The Power of Black Panther to Affect Group Perceptions: Examining the Relationships Between Narrative Engagement, Narrative Influence, and Perceived Vitality of African Americans

2021 ◽  
pp. 027623662110638
Author(s):  
Meghan S. Sanders ◽  
Omotayo Banjo
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Group Perceptions ◽  
Narrative Engagement ◽  
Black Panther ◽  
Narrative Influence

Marvel’s Black Panther (2018) offered much discussion about the role of an entertainment narrative to influence moviegoing audience’s perceptions about African, African American, and Black experiences. Generally, entertainment narratives allow people to imagine themselves as different people, part of different worlds, and sometimes even living in different timeframes. By providing different perspectives, they can provide opportunities for understanding of and improved perceptions of others. The strength of these perspectives resides with the strength of the story’s ability to engage. The present study examines how engagement with the film’s narrative may be associated with perceived vitality of African Americans, and how this relationship may be mediated by the influence audiences perceive the narrative to have on others. The study provides two key findings. Generally, narrative engagement is associated with perceived vitality, through the perceived influence of the narrative on white audiences but not Black audiences. These associations seem to be driven by Black respondents, however, for White respondents, the associations are present when considering the narrative’s influence on Black audiences.

Racial Discrimination and Trajectories of Problematic Alcohol Use Among African American Emerging Adults: The Role of Organizational Religious Involvement

2021 ◽  
pp. 109019812110516
Author(s):  
Danielle R. Busby ◽  
Meredith O. Hope ◽  
Daniel B. Lee ◽  
Justin E. Heinze ◽  
Marc A. Zimmerman
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Alcohol Use ◽  
Emerging Adults ◽  
Racial Discrimination ◽  
Religious Involvement ◽  
Problematic Alcohol ◽  
Stable Class ◽  
Problematic Alcohol Use

Racial discrimination jeopardizes a wide range of health behaviors for African Americans. Numerous studies demonstrate significant negative associations between racial discrimination and problematic alcohol use among African Americans. Culturally specific contexts (e.g., organized religious involvement) often function protectively against racial discrimination’s adverse effects for many African Americans. Yet organized religious involvement may affect the degree to which racial discrimination increases problematic alcohol use resulting in various alcohol use trajectories. These links remain understudied in emerging adulthood marked by when individuals transition from adolescence to early adult roles and responsibilities. We use data from 496 African American emerging adults from the Flint Adolescent Study (FAS) to (a) identify multiple and distinct alcohol use trajectories and (b) examine organizational religious involvement’s protective role. Three trajectory classes were identified: the high/stable, (20.76% of sample; n = 103); moderate/stable, (39.52% of sample; n = 196); and low/rising, (39.72% of the sample; n = 197). After controlling for sex, educational attainment, and general stress, the interaction between racial discrimination and organized religious involvement did not influence the likelihood of classifying into the moderate/stable class or the low/rising class, compared with the high/stable class. These results suggest organized religious involvement counteracts, but does not buffer racial discrimination’s effects on problematic alcohol use. Findings emphasize the critical need for culturally sensitive prevention efforts incorporating organized religious involvement for African American emerging adults exposed to racial discrimination. These prevention efforts may lessen the role of racial discrimination on health disparities related to alcohol use.

Public Opinion toward Equal Opportunity Issues: The Role of Attitudinal and Demographic Forces among African Americans

1992 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 705-720 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terri Susan Fine
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Equal Opportunity ◽  
Opinion Dynamics ◽  
Policy Support ◽  
African American Community ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Disadvantaged Populations ◽  
The Impact

This paper explores African American opinion toward equal opportunity issues using a demographic-attitudinal focus. Previous explorations have focused on black-white opinion comparisons. In this analysis, attitudinal forces, particularly core values, are identified as playing an influential role in policy support. Further, these patterns of values tend to reflect those expressed by whites on similar questions: the more individualistic and conservative one is, the less likely one is to support government intervention on African Americans behalf. In responding to questions concerning governmental responsibility, higher SES African Americans express stronger support than do their lower SES counterparts. This finding suggests that those who are experiencing “glass ceilings” are concerned about government guarantees of equal opportunity, despite their individualistic beliefs. This is inconsistent with previous explorations that analyze these beliefs among disadvantaged populations. The implications of social changes in the African American community and the impact of these changes on opinion dynamics are discussed.

Race and Relevance: Arthur Garfield Hays and the Integration of the American Bar Association, 1938-1943

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard F Hamm
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Professional Organizations ◽  
World War ◽  
Public Issue ◽  
The Press ◽  
Bar Association ◽  
Do So

Abstract This article explores the role of Arthur Garfield Hays and mostly Jewish lawyers in dismantling the American Bar Association’s prohibition of African Americans becoming members. By publicly resigning from the organization and encouraging others to do so over the ABA’s treatment of African-American applicant Francis Rivers, these lawyers made the color bar a public issue in the press. While earlier efforts in the late 1930s had failed, World War II contributed to the success of the activists’ campaign in the early 1940s, as the struggle against Nazi racism had begun to undercut American racial practices. In August 1943 the ABA changed its procedures governing admission that had previously functioned to exclude African-Americans. Other legal professional organizations soon followed its example. Thus the legal profession refashioned itself into part of the liberal order emerging in the wake of World War II.

