Race,resource utilisation,and perceived need among urban community development workers from faith-based organisations

Organisations providing social services in communities of high crime and violence must address staff well-being. The current study surveyed 284 urban community development workers from faith-based organisations in five US cities. The study explored the effects of race and ethnicity on service utilisation and perceived need using binomial logistic regression. Race and ethnicity significantly predicted medical service utilisation, indicating that Caucasian participants were five times more likely and African-American participants were 3.8 times more likely than Latino/a participants to utilise medical services. Race and ethnicity did not predict differences in use of psychological or spiritual services, nor of perceived need for services. Furthermore, volunteer staffs were approximately four times more likely than paid staff to report self-addressing their psychological and spiritual needs rather than utilising services, despite a felt need for support. Barriers to resource utilisation and implications for policies and practices of urban community development organisations are discussed.     

African American Women Survivors of Sexual Assault:

More attention has recently focused on the psychological experiences of women survivors of sexual assault. However, little work has examined the experiences of African American women survivors, particularly with regard to the impact of race and class on survivors' experiences. We address these limitations by presenting a socio-historical analysis of African American women's rape experiences. This analysis considers the relationship between sexual and economic oppression in African American women's lives. Second, we discuss the influences of these socio-historical factors on African American women's post-assault experiences. Finally, recommendations for therapy with African American women survivors are provided.     

Negotiating Racial Identity

Abstract

Counseling research on racial identity development among multiracial people has largely overlooked the complexity of these individuals' social experiences and how their multiple realities result in various racial identities. The assumptions that individuals with one Black and one White parent can only understand themselves as “Black” or “biracial” have been socially, culturally and politically constructed, providing a misguided foundation for models of racial identity. Here, we present findings from a study of 177 biracial individuals that illustrate the multidimensionality of racial identity among this population. We focus on the mechanism of interactional validation in identity construction to better understand the particular dilemmas faced by biracial women and formulate appropriate therapeutic approaches.     

Infrastructure and Scaffolding: Interpretation and Change of Research Involving Human Genetic Information

This essay addresses the relationship of interpretation to change, at two levels. One level concerns the revolutionary claims of molecular biology and biotechnology about using genetic information, read literally or with a minimum of interpretation, to reshape human life. The other level concerns the relationship in social studies of science and technology (STS) between interpreting projects in the life sciences and influencing their direction. On that level, the essay is experimental, employing a series of vignettes that introduce themes and questions—scaffolding—intended to stimulate readers to make their own connections between interpretation and change, in science, STS, and society. The vignettes in Part 1, which range from treatment of individuals with PKU or MAOA genes to personalized medicine and biobanks, indicate in different ways that the use of genetic information always requires social infrastructure. Once attention is given to the actual or implied social infrastructure, the prospect of reshaping life using human genetic information raises more questions than it answers. This thread carries over into Part 2, which speaks to an area of STS that needs more development, namely, conceptualizing the structure of the social context of scientific and technological developments and the nature of human agency in the ongoing restructuring of that context. The vignettes create a picture in which the influence on science of an STS interpretation will, like any effort to produce change, depend on how it links with other engagements and with the heterogeneous components that make up ongoing, intersecting processes of science in society.     

Spouse marital adjustment and patient dietary adherence in chronic hemodialysis: A Comparison of Afro-Americans and Caucasians

Abstract

This study investigated racial differences in the relationship between spouse marital adjustment and dietary adherence of chronic hemodialysis patients. Sixty-eight adult patients and their spouse were subjects. Fifty-two percent of the patients were Caucasians while 48% were Afro-Americans. Spouses completed the Locke-Marital-Questionnaire (LMQ) and provided demographic data pertaining to their patient spouses. The patients' predialysis potassium levels (indices of food intake compliance) for the previous three months were matched with the respective questionnaires. Afro-American spouses, especially males, evidenced significantly lower marital satisfaction than Caucasian spouses. Afro-American female patients seemed to be most compliant as far as food intake wasconcemed. Although the spouse LMQ score was negatively correlated with interdialysis weight gain. Afro-Americans who generally scored lower on the LMQ did not differ from Caucasians in so far as their adherence to the dietary regimen was concerned. Implications for improving quality of life of hemodialysis couples in general, and Afro-Americans in particular are discussed.     

