“Deep Like the Sea and Strong Like the Earth”

2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-103
Author(s):  
Buffie Longmire-Avital ◽  
Brenda M. Reavis
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Male Partner ◽  
Marriage Market ◽  
Early Death ◽  
Black American ◽  
American Women ◽  
White American ◽  
Black American Women ◽  
White American Women

Research indicates that 52% of Black American women will marry by age 30, compared with 81% of White American women. Black women prefer a partner of the same race and one who has the means to provide financial support. However, due to factors that disproportionately affect Black American men, such as incarceration, early death rates, unemployment rates, and lower educational attainment, finding an available Black male partner is challenging. Black women may have a smaller marriage market. To explore how this limited market may be influencing partner selections for Black women, the current study looked at which characteristics heterosexual Black American women seek in an ideal partner, as well as what traits are considered nonnegotiable. Qualitative responses gathered from 128 nonmarried Black American women (ages 18-29, M = 23) who completed an anonymous online survey were analyzed using content analysis. Overall findings indicated that compatibility was the most frequently listed characteristic, not race or financial status. This and other findings are discussed in regard to an expanding perception of heterosexual Black female partner selection habits.

Invisible Visits

2019 ◽  
pp. 38-56
Author(s):  
Tina K. Sacks
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Healthcare Providers ◽  
Black American ◽  
Medical Terminology ◽  
Health Capital ◽  
American Women ◽  
Socioeconomic Resources ◽  
Black American Women

This chapter presents the first key finding of the book. In it, women describe their perceptions of healthcare providers including the challenges they face trying to avoid race, gender, and other forms of discrimination. The chapter also analyzes how the specific stereotypes levied against Black American women negatively affect their relationships with healthcare providers. Furthermore, the chapter presents specific strategies Black women use to mitigate discrimination including emphasizing their cultural health capital (e.g., facility with medical terminology) and socioeconomic resources. However, these data suggest that the strategies women use to resist discrimination may still be experienced as a form of stress that negatively affects their health.

Stress, Cortisol, and Nighttime Blood Pressure Dipping in Nonhypertensive Black American Women

2012 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 330-337 ◽  
Author(s):  
Debra J. Barksdale ◽  
Cheryl Woods-Giscombé ◽  
Jeongok G. Logan
Keyword(s):  
Blood Pressure ◽  
Black Women ◽  
Family History ◽  
Positive Family History ◽  
Early Morning ◽  
Black American ◽  
Personal Factors ◽  
American Women ◽  
Black American Women ◽  
Nighttime Blood Pressure

Black American women have among the highest hypertension (HTN) rates in the world. Research suggests that nighttime might be a critical period of vulnerability for the development of HTN in Blacks. In the present study, personal factors (age, body fat, income, family history), psychological factors (stress, emotions, and John Henryism), and physiological factors (salivary cortisol and blood pressure [BP]) were explored in 30 Black women, ages 26–51 years. Data were collected in participants' homes. BP was monitored while participants were awake and asleep. Cortisol samples were obtained within the first hour after awakening. The usual pattern for BP is a drop or dipping of 10–20% during sleep; however, the BP for about a third of the subjects did not dip adequately during sleep. Though not statistically significant, this nondipping was clinically relevant and was associated with positive family history of HTN, more stress, lower positive and higher negative affect scores, and higher early morning cortisol levels. These findings add to the HTN risk profile and support the need to further explore the relationship between nondipping nighttime BP and cardiovascular disease in Black women.

scholarly journals “I’m Supposed To Be Thick”: Managing Body Image Anxieties Among Black American Women

2020 ◽  
pp. 002193472097244
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Hughes
Keyword(s):  
Body Image ◽  
Black Women ◽  
Body Dissatisfaction ◽  
Body Satisfaction ◽  
White Women ◽  
Black American ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Strong Black Woman ◽  
American Women ◽  
Black American Women

Prior literature on Black women’s body image heavily relies on comparative studies to confirm Black women’s greater body satisfaction relative to white women. Collectively, these studies argue that “cultural buffers” exempt Black women from the thin ideal and instead, encourage women to embrace thickness as a mark of racial pride. And while the literature largely establishes Black women’s preference for a curvaceous figure, I take a different approach by examining women who describe failing to embody thickness and how they reconcile this conflict. Thus, this article asks how women negotiate body dissatisfaction when violating racialized bodily ideals. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 31 Black American women of diverse body sizes and shapes, I demonstrate how women rely on discursive frameworks such as healthism and the “strong Black woman” ideology to reconcile their self-image. While these discourses enable women to defend criticisms of violating thickness, they also participate in stigmatizing other forms of embodiment in their attempts to assuage body dissatisfaction. Overall, these findings reveal Black women’s agency to challenge idealized–and essentialized–notions of thickness that weighed heavily on their body image. Lastly, I discuss the broader implications of my findings within the literature of body politics and offer suggestions for future research.

Black Women’s Food Work as Critical Space

2015 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 34-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimberly D. Nettles-Barcelón ◽  
Gillian Clark ◽  
Courtney Thorsson ◽  
Jessica Kenyatta Walker ◽  
Psyche Williams-Forson
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Food Systems ◽  
Food System ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Black American ◽  
Contemporary Debate ◽  
American Women ◽  
Black American Women ◽  
The Status ◽  
The One

Black American women have long sustained a complex relationship to food—its production, consumption, and distribution within families, communities, and the nation. Black women, often represented in American culture as “natural” good cooks on the one hand and beset by obesity on the other, straddle an uncomfortable divide that is at the heart of contemporary debate about the nature of our food system. Yet, Black women as authorities in the kitchen and elsewhere in matters of food—culturally, politically, and socially—are largely absent, made invisible by the continued salience of intersecting vectors of disempowerment: race/gender/class/sexuality. In this dialogue, we bring together a variety of agents, approaches, explorations, and examples of the spaces where Black American women have asserted their “food voices” in ways that challenge fundamentally the status quo (both progressive and conservative) and utilize the dominant discourses to create spaces of dissent and strategic acquiescence to the logics of capital ever-present in our food systems.

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