Clothing Bodies

2018 ◽  
pp. 157-173
Author(s):  
Amy Murrell Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Refugee Camps ◽  
White People ◽  
Refugee Women ◽  
Women And Children

This chapter describes the clothing obtained and worn by the men, women, and children newly arrived in the war’s refugee camps. With little clothing accumulated during slavery, and with many stresses on that clothing during their journeys into the camps, the refugees had significant clothing needs. Men were usually issued military uniforms, either new ones for those who enlisted or used ones for those who worked as army laborers. But women and children had to rely on the clothing relief provided by missionaries and agents of other northern benevolent organizations. The chapter focuses on the issuance of that clothing relief and the ways in which white, northern relief workers tried to make it serve as a vehicle for preparing refugee women for freedom and citizenship. This occurred through the establishment of stores that would encourage good consumerism while limiting women’s choices to clothing that would mark their racial subordination. Black women, however, determined to wrest control of their bodies from white people, resisted many of these efforts and worked to dress themselves according to their own traditions and desires.

The Paradox of Trans-American Solidarity: Gender, Race, and Representation in the Guatemalan Refugee Camps of Mexico, 1980–1990

2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 74-112
Author(s):  
Molly Todd
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
North American ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Refugee Camps ◽  
Grassroots Organizations ◽  
Refugee Women ◽  
Imperial Power ◽  
New Social Order

In the 1970s and 1980s the Guatemalan government's counterinsurgency tactics prompted nearly 2 million people to abandon their homes. Drawing on heretofore unexamined documentation produced by North American solidarity groups, this article examines how Canadian, Mexican, and U.S. grassroots organizations represented the approximately 200,000 Guatemalans who crossed the border into Mexico. It traces the gendered and racialized victim portrayals that celebrated refugee men's voices and agency while reducing refugee women to silent symbols of trauma. A close reading of new sources reveals a paradox of solidarity work in the 1980s: North American activists promoted a new social order of justice and equality, but they did so from positions both privileged and hindered by Cold War geopolitics. As a result, even as “northern” solidarists provided very real succor to “southern” people, their actions continued to be based on uneven (colonial/imperial) power relations and assumptions about an exotic Other.

scholarly journals Racism as a Leading Cause of Death: Measuring Excess Deaths in the US

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daisy Massey ◽  
Jeremy Faust ◽  
Karen Dorsey ◽  
Yuan Lu ◽  
Harlan Krumholz
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Mortality Rate ◽  
Black Men ◽  
Cause Of Death ◽  
White Women ◽  
Black People ◽  
Mortality Rates ◽  
White People ◽  
The Us ◽  
Excess Deaths

Background: Excess death for Black people compared with White people is a measure of health equity. We sought to determine the excess deaths under the age of 65 (<65) for Black people in the United States (US) over the most recent 20-year period. We also compared the excess deaths for Black people with a cause of death that is traditionally reported. Methods: We used the Multiple Cause of Death 1999-2019 dataset from the Center of Disease Control (CDC) WONDER to report age-adjusted mortality rates among non-Hispanic Black (Black) and non-Hispanic White (White) people and to calculate annual age-adjusted <65 excess deaths for Black people from 1999-2019. We measured the difference in mortality rates between Black and White people and the 20-year and 5-year trends using linear regression. We compared age-adjusted <65 excess deaths for Black people to the primary causes of death among <65 Black people in the US. Results: From 1999 to 2019, the age-adjusted mortality rate for Black men was 1,186 per 100,000 and for White men was 921 per 100,000, for a difference of 265 per 100,000. The age-adjusted mortality rate for Black women was 802 per 100,000 and for White women was 664 per 100,000, for a difference of 138 per 100,000. While the gap for men and women is less than it was in 1999, it has been increasing among men since 2014. These differences have led to many Black people dying before age 65. In 1999, there were 22,945 age-adjusted excess deaths among Black women <65 and in 2019 there were 14,444, deaths that would not have occurred had their risks been the same as those of White women. Among Black men, 38,882 age-adjusted excess <65 deaths occurred in 1999 and 25,850 in 2019. When compared to the top 5 causes of deaths among <65 Black people, death related to disparities would be the highest mortality rate among both <65 Black men and women. Comment: In the US, over the recent 20-year period, disparities in mortality rates resulted in between 61,827 excess deaths in 1999 and 40,294 excess deaths in 2019 among <65 Black people. The race-based disparity in the US was the leading cause of death among <65 Black people. Societal commitment and investment in eliminating disparities should be on par with those focused on other leading causes of death such as heart disease and cancer.

scholarly journals Disability, violence, and mental health among Somali refugee women in a humanitarian setting

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mazeda Hossain ◽  
Rachel Pearson ◽  
Alys McAlpine ◽  
Loraine Bacchus ◽  
Sheru W. Muuo ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Partner Violence ◽  
Functional Disability ◽  
Health Anxiety ◽  
Poor Mental Health ◽  
Refugee Camps ◽  
Post Traumatic Stress ◽  
Gender Based Violence ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Refugee Women

Abstract Background There is limited evidence on the relationship between disability, experiences of gender-based violence (GBV), and mental health among refugee women in humanitarian contexts. Methods A cross-sectional analysis was conducted of baseline data (n = 209) collected from women enrolled in a cohort study of refugee women accessing GBV response services in the Dadaab refugee camps in Kenya. Women were surveyed about GBV experiences (past 12 months, before the last 12 months, before arriving in the refugee camps), functional disability status, and mental health (anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress), and we explored the inter-relationship of these factors. Results Among women accessing GBV response services, 44% reported a disability. A higher proportion of women with a disability (69%) reported a past-year experience of physical intimate partner violence and/or physical or sexual non-partner violence, compared to women without a disability (54%). A higher proportion of women with a disability (32%) experienced non-partner physical or sexual violence before arriving in the camp compared to women without a disability (16%). Disability was associated with higher scores for depression (1.93, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.54–3.33), PTSD (2.26, 95% CI 0.03–4.49), and anxiety (1.54, 95% CI 0.13–2.95) after adjusting for age, length of encampment, partner status, number of children, and GBV indicators. Conclusions A large proportion of refugee women seeking GBV response services have disabilities, and refugee women with a disability are at high risk of poor mental health. This research highlights the need for mental health and disability screening within GBV response programming.

