Race, Health, and the African Diaspora

2007 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-176 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clarence Spigner
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Health Disparities ◽  
African Americans ◽  
African Diaspora ◽  
Health Inequalities ◽  
National Policy ◽  
African Continent ◽  
Racial Stratification ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Caribbean

Health inequalities exist throughout the African Diaspora and are viewed in this article as largely color-coded. In developed, developing, and undeveloped nations today, “racial” stratification is consistently reflected in an inability to provide adequate health regardless of national policy or ideology. For instance, African Americans experience less than adequate health care very similar to Blacks in Britain, in spite of each nations differing health systems. Latin America's Africana Negra communities experience poorer health similar to Blacks throughout the Caribbean. The African continent itself is arguably the poorest on earth. A common history of racism correlates with health disparities across the African Diaspora.

Romancing the Stone: Academe’s Illusive Template for African Diaspora Studies

1996 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 38-39
Author(s):  
Melina Pappademos
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
African Diaspora ◽  
Graduate School ◽  
Diaspora Studies ◽  
North Americans ◽  
History Of ◽  
America South ◽  
Research Plan ◽  
The Caribbean

I began graduate school in 1994 to study the history of American peoples of African descent; I saw important similarities between their cultures and their resistance struggles and sought to develop a comparative project. However, as I began casting my long term research plan— which was to compare Afro-Cubans and Afro-North Americans—I discovered and uncovered many stumbling blocks. The primary one was that academe grouped African descended people by their European and colonially derived relationships (ex: North America, Latin America, South America, and the Caribbean) and not by their Black derived positions. I may have been naive but this seemed problematic to me.

Psychological Implications of Health Disparities

2021 ◽  
pp. 67-95
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Health Disparities ◽  
Healthcare Workers ◽  
Healthcare Providers ◽  
Poor Quality ◽  
Physical And Mental Health ◽  
Care Workers ◽  
History Of ◽  
Psychologically Impaired

The psychological implications of health disparities are damaging as humans of different religions, genders, races, cultures, and socioeconomic backgrounds seek entry into healthcare systems and receive poor quality of treatment related to health care workers' and healthcare providers' conscious and unconscious biases. Linguistics, a cultural aspect of diversity, also impacts healthcare disparities, as language barriers affect health literacy. Psychologically impaired by both perceived and overt expressions of discrimination, affected persons can develop discomfort in seeking health care treatment secondary to a history of maltreatment by healthcare workers and providers. However, this pattern of maltreatment can be altered when healthcare workers are educated about unconscious biases and how, if not brought to awareness and removed from the daily interactions with others, they impact the physical and mental health of generations of people.

Conclusion

2019 ◽  
pp. 309-314
Author(s):  
Martin Summers
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Health Care ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
African American ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Mentally Ill ◽  
Health It ◽  
Historical Scholarship ◽  
History Of ◽  
Orthodox View

The conclusion provides a summation of the book’s main arguments and offers suggestions for further research in the history of African American mental health. It reasserts the two central theses. First, Saint Elizabeths’ psychiatrists’ construction and reaffirmation of the white psyche as the norm produced a great deal of ambiguity regarding the nature of black insanity. This contributed to the prioritizing of the white sufferer of mental illness and the marginalization of mentally ill blacks. Second, African American patients and their communities exercised agency in their interactions with Saint Elizabeths, both to shape the therapeutic experience and to assert their status as citizens. This latter argument suggests that the orthodox view that African Americans have generally had an indifferent or antagonistic relationship to psychiatry needs to be rethought, which will require further historical scholarship, particularly with respect to African American activism within the realm of mental health care.

