scholarly journals “Subtle, vicious effects”: Lillian Steele Proctor's Pioneering Investigation of Gifted African American Children in Washington, DC

2021 ◽  
Vol 61 (3) ◽  
pp. 351-371
Author(s):  
Sevan G. Terzian
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African American Youth ◽  
Black Children ◽  
Gifted Children ◽  
Washington Dc ◽  
Cultural Resources ◽  
Systemic Racism ◽  
Master's Thesis ◽  
American Children ◽  
Intellectual Potential

AbstractThis essay examines the first detailed study of gifted African American youth: Lillian Steele Proctor's master's thesis from the late 1920s on Black children in Washington, DC. Unlike formative research on gifted children by educational psychologists, Proctor's investigation emphasized children's experiences at school, home, and community in determining their abilities, opportunities, and accomplishments. Proctor's work also anticipated African American intellectuals’ critiques of racist claims about intelligence and giftedness that would flourish in the 1930s. In focusing on the nation's capital, her investigation drew from a municipality with a high proportion of African American residents that was segregated by law. Proctor pointed directly to systemic racism as both contributing to the relative invisibility of gifted African American youth and in thwarting opportunities to realize their intellectual potential. In an environment of racial subordination and segregation, these gifted children found themselves excluded from cultural resources and educational opportunities.

In Need of Care: African American Families Transform the Providence Association for the Benefit of Colored Orphans during the Final Collapse of Slavery, 1839–1846

2019 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 295-314
Author(s):  
Christy Clark-pujara
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Rhode Island ◽  
Black Children ◽  
African American Families ◽  
Black Parents ◽  
Working Parents ◽  
Term Care ◽  
Short And Long Term ◽  
American Children

In 1839, several white Quaker women in Providence, Rhode Island, founded the Providence Association for the Benefit of Colored Orphans; they sought to take in the city’s orphans. During the first years of operation, dozens of African American parents admitted and withdrew their children from the Association. The vast majority of the children admitted had living parents or were paid boarders. In 1846, the Association incorporated as the Providence Association for the Benefit of Colored Children with an enlarged mission to provide for the support and education of black children. During the final collapse of slavery in Rhode Island, black parents transformed an orphanage into an institution that also offered short- and long-term care and education for wards and boarders. In doing so, they expanded the work of white reformers from raising African American children to supporting their needs as working parents.

A Preliminary Investigation of Cognitive Features Associated With Worry Among African American Youth

2019 ◽  
Vol 45 (6-7) ◽  
pp. 518-539
Author(s):  
Elena M. C. Geronimi ◽  
Allyn Richards ◽  
Colette Gramszlo ◽  
Janet Woodruff-Borden
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Preliminary Investigation ◽  
African American Youth ◽  
Self Report ◽  
Cognitive Factors ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Factors Associated ◽  
Negative Beliefs ◽  
American Children ◽  
Negative Problem Orientation

Although knowledge of the cognitive factors that place children at risk for worry has grown, little is known about these processes within African American youth. The present study investigated cognitive factors associated with worry in a sample of 47 African American children, ages 8 to 13. Participants completed self-report measures of worry, intolerance of uncertainty, positive and negative beliefs about worry, and negative problem orientation. Results supported the hypothesis that cognitive factors demonstrated significant positive associations with worry. Based on a model predicting worry from all cognitive factors, negative beliefs about worry emerged as the only individual predictor. This is the first study to examine cognitive factors associated with worry in an African American sample of children and provides initial support for the applicability of these cognitive factors in future examinations of worry within this population. Future research should continue to explore cognitive as well as other factors that predispose African America children to worry.

Children, and Black Children

Gone Home ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 76-100
Author(s):  
Karida L. Brown
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Oral History ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Black Children ◽  
Phenomenological Analysis ◽  
Reconstruction Era ◽  
The Us ◽  
American Children ◽  
Racial Lines

This chapter analyzes the emergence of the racial self among this migrant group of “Black Appalachians.” How does a child come to learn that they are a black child? What are the institutions and practices that inform and reinforce one’s understanding of his or her own racialization? What are the ways in which this generation of African Americans affirmed and valued their own lives within the dehumanizing context of Jim Crow? Drawing on the oral history testimony of Brown’s research participants, this chapter offers a phenomenological analysis of the ways in which African American children of that generation experienced, perceived, and made sense of racism, prejudice, and segregation. The chapter argues that while the racial landscape was much different from that of their parents who grew up in post-Reconstruction era Alabama, the structure of feeling that articulates the ‘us and them’ along racial lines is the same.

