Mastery Goals for Black American Dementia Caregivers

About 5.8 million older American adults live with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias; Black American older adults’ prevalence is more than twice that of non-Hispanic white older adults. The Black American dementia caregiving experience can be pictured within the Black Family Social-Ecological Context Model, which provides a conceptual basis for examining social determinants of health at individual, family, community, and societal levels with careful consideration for how the intersecting identities of race, gender, and class of Black American caregivers influence the multiple dimensions of their caregiving experiences. Family dynamics, community setting, and healthcare systems have a potentially bidirectional influence on these caregivers, which is informed by the larger historical reality of systemic racism and general disenfranchisement. This paper outlines how Stress Process and Perceived Control frameworks offer ways for Black American dementia caregivers to achieve a sense of mastery within the complicated and fraught ecology within which their caregiving occurs. We propose a research and development agenda to create a program for enhancing a sense of mastery among Black American dementia caregivers. Two concepts in particular, “constraints” and “efficacy expectations,” provide ways to develop a systematic approach to developing successful coping strategies for the constraints perceived by individuals as they undertake and function in the caregiving role. The recognition of the complexity of the caregiving ecosystem and intersectionality of caregivers’ experience emphasize the importance of individualization: each caregiver’s experience of this ecosystem– and therefore each Black American caregiver’s way to mastery within it– will be uniquely shaped and experienced.

Fraudulent Data Detection and Prevention Within the National Caregiver Survey

The National Caregiver Survey is an online, incentivized survey that aims to gather information about the health and coping strategies used by Black family caregivers of persons with dementia. The survey data will help elucidate the relationships between coping, health, and adaptation to family caregiving and facilitate the development of culturally responsive caregiver support programming. Virtually distributing this survey made it cost-effective, easily accessible, and quick to produce usable data. The online format also helped the team reach caregivers from across the nation, as well as keep participants safe during the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, because online surveys are advertised and administered digitally, they become targets for hacking, especially when the surveys are incentivized. The hacking attempts are executed through digital survey bots and threaten the integrity of the collected data. These corrupt responses also increase study costs by falsely rewarding the hackers for their survey responses and research team time in the investigation, detection, and removal of fraudulent responses. To detect potential bots, a reCAPTCHA bot system was incorporated into the survey, and survey questions were formatted specifically to thwart hacking attempts. Finally, data were cleaned to remove illogical, inconsistent, and duplicative surveys. Findings from this work may help researchers improve online survey design and data collection methods to provide greater confidence in conclusions drawn from virtually surveyed data.

Technology Is out There for the Betterment of Us: African American Family Caregivers and COVID-19

Unpaid family caregivers are mostly responsible for bearing the costs associated with caring for older adults with dementia. Importantly, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has created unforeseen challenges for many family caregivers. Specifically, the restrictions put in place to limit the spread of the coronavirus may be exacerbating the challenges faced by these caregivers as they try to navigate the system. Further, studies have shown that family caregivers who are members of a racial or ethnic minority group such as African-Americans or Hispanics face unique challenges when caring for their loved ones. Additional challenges may include socioeconomic disadvantages, health disparities, and language barriers that make it more difficult to access healthcare and social services. In this study, we examined the perspectives of African-American family caregivers of older adults on the feasibility of utilizing technology as a coping strategy (including for research participation) during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The research question was: What are the perspectives of African-American family caregivers of people with dementia on the feasibility, opportunities, and challenges of technology as a means to engage family caregivers during a pandemic? In-depth one-on-one interviews were conducted with 12 African-American/black family caregivers. Thematic analysis of the qualitative data yielded the following three themes: (1) Acceptance that technology will play a greater role in the world going forward, and family caregivers need to adapt; (2) Opportunities to avoid social isolation while maintaining links with critical community resources; and (3) Challenges due to possible loss of privacy and lack of physical interactions

“All Blacks Are Angry”

This chapter examines the continuing disparities between Whites and Blacks through extensive social science data and studies of the impacts of systemic racism. It first utilizes what demographers call the dissimilarity index to measure housing segregation in major metropolitan areas; cities with heavily Black populations, such as Detroit, have become “hyper-segregated” with almost total “social isolation” of Blacks. The chapter then examines the long-standing academic and political debates over the causes of systemic racism, beginning in 1965 with a government report, The Negro Family: The Case for National Action, by a young Labor Department aide, Daniel Patrick “Pat” Moynihan. He found the main cause of Black poverty and increasing single Black motherhood in the “pathology” of a “matriarchal” Black family structure in which males are neither needed nor welcome. Moynihan’s report spurred an angry rebuttal in a book by psychology professor William Ryan, Blaming the Victim, which found the main cause of Black poverty in the systemic racism of White society and culture. The chapter then looks at social science studies by William Julius Wilson (explaining the “racial invariance” of White and Black crime); psychologist John Dollard (explaining the prevalence of Black-on-Black crime with the “frustration-aggression-displacement” theory); and Black psychiatrists William Grier and Price Cobbs (explaining “Black rage” as rooted in White control of institutions that exclude or discriminate against Blacks). The chapter concludes with a look at the War on Drugs of the 1980s and 1990s and the resulting mass incarceration of Black men.

