The Association Between African American Father–Child Relationships and HIV Testing

The existing literature identifies parent communication as a protective mechanism in the reduction of sexual risk behaviors among youth; however, not much is known about father–child communication and bonding and its association with HIV testing. Therefore, this study examines the link between the relationship, bonding, and communication shared by African American (AA) fathers and their children and HIV testing over time. This secondary data analysis included data from Waves 1 and 3 of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health on the health of adolescents to adults in a sample of AA males and females ( N = 509), with a mean age of 16 years. The independent variables included fathers’ communication, bonding, and relationships, and the dependent variables included HIV testing. A multinomial analysis assessed the factors that contributed to or prevented HIV testing. It was found that the overall model was statistically significant; F(24, 55) = 8.95; p < .001. The results suggest that father–adolescent communication was statistically significant and positively associated with HIV testing ( B = 23.88; p < .05). AA adolescents who reported going to the doctor or making a nursing visit were more likely to get tested multiple times ( B = 13.91; p < .001). Our findings indicate that father–child relationships are essential to adolescent sexual development and serve as a protective factor against threats to sexual health. Future studies should be designed to investigate the cognitive mechanisms through which the father–child bonding and communication may impact HIV testing.

“Intruder of Color”

Chapter 1 documents the life path of Thomas Jefferson Brown, the son of an African-American father and Irish mother, who migrated from Arkansas to Indian Territory in the 1870s and married two African-descended women of the Creek and Seminole nations. This chapter uses Brown’s story to illustrate how some early African-American settlers initially bolstered their claims to freedom in the postemancipation era by attaching themselves to American expansion, Native Americans, and the acquisition of Indian land. This complex moment of African-American participation in the expropriation of Indian Territory was tellingly short-lived. African-American access to Indian land ended abruptly with the advent of Oklahoma statehood, Jim Crow segregation, and oil speculation. As Indian sovereignty was dissolved and notions of racial purity and “blood” acquired growing significance, “race” ultimately eclipsed “nation” as a guarantor of rights and resources. Brown’s story illuminates the construction of a new racial order in Indian Territory, and, ultimately, the limits of North American escape.

Scipio Vaughan’s South Carolina

In 1840, Church Vaughan’s dying father Scipio advised his family to return to Africa, the continent of their ancestors. Although Scipio had spent most of his life as a slave, his ten children and their mother were life-long free people of color in Kershaw County, South Carolina. Through hard work and the careful cultivation of white patrons, they made an independent living and owned their own land. As this chapter shows through the experiences of this family and their neighbors, however, inland South Carolina became increasingly restrictive and dangerous for free people of color in the first half of the nineteenth century. By the time Church Vaughan’s free Anglo-Catawba mother and African American father married in the 1810s, so many slaves worked on Kershaw County cotton plantations that planters had good reason to fear rebellion, such as one that was brutally suppressed in 1816. Over the following decades, plantation slavery expanded over land previously controlled by Native Americans. Though Scipio Vaughan was gradually manumitted, even free people of color faced increasing legal restrictions, social exclusion, and violence. This chapter illustrates their limited pathways to freedom as well as the mounting pressures on free people of color that made emigration attractive.

RACHEL MORSE’S NEGOTIATING AS THE EFFECT OF DOUBLE CONSCIOUSNESS IN DURROW’S THE GIRL WHO FELL FROM THE SKY

Racism towards African-American brings many impacts to African-American people’s life, especially who have ever experienced it. One ofsome psychological effects that experienced by African-American is doubleconsciousness experience that could be explored in Durrow’s The Girl Who Fellfrom the Sky. Double consciousness phenomenon is found in the main characterof the novel named Rachel Morse, a daughter of white mother and African-American father, who has identity problem in her new society. This study aimsto attend the identity negotiation of Rachel as the result of double consciousnessshe experienced using double consciousness theory by W.E.B. Du Bois. Thisstudy reveals that Rachel Morse who experience double consciousness has tonegotiate her biracial identity in American society who still believe in ‘one-drop’rule so that she could fit in the society. The practice of racism and stereotypeforms need to be reduced to make a better living for African-American andbiracial people in the United States.