Beyond Freedom's Reach: An Imperfect Centering of Women and Children Caught within Cuba's Long Emancipation and the Afterlife of Slavery

2019 ◽  
Vol 96 ◽  
pp. 122-144
Author(s):  
Karina L. Cespedes
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Black Women ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
African Women ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Free People Of Color ◽  
Sexual Deviancy ◽  
The Social ◽  
Women And Children ◽  
Free People

AbstractThis article examines Cuba's long process of gradual emancipation (from 1868–1886) and the continual states of bondage that categorize the afterlife of Cuban slavery. The article addresses deferred freedom, re-enslavement, and maintenance of legal states of bondage in the midst of “freedom.” It contends with the legacy of the casta system, the contradictions within the Moret Law of 1870, which “half-freed” children but not their mothers, and it analyzes the struggle for full emancipation after US occupation, with the thwarted attempt of forming the Partido Independiente de Color to enfranchise populations of color. The article argues that the desire to control the labor of racialized populations, and in particular the labor of black and indigenous women and children, unified Cuban and US slaveholders determined to detain emancipation; and provides an analysis of the re-enslavement of US free people of color at the end of the nineteenth century, kidnapped and brought to the Cuba as a method of bolstering slavery. The article draws on the scholarship of Saidiya Hartman and Shona Jackson to provide an assessment of the afterlife of Cuban slavery, the invisibility of indigenous labor, the hypervisibility of African labor in the Caribbean deployed to maintain white supremacy, and it critiques the humanizing narrative of labor as a means for freedom in order to address the ways in which, for racialized populations in Cuba, wage labor would emerge as a tool of oppression. The article raises an inquiry into the historiography on Cuban slavery to provide a critique of the invisibility of indigenous and African women and children. It also considers the role and place of sexual exchanges/prostitution utilized to obtain freedom and to finance self-manumission, alongside the powerful narratives of the social and sexual deviancy of black women that circulated within nineteenth-century Cuba.

Protecting Refugee Women and Children

2003 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Weiss Fagen
Keyword(s):  
Refugee Women ◽  
Women And Children

scholarly journals IDENTITY CRISIS AND ASSIMILATION PROBLEMS AMONG SYRIAN REFUGEE WOMEN RESIDING OUTSIDE REFUGEE CAMPS IN JORDAN

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (4.1) ◽  
pp. 44-64
Author(s):  
Sahar Al-Shar ◽  
Muhammad Al-Tarawneh
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Differences ◽  
Social Relationships ◽  
Sense Of Belonging ◽  
Identity Crisis ◽  
Host Community ◽  
Refugee Camps ◽  
Cultural Assimilation ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Refugee Women ◽  
Syrian Refugee

This article describes and analyzes the main problematic issues of social and cultural assimilation encountered by Syrian refugee women in Jordan who are not living in refugee camps, and the reasons for the identity crisis that these women experience. The data that provide this information were collected by means of semi-structured interviews from a sample of 50 of these women. The results show that most of the Syrian refugee women living outside the camps suffered from hardships that interfered with their social and cultural assimilation. There were few formal social relationships between refugee women and others in their milieu, and the refugees felt that there were distinct cultural differences in dialect, customs, and traditions between them and their Jordanian peers. The study shows that most of the participants were living in a state of social isolation resulting from identity crisis. It was difficult for them to develop a sense of belonging to the society of the country of asylum while being distracted both by day-to-day concerns and by their desire to return to their homeland. These factors limited their ability to develop good relations with the host community as a prelude to integration, assimilation, and social symmetry.

scholarly journals Trends in Black-White Church Integration

2009 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Q. Yang ◽  
Starlita Smith
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
White Americans ◽  
White People ◽  
Civil Rights Act ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Blacks And Whites ◽  
Martin Luther King ◽  
The Church

Historically, the separation of blacks and whites in churches was well known (Gilbreath 1995; Schaefer 2005). Even in 1968, about four years after the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. still said that “eleven o'clock on Sunday is the most segregated hour of the week” (Gilbreath 1995:1). His reference was to the entrenched practice of black and white Americans who worshiped separately in segregated congregations even though as Christians, their faith was supposed to bring them together to love each other as brothers and sisters. King's statement was not just a casual observation. One of the few places that civil rights workers failed to integrate was churches. Black ministers and their allies were at the forefront of the church integration movement, but their stiffest opposition often came from white ministers. The irony is that belonging to the same denomination could not prevent the racial separation of their congregations. In 1964, when a group of black women civil rights activists went to a white church in St. Augustine, Florida to attend a Sunday service, the women were met by a phalanx of white people with their arms linked to keep the activists out (Bryce 2004). King's classic “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” was a response to white ministers who criticized him and the civil rights movement after a major civil rights demonstration (King [2002]).

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