The Racial and Ethnic Identity Formation Process of Second‐Generation Asian Indian Americans: A Phenomenological Study

This phenomenological study elucidates the identity development processes of 12 second‐generation adult Asian Indian Americans. The results identify salient sociocultural factors and multidimensional processes of racial and ethnic identity development. Discrimination, parental, and community factors seemed to play a salient role in influencing participants’ racial and ethnic identity development. The emergent Asian Indian American racial and ethnic identity model provides a contextualized overview of key developmental periods and turning points within the process of identity development. Este estudio fenomenológico dilucida los procesos de desarrollo de la indentidad de 12 individuos Americano‐Indoasiáticos adultos. Los resultados identifican factores socioculturales destacados y procesos multidimensionales del desarrollo de la identidad racial y étnica. Los factores de discriminación, paternos y comunitarios parecieron jugar un papel destacado en su influencia sobre el desarrollo de la identidad racial y étnica de los participantes. El modelo emergente de identidad racial y étnica Americano‐Indoasiática proporciona una visión general contextualizada de los periodos clave del desarrollo y los puntos de inflexión durante el proceso del desarrollo de la identidad.     

Do Actions Speak Louder Than Words? A Comparison of Three Organizational Practices for Reducing Racial/Ethnic Harassment and Discrimination

We assessed the effectiveness of three commonly suggested organizational practices for reducing racial/ethnic harassment and discrimination (REHD): training; resources for reporting REHD; and implementation actions taken by leadership to reduce REHD. In a sample of 39,475 U.S. military personnel, we conducted dominance analyses to examine the relative contributions of these practices to REHD. Implementation contributed more to the prediction of REHD than did training or resources. Moreover, implementation moderated the effect of resources and training. This suggests that active leadership effort to address REHD can be 1 of the most effective means of reducing such behavior.     

A Change is Gonna Come: Generational Membership and White Racial Attitudes in the 21st Century

The election of President Barack Obama offers a unique opportunity to test the impressionable‐years hypothesis—the theory of political socialization that predicts that widely experienced political events can have a lasting impact on the political attitudes of individuals who experience that event in their youth, thereby creating a generational distinction. Using data from an original survey embedded in the 2010 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, we examine the racial attitudes of White youth who came of age during Barack Obama's presidential campaign and election to see if those individuals are significantly more liberal on racial attitudes than older generations of Whites. In other words, we look for early evidence that an “Obama generation” has emerged. We find there are indeed early signs of a generational distinction. Members of the “Obama generation” are more strongly opposed to racial resentment, but they exhibit similar levels of opposition to old‐fashioned racism as older cohorts. Additionally, we uncover that the factors that traditionally structure racial attitudes among Whites, most notably contact, education, and residential proximity, work quite differently for members of this generation. We take these findings as initial evidence that Barack Obama's presidency will have a lasting impact on the racial views of a generation of Americans.     

Why read Fairbairn?

The author offers a close reading of portions of Fairbairn's work in which he not only explicates and clarifies Fairbairn's thinking, but generates ideas of his own by developing concepts that he believes to be implicit in, or logical extensions of, Fairbairn's work. Among the unstated or underdeveloped aspects of Fairbairn's contribution that the author discusses are (1) the idea that the formation of the internal object world is always, in part, a response to trauma (actual failure on the part of the mother to convey to her infant a sense that she loves him and accepts his love); (2) the notion that the infant's unceasing efforts to transform the internalized relationship with the unloving mother into a loving relationship – thus reversing the effect on his mother of his (imagined) 'toxic love'– is the single most important motivation sustaining the structure of the internal object world; and (3) the idea that attacks on oneself for the way one loves, while self-destructive, contain a glimmer of insight into one's own self-hatred and shame regarding one's endless, futile attempts to change oneself (or the rejecting object) into a different person. The author, using his own clinical work, illustrates the way he makes use of his understanding of the 'emotional life' of internal objects to facilitate the patient's emotional growth.     

Articulate forgiveness and normative constraints

Philosophers writing on forgiveness typically defend the Resentment Theory of Forgiveness, the view that forgiveness is (or crucially implicates) the overcoming of resentment. Rarely is much more said about the nature of resentment or how it is overcome when one forgives. Pamela Hieronymi, however, has advanced detailed accounts both of the nature of resentment and how one overcomes resentment when one forgives. In this paper, I argue that Hieronymi’s account of the nature of forgiveness is committed to two implausible claims about the norms bearing on forgiveness. Her account is highly instructive, however, for it brings into relief how certain intuitive views about the norms of forgiveness should be used to constrain our theories about its nature. I conclude by defending this methodological proposal.