely negatively stereotyped. The presence of unconscious stereotypes can be effectively assessed with the administration of “racial priming tasks.” An ethnically diverse group was subjected to a priming paradigm to test whether racial cues could bias the identification of target objects. Participants were asked to categorize objects (either as dangerous or nondangerous) after the presentation of Black/White faces as primes. Results show that both Black and White participants were faster in categorizing dangerous objects when primed with Black faces compared to the control condition (i.e., scrambled faces). One possible explanation for this effect is that Black faces are generally associated with a feeling of danger, which ultimately leads to faster responses.     

Black Women's Career Aspirations

A 2-page questionnaire dealing with career aspirations and expectations was administered to undergraduates at four institutions, of which two were women's colleges and two were universities. Results suggest that Black women as a group predict that they will be earning less than Black males; white women as a group predict that they will be earning less than white men but the pay gap is narrower. While some employers may believe that Black women enjoy a special advantage in the job market, students who are Black and female do not, it seems, share that optimism.     

Black children's perceptions of Black English

In studying the perception of differences between Black English and Standard English by 48 first-grade, urban, Black children, BE and SE were partitioned into content, i.e., syntax and lexicon, and style, i.e., suprasegmentals or prosodic features of phonology. A discrimination task was designed to test whether the subjects could perceive differences in terms of style or content or both. Accurate discriminations were related to language variety preference and school and home-street register maintenance. The results indicated BE style to be as significantly related to BE preference and register maintenance as BE content when the two were separated.     

The Black Writer and His Role

Carolyn Gerald ascribes a role for Black writers that we as counseling psychologists feel is fitting for the Black counselor or educator. With great perceptiveness, she establishes a cause and effect relationship between image and self-concept. This article will convince readers that it is impossible to be Black in a world of white-controlled imagery without having a zero self-image. Black youth are bombarded with racial and cultural images that usually exalt whiteness and demean Blackness, and it is difficult, if not impossible, for them without wise guidance to exhibit behavior in accord with the beauty of Blackness. Black counselors, teachers, psychologists, and parents must help Black youth and each other to sort through or scrutinize more carefully the images projected on their sensory mechanisms and help effect the positive self-images essential for positive Black behavior.     

Black Churches as Therapeutic Groups

This article examines how Black churches serve as therapeutic groups and thus provide a source of psychological support to African American communities. Group theory is used as a conceptual framework to discuss the findings from 7 focus groups conducted in Black churches in the New York metropolitan area. Implications for counselors working with clients involved in the Black religious tradition are discussed.     

Roles for the Black pastor in preventive medicine

In recent years, a new role for Black pastors has emerged. As agents of health-related social and behavioral change, Black ministers have taken active roles in preventive medicine at the tertiary, secondary, and primary levels of prevention, succeeding despite resistance by some physicians. The literature detailing these new health-related pastoral roles is reviewed, with special reference to the place of the Black Church in health care and to the place of the Black pastor in the Black experience. It is concluded that Black ministers are ideal people to take part in planning, promoting, and delivering preventive health care in the Black community.The author wishes to acknowledge Dr. John W. Hatch of the University of North Carolina School of Public Health, who supervised the preparation of an annotated bibliography upon which this paper is based.     

Married Black men's opinions as to why Black women are disproportionately single: A qualitative study

This study's purpose was to explore the reasons Black women are disproportionately single according to the unique viewpoint of married Black men. The sample comprises 52 married Black men who resided in northeast Georgia (mean age = 43). Qualitative interviews were conducted in 2010 as part of the Pathways to Marriage study. The authors analyzed the data in a collaborative fashion and utilized content analyses to explore the relationships in the data, which were derived from qualitative interviews with the men. Findings on the reasons for the disproportionality of singlehood among Black women reflected these four themes: gender relations, marriage education and socialization, individual development, and a preference for gay/lesbian relationships. Recommendations for future research are discussed.     

Black and White College Women's Perceptions of Sexual Harassment

In this study, we examined how racial factorsinfluence college women's perceptions of sexualharassment. Specifically, we examined whether Black (N= 46) and White (N = 89) women perceive unsolicitedsexual behavior between a Black woman and Black mandifferentfrom such behavior between a Black woman and aWhite man. The data suggest that sexual harassmentbetween Black women and men are trivialized compared to sexual behavior between Black women andWhite men. The findings are interpreted with regard tothe necessity of studying sexual harassment for women ofcolor.     