Social interactions and children with asthma

2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 512-520 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jo A Dowell
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Social Network ◽  
Health Outcomes ◽  
Social Integration ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Cultural Resources ◽  
Children With Asthma ◽  
American Children ◽  
Negative Health Outcomes

This article reviews the literature on the effects of living in a disenfranchised community for low-income African American children who have asthma. The review focuses on social integration, social network, interactions with parents, and limited cultural resources, which lead to negative health outcomes among these children.

Regional differences in low SES African-American children's speech in the school setting

2007 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 281-293 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne H. Charity
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
Regional Differences ◽  
School Setting ◽  
African American Children ◽  
Washington Dc ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
Standard American English ◽  
Vernacular English ◽  
American Children

AbstractComprehensive investigations of African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) have demonstrated that most features of AAVE reported in the sociolinguistic literature are consistently seen in nearly every African-American speech community in which vernacular speech has been documented. This article highlights quantitative regional differences in the speech produced by African-American children from three U.S. cities in an academic setting. In this analysis, 157 5- to 8-year-old African-American children in New Orleans, LA, Washington, DC, and Cleveland, OH imitated the sentences of a story presented in Standard American English (SAE) by teachers. The 15 sentences included many items that were possible mismatches between the child's vernacular and SAE. Afterwards, the children retold the story in their own words. Children's use of SAE and AAVE features in both tasks was analyzed. Higher rates of AAVE feature use occurred in New Orleans than in Cleveland or Washington, DC.

scholarly journals Maltreatment timing, HPA axis functioning, multigenic risk, and depressive symptoms in African American youth: Differential associations without moderated mediation

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (5) ◽  
pp. 1838-1853
Author(s):  
Adrienne A. VanZomeren ◽  
Jingchen Zhang ◽  
Sun-Kyung Lee ◽  
Meredith Gunlicks-Stoessel ◽  
Timothy Piehler ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Depressive Symptoms ◽  
Racial Differences ◽  
Hpa Axis ◽  
Developmental Psychopathology ◽  
African American Youth ◽  
Future Research ◽  
American Children ◽  
Risk Processes ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractUtilizing a large (N = 739), ancestrally homogenous sample, the current study aimed to better understand biological risk processes involved in the development of depressive symptoms in maltreated, African American children age 8-12 years. Maltreatment was independently coded from Child Protective Services records and maternal report. Self-reported depressive symptoms were attained in the context of a week-long, summer research camp. DNA was acquired from buccal cell or saliva samples and genotyped for nine polymorphisms in four hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA)-axis-related genes: FKBP5, NR3C1, NR3C2, and CRHR1. Salivary cortisol samples were collected each morning (9 a.m.) and late afternoon (4 p.m.) throughout the week to assess HPA functioning. Results revealed that experiences of maltreatment beginning prior to age 5 were most predictive of depressive symptoms, whereas maltreatment onset after age 5 was most predictive of HPA axis dysregulation (blunted daytime cortisol patterns). Multigenic risk did not relate to HPA functioning, nor did it moderate the relationship between maltreatment and HPA activity. There was no mediation of the relationship between maltreatment and depressive symptoms by HPA dysfunction. Results are interpreted through a developmental psychopathology lens, emphasizing the principle of equifinality while carefully appraising racial differences. Implications for future research, particularly the need for longitudinal studies, and important methodological considerations are discussed.

African-American Youth: Essential Prevention Strategies for Every Pediatrician

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 96 (1) ◽  
pp. 132-137
Author(s):  
Jann Murray-Garcia
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Psychosocial Development ◽  
African American Youth ◽  
Prevention Strategies ◽  
Effective Prevention ◽  
The Public ◽  
Health And Development ◽  
American Children ◽  
Policy Arena ◽  
Effective Prevention Strategies

National statistics of morbidity and mortality warrant our urgent attention to the issue of effective prevention strategies among African-Americans. Implicit, explicit, and often internalized messages of inferior value, negative expectations, and expendability remain a part of everyday life for African-American youth. This sociopolitical disenfranchisement has a direct impact on their health and development and on our ability to provide effective preventive and therapeutic intervention. Pediatricians enjoy a deserved perception of expertise in those areas that bear directly on the healthy physical and psychosocial development of all children. We have not heretofore optimally exploited this perceived and real expertise in prevention efforts among African-American children. We ourselves are in need of reeducation. We need to first shatter the insidious conceptual barriers of our own impotence as well as the perceived impotence of African-American patients in our collective abilities to inspire and affect change. On a patient-by-patient basis, among our regional pediatric communities and in the public policy arena, we can be involved in the process that restores to our African-American patients a sense of full citizenship and potential within our society. Without adoption of this process of sociopolitical reenfranchisement, our best-intended efforts at prevention in this community will always tragically fall short of their full and critically needed potential.

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