Africanity, Identity and Culture

1996 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 13-17
Author(s):  
Ibrahim K. Sundiata
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
African Diaspora ◽  
African Continent ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Forced Migrants

What is the meaning of the term “African Diaspora” and what is its extent? What is its future? Although the term has long been used for the scattered daughters and sons of Africa in the Americas, little attention has been devoted to delimiting its boundaries. From the fifteenth century onward, over ten million forced migrants left the African continent to people both of the Americas and the islands of the Caribbean. Their culture was never static; it involved syncretistic reformation, subsumption/transmogrification and reintegration/reassertion.

scholarly journals State-Level Health Disparity Is Associated with Sarcoidosis Mortality

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 2366
Author(s):  
Yu-Che Lee ◽  
Ko-Yun Chang ◽  
Mehdi Mirsaeidi
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Health Disparities ◽  
African Americans ◽  
New York State ◽  
State Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Mortality Data ◽  
State Health ◽  
European Americans ◽  
The Us

Background: Sarcoidosis is associated with significant morbidity and rising health care utilization, which contribute to the health care burden and disease outcome. In the United States (US), evaluation of sarcoidosis mortality by individual states has not been investigated. Methods: We examined sarcoidosis mortality data for 1999–2018 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). America’s Health Rankings (AHR) assesses the nation’s health on a state-by-state basis to determine state health rankings. The numbers of certified Sarcoidosis Clinics within the US were obtained from World Association for Sarcoidosis and Other Granulomatous Disorders (WASOG) and Foundation for Sarcoidosis Research (FSR). The associations between sarcoidosis mortality and state health disparities were calculated by linear regression analyses. Results: From 1999 to 2018, the mean age-adjusted mortality rate (AAMR) in all populations, African Americans and European Americans were 2.9, 14.8, and 1.4 per 1,000,000 population, respectively. South Carolina had the highest AAMR for all populations (6.6/1,000,000) and African Americans (20.8/1,000,000). Both Utah and Vermont had the highest AAMR for European Americans (2.6/1,000,000). New York State and South Atlantic had the largest numbers of FSR-WASOG Sarcoidosis Clinics (6 and 13, respectively). States with better health rankings were significantly associated with lower AAMR in all population (R2 = 0.170, p = 0.003) but with higher AAMR in European Americans (R2 = 0.223, p < 0.001). Conclusions: There are significant variations in sarcoidosis mortality within the US. Sarcoidosis mortality was strongly associated with state health disparities. The current study suggests sarcoidosis mortality could be an indicator to reflect the state-level health care disparities in the US.

AHR Conversation: Black Internationalism

2020 ◽  
Vol 125 (5) ◽  
pp. 1699-1739
Author(s):  
Monique Bedasse ◽  
Kim D. Butler ◽  
Carlos Fernandes ◽  
Dennis Laumann ◽  
Tejasvi Nagaraja ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
African Diaspora ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Deep Roots ◽  
Multiple Points ◽  
Black Internationalism ◽  
Black Resistance ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Intellectual Production

Abstract This annual AHR Conversation focuses on the issues and historiographic debates raised by the term “Black Internationalism.” Participants Monique Bedasse, Kim D. Butler, Carlos Fernandes, Dennis Laumann, Tejasvi Nagaraja, Benjamin Talton, and Kira Thurman bring a wide array of interests and areas of expertise to bear on the origins, evolution, and meaning of the concept of Black Internationalism; its application within Africa, the U.S., and the African diaspora more generally; and its relationship to gender, nationalism, and anticolonialism. In addition to tracing the deep roots of this framework for writing the history of Black resistance to slavery, colonialism, and white supremacy as global phenomena, they insist on seeing Black Internationalism from multiple points on the compass. Perspectives derived from the history—and intellectual production—of Africa, Europe, South America, and the Caribbean prove just as important, if not more so, than those emanating from the United States.

scholarly journals Book reviews

2012 ◽  
Vol 86 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 309-407
Author(s):  
Redactie KITLV
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Short Story ◽  
West Indies ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Cane Sugar ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Political Performance ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Spiritual Baptists