The Politics of Fatherhood in Three Days before the Shooting …

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lena Hill
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
American History ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Visual Art ◽  
Fathers And Sons

Lena Hill’s “The Politics of Fatherhood in Three Days Before the Shooting . . .” examines Ellison’s use of fathers and sons to explore the role of African Americans in U.S. history. Hill focuses on the use of visual art in Three Days to present a sophisticated response by African Americans to their ambivalent place in America’s political development. She shows how the novel’s protagonist, the Rev. A. Z. Hickman, appreciates and reflects upon visual art, thereby embodying what Ellison believes African Americans contributed to the land of their birth: an astute, self-reliant judgment of the nation’s practices in light of its professions. In contrast with sociologically-reductive accounts of black victimhood, Hill reads Ellison as interpreting American history as involving significant African American agency and influence that belies their status as second-class citizens.

Healin’ da Sick, Raisin’ da Daid

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katrina Hazzard-Donald
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Health Care Providers ◽  
Black Belt ◽  
Care Providers ◽  
Silver Coin

This chapter examines Hoodoo as health care and the role of the African American midwife in the old tradition black belt Hoodoo complex. Scholarship has totally overlooked a discussion of traditional Hoodoo healers: treaters, midwives, and root doctors. Even African Americans who know anything of contemporary Hoodoo will usually not immediately associate it with medicinal herbalism. Hoodoo marketeers were neither interested in nor had access to this aspect of Hoodoo. This chapter considers how Hoodoo midwives, treaters, and root doctors mastered treatments and developed their regional pharmacopoeia. It discusses one technique used by all three types of Hoodoo health care providers: the method of using string to tie sacred healing knots. It also describes nine types of healing amulets used in Hoodoo: single-knot string amulet; multiknot amulet; root necklace; prayer bead necklace; prayer cloth; biblical scroll; walking cane; religious lithography; and silver coin.

The role of African Americans in Philadelphia sound change

2014 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Labov
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Residential Segregation ◽  
White Community ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Vowel Systems ◽  
Degree Of Participation ◽  
High Degree

AbstractA number of studies of African American communities show a tendency to approximate the phonological patterns of the surrounding mainstream white community. An analysis of the vowel systems of 36 African American speakers in the Philadelphia Neighborhood Corpus compares their development over the 20th century with that of the mainstream community. For vowels involved in change in the white community, African Americans show very different patterns, often moving in opposite directions. The traditional split of short-a words into tense and lax categories is a more fine-grained measure of dialect relations. The degree of participation by African Americans is described by measures of bimodality, which are applied as well to the innovative nasal short-a system. The prototypical African American speakers show no bimodality in either measure, recombining the traditional tense and lax categories into a single short-a in lower mid, nonperipheral position. The lack of relation between the two short-a systems is related to the high degree of residential segregation, in that linguistic contact is largely diffusion among adults rather than the faithful transmission found among children.

scholarly journals Afrofuturism and Transhumanism: New Insights into the African American Identity in Octavia Butler’s Dawn

2021 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sami Abdullah Al-Nuaimi ◽  
Zainor Izat Zainal ◽  
Mohammad Ewan Awang ◽  
Noritah Omar
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
American Identity ◽  
African American Identity ◽  
Octavia Butler ◽  
The Future

Afrofuturism offers visions about different aspects of African Americans’ future. Combining the elements of Afrofuturism and Transhumanism can allow new and vast paths to argue about African Americans’ future. Octavia Butler (1947-2006) is among those authors who wanted a better future for her people. In Dawn (1987), she presents the future of an African American protagonist – Lilith, whose identity is scientifically fictionalised and intermingled with hope for a better future. This study critically examines the traits and the role of the protagonist. It aims to investigate how Butler’s transhumanist protagonist’s portrayal is necessary to pursue the demarginalisation of African American’s future identity. In this respect, we adopt the Afrofuturistic sense of utilising knowledge and science of Ytasha Womack in discussing Afrofuturism, as well as Nick Bostrom’s transhumanistic perspective on the necessity of body enhancements to extend humanism.

The Patronage Dilemma: Allison Davis's Odyssey from Fellow to Faculty

2020 ◽  
Vol 60 (4) ◽  
pp. 581-610
Author(s):  
E. Masghati
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Early Research ◽  
Fellowship Program ◽  
Academic Aspirations ◽  
Scholarly Literature ◽  
Faculty Appointment ◽  
Two Sides

This article analyzes the role of the Julius Rosenwald Fund in shaping the career of W. Allison Davis, a distinguished anthropologist who became the first African American appointed to the faculty of a mostly white university. From 1928 to 1948, the Rosenwald Fund ran an expansive fellowship program for African American intellectuals, which, despite its significance, remains largely unexamined in the scholarly literature. Davis tied his academic aspirations to Rosenwald Fund support, including for his early research and the terms of his faculty appointment. His experiences illustrate the dynamics inclusion and exclusion of African Americans in the academy; paternalistic promotion and strategic denial functioned as two sides of the same coin. Spotlighting Davis's negotiations, this article establishes how presumptions of racial inferiority guided Rosenwald patronage and demonstrates the extent to which the principles of meritocracy and expertise remained secondary concerns for those interested in cultivating African American intellectuals.

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