Contemporary Black Theology: A Review Essay

Books reviewed in this article:
Dwight N. Hopkins, Introducing Black Theology of Liberation
Dwight N. Hopkins, Down, Up, and Over; Slave Religion and Black Theology
Dwight N. Hopkins, Heart and Head: Black Theology–Past, Present, and Future     

White and Black American Children's Implicit Intergroup Bias

Despite a decline in explicit prejudice, adults and children from majority groups (e.g., White Americans) often express bias implicitly, as assessed by the Implicit Association Test. In contrast, minority-group (e.g., Black American) adults on average show no bias on the IAT. In the present research, representing the first empirical investigation of whether Black children's IAT responses parallel those of Black adults, we examined implicit bias in 7-11-year-old White and Black American children. Replicating previous findings with adults, whereas White children showed a robust ingroup bias, Black children showed no bias. Additionally, we investigated the role of valuing status in the development of implicit bias. For Black children, explicit preference for high status predicted implicit outgroup bias: Black children who explicitly expressed high preference for rich (vs. poor) people showed an implicit preference for Whites comparable in magnitude to White children's ingroup bias. Implications for research on intergroup bias are discussed.     

Relationship Between Race and Attitudes Toward Black Men

This article presents an empirical method for assessing attitudes toward Black men. The findings document that race is a significant factor in determining how Black men are perceived by Black and White college students.     

An Exploration of the Content of Stereotypes of Black Politicians

Do voters have the same stereotypes of Black politicians that they have of Black people in general? We argue that common stereotypes of Blacks (e.g., lazy, violent) may not apply to perceptions of Black politicians. Instead, we hypothesize that Black politicians are a unique subtype of the larger group Blacks, different enough to warrant their own stereotypes. We take an inductive approach to understanding the stereotypes of Black politicians. Employing a classic psychology research design ( Katz & Braly, 1933 ) in which respondents list traits for a target group, we find that there is little overlap of stereotype content between Black politicians and Blacks. Our results therefore indicate that Black politicians constitute a separate and unique subtype of Blacks. Our analysis explores similarities and differences between stereotypes of Black politicians and two other groups: Black professionals (another subtype of Blacks) and politicians. We discuss the implications of our findings for the relationship between stereotypes and voter decisions.     

Community‐Based Participatory Research With Black Churches

Black Americans are more likely than other racial/ethnic groups to rely on spiritual and religious resources for mental health support. As such, counselors must seek unique ways to reach and understand Black communities. This article provides an overview of Black Americans' help‐seeking behaviors, the significance and culture of the Black Church, and a framework for counselors and counseling researchers to form effective partnerships to conduct community‐based participatory research initiatives that will produce empirical outcomes and promote culturally responsive mental health and wellness programming in Black communities.     

Black Women's Body Image: An Analysis of Culture-Specific Influences

A review of the literature on racial differences in body image in Black and White women indicates body image dissatisfaction is more common in White females than Black females. However, Black women are not protected from body image issues. Research on body image concerns specifically related to Black women is limited. The present study involves focus group and individual interviews conducted with 16 Black women. Data were analyzed using qualitative methodology. Results indicate 6 major themes, with shapely and curvaceous ideal body image standards within the Black community as the most prevalent theme across data sources. Therapeutic implications emphasize recognition of culture-specific ideal standards of beauty, as well as the influence of external factors such as men, family, peers, and media on Black women's self-evaluations.     

Black Women and the Pleasures of Intellectual Work

What does it mean for a Black woman to choose to do intellectual work? In the twenty‐first century, Black women, either by virtue of their academic careers or their vocations outside of institutional settings, pursue intellectual work for its own sake as well as in pursuit of collective goals. That is to say, they can acknowledge intellectual work as a source of personal fulfillment, indeed a source of joy in ways that earlier generations of Black women could not. At least that should be true. In fact, it remains difficult for Black women to own the joy that their engagement with ideas produces.     

Black and white adolescent mothers' child-rearing beliefs and behaviors

A convenience sample of 99 Black and 63 White adolescent mothers participated in a study of child-rearing beliefs and behaviors. Attitudes toward child-rearing were assessed using a scale developed for low-income, Black adolescent mothers. The HOME was used by trained observers to record parenting behavior. The Black and White samples were comparable in terms of income, employment status, educa tion, and age. Black mothers were more likely than White mothers to advocate some authoritarian child-rearing techniques. Black and White mothers with desirable attitudes toward parenting and positive parenting behaviors exceeded the number expected on the basis of chance alone. Overall, Black mothers were not as punitively oriented in either words or deeds as depicted in sociological analyses. The results of this analysis point to the importance of recognizing diversity in parental attitudes and behavior both between and within racial groups in the broader context of the changing role of adolescent mothers in our society.