A World Among these Islands: Essays on Literature, Race, and National Identity in Antillean America, by Roberto Márquez (reviewed by Peter Hulme) Caribbean Reasonings: The Thought of New World, The Quest for Decolonisation, edited by Brian Meeks & Norman Girvan (reviewed by Cary Fraser) Elusive Origins: The Enlightenment in the Modern Caribbean Historical Imagination, by Paul B. Miller (reviewed by Kerstin Oloff) Caribbean Perspectives on Modernity: Returning Medusa’s Gaze, by Maria Cristina Fumagalli (reviewed by Maureen Shay) Who Abolished Slavery: Slave Revolts and Abolitionism: A Debate with João Pedro Marques, edited by Seymour Drescher & Pieter C. Emmer, and Abolitionism and Imperialism in Britain, Africa, and the Atlantic, edited by Derek R . Peterson (reviewed by Claudius Fergus) The Mediterranean Apprenticeship of British Slavery, by Gustav Ungerer (reviewed by James Walvin) Children in Slavery through the Ages, edited by Gwyn Campbell, Suzanne Miers & Joseph C. Miller (reviewed by Indrani Chatterjee) The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates, by Peter T. Leeson (reviewed by Kris Lane) Theorizing a Colonial Caribbean-Atlantic Imaginary: Sugar and Obeah, by Keith Sandiford (reviewed by Elaine Savory) Created in the West Indies: Caribbean Perspectives on V.S. Naipaul, edited by Jennifer Rahim & Barbara Lalla (reviewed by Supriya M. Nair) Thiefing Sugar: Eroticism between Women in Caribbean Literature, by Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley (reviewed by Lyndon K. Gill) Haiti Unbound: A Spiralist Challenge to the Postcolonial Canon, by Kaiama L. Glover (reviewed by Asselin Charles) Divergent Dictions: Contemporary Dominican Literature, by Néstor E. Rodríguez (reviewed by Dawn F. Stinchcomb) The Caribbean Short Story: Critical Perspectives, edited by Lucy Evans, Mark McWatt & Emma Smith (reviewed by Leah Rosenberg) Society of the Dead: Quita Manaquita and Palo Praise in Cuba, by Todd Ramón Ochoa (reviewed by Brian Brazeal) El Lector: A History of the Cigar Factory Reader, by Araceli Tinajero (reviewed by Juan José Baldrich) Blazing Cane: Sugar Communities, Class, and State Formation in Cuba, 1868-1959, by Gillian McGillivray (reviewed by Consuelo Naranjo Orovio) The Purposes of Paradise: U.S. Tourism and Empire in Cuba and Hawai’i, by Christine Skwiot (reviewed by Amalia L. Cabezas) A History of the Cuban Revolution, by Aviva Chomsky (reviewed by Michelle Chase) The Cubalogues: Beat Writers in Revolutionary Havana, by Todd F. Tietchen (reviewed by Stephen Fay) The Devil in the Details: Cuban Antislavery Narrative in the Postmodern Age, by Claudette M. Williams (reviewed by Gera Burton) Screening Cuba: Film Criticism as Political Performance during the Cold War, by Hector Amaya (reviewed by Ann Marie Stock) Perceptions of Cuba: Canadian and American Policies in Comparative Perspective, by Lana Wylie (reviewed by Julia Sagebien) Forging Diaspora: Afro-Cubans and African Americans in a World of Empire and Jim Crow, by Frank Andre Guridy (reviewed by Susan Greenbaum) The Irish in the Atlantic World, edited by David T. Gleeson (reviewed by Donald Harman Akenson) The Chinese in Latin America and the Caribbean, edited by Walton Look Lai & Tan Chee-Beng (reviewed by John Kuo Wei Tchen) The Island of One People: An Account of the History of the Jews of Jamaica, by Marilyn Delevante & Anthony Alberga (reviewed by Barry Stiefel) Creole Jews: Negotiating Community in Colonial Suriname, by Wieke Vink (reviewed by Aviva Ben-Ur) Only West Indians: Creole Nationalism in the British West Indies, by F.S.J. Ledgister (reviewed by Jerome Teelucksingh) Cultural DNA: Gender at the Root of Everyday Life in Rural Jamaica, by Diana J. Fox (reviewed by Jean Besson) Women in Grenadian History, 1783-1983, by Nicole Laurine Phillip (reviewed by Bernard Moitt) British-Controlled Trinidad and Venezuela: A History of Economic Interests and Subversions, 1830-1962, by Kelvin Singh (reviewed by Stephen G. Rabe) Export/Import Trends and Economic Development in Trinidad, 1919-1939, by Doddridge H.N. Alleyne (reviewed by Rita Pemberton) Post-Colonial Trinidad: An Ethnographic Journal, by Colin Clarke & Gillian Clarke (reviewed by Patricia van Leeuwaarde Moonsammy) Poverty in Haiti: Essays on Underdevelopment and Post Disaster Prospects, by Mats Lundahl (reviewed by Robert Fatton Jr.) From Douglass to Duvalier: U.S. African Americans, Haiti, and Pan Americanism, 1870-1964, by Millery Polyné (reviewed by Brenda Gayle Plummer) Haiti Rising: Haitian History, Culture and the Earthquake of 2010, edited by Martin Munro (reviewed by Jonna Knappenberger) Faith Makes Us Live: Surviving and Thriving in the Haitian Diaspora, by Margarita A. Mooney (reviewed by Rose-Marie Chierici) This Spot of Ground: Spiritual Baptists in Toronto, by Carol B. Duncan (reviewed by James Houk) Interroger les morts: Essai sur le dynamique politique des Noirs marrons ndjuka du Surinam et de la Guyane, by Jean-Yves Parris (reviewed by H.U.E. Thoden van Velzen & W. van Wetering)

