“It Makes Me Worry About Her Future Pain:” A Qualitative Investigation of White Mothers of Non-White Children

In the United States, increasing numbers of White women are mothering children of color. Little is known about their psychosocial experiences of racially socializing non-White children within a culture that transmits socially constructed meanings about race. Such messages influence employment and quality and access to health care. Thirteen White mothers of non-White children (school age to adulthood) residing in the U.S. were interviewed. Their psychosocial experiences and racial socialization practices were explored. Through an analysis of transcribed interviews and interview notes, seven themes emerged: (1) Looking Like a Family and Looking Alike; (2) Mothering as Vulnerability; (3) Teen Daughters’ Perceptions of Black Men as Undesirable and Frightening; (4) Exposing Children to Culture; (5) Children and Mothers’ Experiences as “Other”; (6) Hostility from Black Women; and (7) Not Talking About Race. Study's limitations and future research are discussed.     

Mixed-Race Women

Abstract

Within the last two decades, researchers have found that the majority of mixed-race individuals are psychologically healthy, experience similar life events as other people of color, and encounter additional discrimination and stresses due to their mixed-race status. The experiences of mixed-race women differ from mixed-race men along severaldimensions: belonging and acceptance, physical appearance, cultural stereotypes, ethnic identity, power and guilt, and dating and marriage. It is important for mental health practitioners to understand how these experiences affect a mixed-race woman's life.     

Physical,Psychological and Social Adaptation of African American Nuns to Their Religious Communities as They Age: Implications for Aging in Place

ABSTRACT

This study examined the association between health status, stress, depression, satisfaction with the relationship with the religious community, alienation from significant persons, racial/cultural identity and “aging in place,” as measured by length of time in the same religious community, for a purposive sample of 72 African American nuns. Aging in place was significantly associated with perceptions of better health status, less stress and depression and greater satisfaction with relationships with the religious community. However, the study also found that the longer the nuns lived in their respective communities, the less racially/culturally identified they became. These findings underscore the need for finding ways to keep nuns in their religious communities as they age and to provide avenues of racial/cultural expression for African American nuns.     

An Evaluation of the Effects of Diagnostic Composition on Individual Treatment Outcome Within Transdiagnostic Cognitive–Behavioral Group Therapy for Anxiety

Recently, studies have supported the efficacy of treating anxiety disorders utilizing a transdiagnostic, or non-diagnosis-specific, framework (Erickson, D. H. (2003). Group cognitive behavioural therapy for heterogeneous anxiety disorders. Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, 32, 179–186; Garcia, M. S. (2004). Effectiveness of cognitive-behavioural group therapy in patients with anxiety disorders. Psychology in Spain, 8, 89–97; Norton, P. J., & Hope, D. A. (2005). Preliminary evaluation of a broad-spectrum cognitive-behavioral group therapy for anxiety. Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, 36, 79–97). Transdiagnostic group treatment packages focus on the common aspects inherent across the anxiety disorders such as behavioral and cognitive avoidance, and faulty cognitive appraisals of threat potential or meaning (Barlow, D. H., Allen, L. B., & Choate, M. L. (2004). Toward a unified treatment for emotional disorders. Behavior Therapy, 35, 205–230). Although research supports the overall efficacy of transdiagnostic cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) for anxiety disorders (Norton, P. J., & Philipp, L. M. (2008). Transdiagnostic approaches to the treatment of anxiety disorders: A quantitative review. Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice and Training, 45, 214–226), the effect of diagnostically mixed group composition on individual outcomes is less clear. This study investigated the relationship between group composition and treatment outcome within diagnostically heterogeneous groups with the purpose of determining if diagnostic heterogeneity differentially impacted treatment outcome for 84 individuals during a 12-week transdiagnostic cognitive–behavioral group anxiety treatment program (Norton, P. J. (2012a). Group cognitive-behavioral therapy of anxiety: A transdiagnostic treatment manual. New York: Guilford). The diagnostic makeup of the treatment group was examined at the beginning of treatment and at the end of treatment, and the results indicated that the diagnostic makeup of the treatment group had no significant impact on individual treatment outcome. These findings have direct implications for the delivery of transdiagnostic treatments, and are discussed in terms of their global implications for the transdiagnostic approach to the treatment of anxiety disorders.     

Racism: What It Is and What It Isn't

The words `racist' and `racism' have become so overused that they nowconstitute obstacles to understanding and interracial dialogue aboutracial matters. Instead of the current practice of referring tovirtually anything that goes wrong or amiss with respect to race as`racism,' we should recognize a much broader moral vocabulary forcharacterizing racial ills – racial insensitivity, racial ignorance,racial injustice, racial discomfort, racial exclusion. At the sametime, we should fix on a definition of `racism' that is continuouswith its historical usage, and avoids conceptual inflation. Isuggest two basic, and distinct, forms of racism that meet thiscondition – antipathy racism and inferiorizing racism. We should alsorecognize that not all racially objectionable actions are done froma racist motive, and that not all racial stereotypes are racist.     