Writing the Grotesque in Jesmyn Ward's "Salvage the Bones"

In her work, Jesmyn Ward has revitalized the Southern Gothic tradition and its tropes to better reflect the realities of Black American life in the 21st century. This essay explores the reconfiguration of the grotesque body in Ward's sophomore novel, Salvage the Bones, which follows an impoverished Black family in Mississippi in the days leading up to Hurricane Katrina. In contrast to her literary predecessors, Ward defines the grotesque as a state of debility imposed on Black bodies and then deemed uniquely problematic to them as a class and race, rather than the result of centuries of structural oppression. As such, she understands the trope as encompassing far more than bodily or intellectual difference, the way in which it was previously utilized by Southern writers like William Faulkner and Carson McCullers. Instead, Ward theorizes the grotesque as a biopolitical state, in which populations that do not conform to the status quo, and specifically the dominant capitalist mode of production and consumption, are driven to the margins and their lives deemed expendable.

Political-Economic Roots of Coercion

The Article argues that at the core of the American neoliberal policy regime, of which child welfare is a critical part, lies an enduring raced family policy logic of two racially stratified standards: a punitive Black economic utility family standard and a supportive white domestic affection family standard, whose policy roots and practices trace back to slavery in the antebellum South. Historically and contemporaneously, state regulation of poor Black families has been shaped by, and in turn perpetuates, the Black economic utility standard that normalizes and places political value above all else on the promotion of labor by Black mothers outside of their homes in service of a racially-discriminatory market order. By doing so, the state devalues the affective, nurturing labor that Black mothers perform within their households and towards their children. Long followed in Southern local policy practices and led by the efforts of congressmen from the South, the Black economic utility standard is shown to have been formalized nationally within the neoliberal policy regime through a repurposing of overtly racial ideas into behavioral values of work and self-sufficiency that are enshrined in social and child welfare reforms. The Article suggests that the deployment of the Black economic utility standard by the neoliberal policy regime pathologizes poor Black women’s childbearing and motherhood as economically irresponsible, obscures centuries-long structural inequalities and racial family coercion, and serves to perpetuate and justify Black family disruptions in colorblind ways.

Framing, Context, and the Misperception of Black–White Wealth Inequality

In one large-scale experiment using U.S. respondents on Mechanical Turk ( N = 2,899), we studied how subtle differences in framing and context impacted estimates of the Black–White wealth gap. Across our 10 different experimental manipulations of framing and context, respondents consistently overestimated Black family wealth relative to White wealth. There was also substantial variation in the magnitude of these wealth estimates, which ranged from a low of 35 to a high of over 60 percentage points across the conditions. Overestimates were largest when respondents were asked about the Black–White wealth gap at both past and present time points and closest to accuracy when respondents used images as pictorial comparisons for White and Black wealth. Overall, while framing and context certainly affect the magnitude of this misperception, the tendency to overestimate racial wealth equality is extremely robust.

From topic and evidence to architect: the development of Black diasporic interpretive phenomenology and the resistive strategies of Black child welfare survivors

This research engaged in the epistemological development from interpretive phenomenology into what is my implemented method of inquiry, which is Black diasporic interpretive phenomenology. This approach grounds itself in Black diasporic thought and the theorizing and work of Black authors, scholars, and activists to understand and describe the sensibilities, intimacies, struggle and resistance of Black people within the diaspora, often stemming from a hyper/invisibility created by the state, society, and institutions (Walcott, 2016). It takes seriously concerns around ethics and care while also being investigative by making connections between our present moment as Black people to the long history of subjugation and our continued fight for freedom. Three Black participants of various identities were engaged to answer the overall research question of “what are the resistive strategies deployed by Black child welfare survivors?” The term Black child welfare survivor refers to Black people who at some point in their lives have been engaged by or taken under state guardianship, or experienced adoption. The methodology used allowed for participants’ narratives to expose the anti-Black racism and continuity of slavery and coloniality in child welfare, as well as the rigourous, sustainable, and effective methods Black child welfare survivors deploy in order to maintain themselves, their families, and their communities. Key words: anti-Black racism, child welfare, resistance, Black diaspora, Black family

From topic and evidence to architect: the development of Black diasporic interpretive phenomenology and the resistive strategies of Black child welfare survivors

This research engaged in the epistemological development from interpretive phenomenology into what is my implemented method of inquiry, which is Black diasporic interpretive phenomenology. This approach grounds itself in Black diasporic thought and the theorizing and work of Black authors, scholars, and activists to understand and describe the sensibilities, intimacies, struggle and resistance of Black people within the diaspora, often stemming from a hyper/invisibility created by the state, society, and institutions (Walcott, 2016). It takes seriously concerns around ethics and care while also being investigative by making connections between our present moment as Black people to the long history of subjugation and our continued fight for freedom. Three Black participants of various identities were engaged to answer the overall research question of “what are the resistive strategies deployed by Black child welfare survivors?” The term Black child welfare survivor refers to Black people who at some point in their lives have been engaged by or taken under state guardianship, or experienced adoption. The methodology used allowed for participants’ narratives to expose the anti-Black racism and continuity of slavery and coloniality in child welfare, as well as the rigourous, sustainable, and effective methods Black child welfare survivors deploy in order to maintain themselves, their families, and their communities. Key words: anti-Black racism, child welfare, resistance, Black diaspora, Black family