In the Kitchen, Cooking up Diaspora Possibilities: Bailey and Lewis's Sistahs

2010 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 152-163
Author(s):  
SANDRA L. RICHARDS
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
African Diaspora ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cultural Feminism

This article analyses Maxine Bailey and Sharon M. Lewis's play Sistahs (1994) as an instance of African diaspora feminism in the Americas. The drama's focus on five women in a Canadian kitchen displaces the hegemony enjoyed by African Americans as signifiers of blacknesss, challenging spectators as well as readers to remember instead the long history of blacks in Canada and the existence of multiple African diasporas in the Americas. Further, its rewriting of a 1970s cultural feminism dramatizes the labour of fostering an African diasporic sensibility and subverts that paradigm's conventional emphasis on heteronormativity.

scholarly journals Examining the Role of Family History of US Enslavement in Health Care System Distrust Today

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 417-424
Author(s):  
Lorraine T. Dean ◽  
Genee S. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
African American ◽  
Family History ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Health Care System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Black African ◽  
The Us ◽  
History Of ◽  
Care System

Objective: Black/African American people have long reported high, albeit warranted, distrust of the US health care system (HCS); however, Blacks/African Americans are not a homogenous racial/ethnic group. Little in­formation is available on how the subgroup of Black Americans whose families suffered under US chattel slavery, here called De­scendants of Africans Enslaved in the United States (DAEUS), view health care institu­tions. We compared knowledge of unethical treatment and HCS distrust among DAEUS and non-DAEUS.Design and Setting: A cross-sectional random-digit dialing survey was adminis­tered in 2005 to Blacks/African Americans, aged 21-75 years, from the University of Pennsylvania Clinical Practices in Philadel­phia, Penn.Participants: Blacks/African Americans self-reported a family history of persons enslaved in the US (DAEUS) or no family history of persons enslaved in the US (non- DAEUS).Main Outcome Measures: HCS distrust was measured by a validated scale assessing perceptions of unethical experimentation and active or passive discrimination.Methods: We compared responses to the HCS distrust scale using Fisher’s exact and t-tests.Results: Of 89 respondents, 57% self-re­ported being DAEUS. A greater percentage of DAEUS reported knowledge of unethical treatment than non-DAEUS (56% vs 21%; P<.001), were significantly more likely to express distrust, and to endorse the pres­ence of covert (eg, insurance-based) than overt forms (eg, race-based) of discrimina­tion by the HCS.Conclusions: DAEUS express greater HCS distrust than non-DAEUS, patterned by awareness of unethical treatment and passive discrimination. Understanding how long-term exposure to US institutions influ­ences health is critical to resolving dispari­ties for all Black/African American groups. Rectifying past injustices through repara­tive institutional measures may improve DAEUS’ trust and engagement with the US HCS.Ethn Dis. 2021:31(3):417-424; doi:10.18865/ed.31.3.417

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document