Racial Differences in Perceptions of Starting Salaries: How Failing to Discriminate Can Perpetuate Discrimination

Despite recent findings suggesting the presence of racial differences in the perception of starting salaries, researchers have yet to empirically investigate this possibility. Consequently, this study examined the interactive effects of race, ethnic identity, and starting salaries on the salary perceptions of 342 undergraduates. Hispanic, Asian American, and White participants exhibited positive effects of salary whereas Black respondents failed to discriminate between the different salaries. However, a three-way interaction involving ethnic identity, race, and salary revealed a more complex pattern of responses for Black participants: Higher ethnic identifiers responded similarly to Hispanic, White, and Asian Americans. The implications of these results regarding the perpetuation of racial wage inequity are discussed.     

“I Was a Muslim,But Now I Am a Christian”: Preaching,Legitimation, and Identity Management in a Southern Evangelical Church

Established in 2005, “Life” is a suburban, nondenominational, evangelical church in Charlotte, North Carolina, with an almost entirely white membership, yet the lead pastor is an immigrant from the Middle East. As an ex‐Muslim ethnic Pakistani who was born and raised in Kuwait, Pastor Sameer Khalid does not “fit” into southern culture, and he did not convert to Christianity until he was enrolled in college in the United States. Ethnographic data from 14 months of fieldwork reveal how Pastor Sameer uses weekly sermons to negotiate racialized stigmas, emphasize his common religious identity with the congregation, and make his immigrant background a distinctive religious resource for the church. More specifically, while all pastors require legitimation of their charismatic authority, this research focuses on the dynamics of performance through preaching within the Sunday morning services of this congregation, a performance that negotiates this lead pastor's ethnic and religious identities and accentuates his strategic use of institutionalized evangelical narratives to subvert Islamophobic threats and buttress legitimation of his pastoral identity.     

From My Place: Teaching the Holocaust and Judaism at the University of Mississippi Fifty‐Three Years after James Meredith

This essay explores classroom dynamics when students identify and connect their own painful experiences to structural racism or ethnocentrism exhibited in the Holocaust or parts of Jewish history. The intrusion of this proximal knowledge can be an obstacle to student learning. If engaged by professors, however, I argue that proximal knowledge can be a catalyst that promotes learning. Social scientific theory provides a useful lens for helping students to better grasp and contextualize both their old experiences and the new materials that are being taught in the course within the larger structural frames of race, religion, and ethnicity that they have selected, but may not fully appreciate. Reflective guided journaling is an essential part of the learning experience.     

The Influence of Neighborhood Aesthetics,Safety, and Social Cohesion on Perceived Stress in Disadvantaged Communities

Limited research has explored how specific elements of physical and social environments influence mental health indicators such as perceived stress, or whether such associations are moderated by gender. This study examined the relationship between selected neighborhood characteristics and perceived stress levels within a primarily low‐income, older, African‐American population in a mid‐sized city in the Southeastern U.S. Residents (n = 394; mean age=55.3 years, 70.9% female, 89.3% African American) from eight historically disadvantaged neighborhoods completed surveys measuring perceptions of neighborhood safety, social cohesion, aesthetics, and stress. Multivariate linear regression models examined the association between each of the three neighborhood characteristics and perceived stress. Greater perceived safety, improved neighborhood aesthetics, and social cohesion were significantly associated with lower perceived stress. These associations were not moderated by gender. These findings suggest that improving social attributes of neighborhoods may have positive impacts on stress and related benefits for population health. Future research should examine how neighborhood characteristics influence stress over time.     

Parental Monitoring,Association with Externalized Behavior,and Academic Outcomes in Urban African‐American Youth: A Moderated Mediation Analysis

African‐American adolescents exposed to neighborhood disadvantage are at increased risk for engaging in problem behavior and academic underachievement. It is critical to identify the mechanisms that reduce problem behavior and promote better academic outcomes in this population. Based on social disorganization and socioecological theories, the current prospective study examined pathways from parental monitoring to academic outcomes via externalizing behavior at different levels of neighborhood disadvantage. A moderated mediation model employing maximum likelihood was conducted on 339 African‐American students from 9th to 11th grade (49.3% females) with a mean age of 14.8 years (SD ± 0.35). The results indicated that parental monitoring predicted low externalizing behavior, and low externalizing behavior predicted better academic outcomes after controlling for externalizing behavior in 9th grade, intervention status, and gender. Mediation was supported, as the index of mediation was significant. Conversely, neighborhood disadvantage did not moderate the path from parental monitoring to externalizing behavior. Implications for intervention at both community and individual levels and study limitations are discussed.