Women, Gender, and Families of Color

The years 2013 and 2014 mark milestones and landmark decisions directly related to the black experience in the United States, quality of life, and the practice of humanity. Last year, 2013, marked the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, ending U.S. enslavement of black Americans. It was also the 50-year anniversary of the historical 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. This year, 2014, is the 60th anniversary of the 1954 Brown versus Board of Education school desegregation decision; the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin; and the 20th anniversary of the year Nelson Mandela assumed the presidency in South Africa and colonialism ended on the continent of Africa. It is also the sixth year of Barack Obama’s, the first black American president, two-term presidency.

Black academic professional associations have and will celebrate these accomplishments, as well as their own respective anniversaries. Most have been in existence for 40 years or more with missions to offer a more holistic and accurate approach to the study of the black experience and to support the professional development of black scholars. Yet, despite their agendas and activism, annual conferences tell us that, for these associations, the issues of blacks of the past remain central to studies of the present. The Association of Black Sociologists 2013 conference theme, for example, was “Social (Injustice) and Health Disparities: A Continuing Saga,” and the organization will sponsor a 2014 symposium titled “Sexuality Matters: Race, Gender, and Class Intersections in the 21st Century.” Black political scientists will come together in 2014 around “Analyzing the Black Political Community: People, Policy, Process, and Politics in the Era of Globalization.” The 2013 Association for the Study of African American Life and History focused on “At the Crossroads of [End Page v] Freedom and Equality: The Emancipation Proclamation and the March on Washington,” and several sessions emphasized how retrenchment, austerity, and racial politics and practices are defining a future of uncertainty.

This issue of Women, Gender, and Families of Color focuses on a range of black experiences in the United States, in recognition of the many 2013–14 anniversaries and the continued efforts by black professional associations to emphasize humanity and maintain their engagement with persistent critical social, economic, cultural, and political issues. In this issue, “The Impact of Community Involvement, Religion, and Spirituality on Happiness and Health among a National Sample of Black Lesbians,” by Juan Battle and Alfred DeFreece, explores variables that enhance or inhibit the health and well-being of black lesbians, a population often ignored in scholarly research. Future issues of the journal will also feature articles developed on this indispensable national survey data to examine and appreciate the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and class. In “Doing What’s Right for the Baby: Parental Responses and Custodial Grandmothers’ Institutional Decision Making,” LaShawnDa Pittman offers a study of black grandmothers and how they engage with social services and adult children to make decisions about the care of their grandchildren. As noted in “From the Editor” (volume 1, no. 1 of this journal), black children are overrepresented among those in state care and foster care. And relative to other demographic groups, black grandmothers, many of whom are poor and working-class, are more likely than most to have primary responsibility for the care of grandchildren. Studies that research how institutions support and engage these women and families are essential. Randal Maurice Jelks, in “Masculinity, Religion, and Modernism: A Consideration of Benjamin Elijah Mays and Richard Wright,” contemplates the role of mothering, gender, and religion on the historical direction and thinking of two leading black intellectuals of the 20th century. His thoughtful essay reminds us that directions of meaningful social change in the eras of Civil Rights and Black Power, were often complicated by male leadership and how men understood and practiced race and gender. In “That’s Not Me I See on TV . . . African American Youth Interpret Media Images of Black Females,” Valerie N. Adams-Bass, Keisha Bentley-Edwards, and Howard C. Stevenson, prompt our attention to the historical negative images of black women that continue to permeate popular media as a source of entertainment, especially for youth. Nonetheless, the findings from this study suggest that black youth may be consciously assessing and rejecting these portrayals as they compare them to women who are a part of their everyday lives. Overall, the content [End Page vi] of this issue pushes forward our understanding of sexuality, race, gender, and class in black communities and simultaneously denotes a continuity of concerns that have impacted life in the United States for those within them.

Yet, while this issue focuses on the black experience, the years 2013 and 2014 offer clear evidence of backward movement and a continuing struggle for equity across racial and ethnic boundaries. In 2013, the Supreme Court, for example, effectively struck down the major tenets of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. According to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University of Law School, “as of August 6, 2013, restrictive voting bills have been introduced in more than half the states,” and each is intended to exclude and disenfranchise mostly black, brown, and young people. In 2013, the Republican Party led the shutdown of the U.S. federal government in an effort to prevent the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, a long-awaited national plan to expand health care services to those formerly without this vital resource—especially racialized and working-class populations. This reckless decision was seemingly made without care for those most vulnerable. The Women, Infant, and Children (WIC) program to provide food and milk to the nations’ poorest was halted for the duration of the shutdown. Millions of modestly paid federal employees were furloughed, and the loss of their salaries impacted their ability to meet the basic needs of them and their families. In 2010, the death rate by firearm among black and African American male youth was 73.2 percent, compared to 26 percent for American Indian peers, 21 percent for Hispanic, and 14 percent for whites. Yet, according to a 2013 poll by Pew Research Center, “the public is . . . evenly divided over whether in general it is more important to control gun ownership (50%) or to protect the rights of Americans to own guns (48%).”¹ Across the United States, a growing number of school districts with majority African American, Latino, and working-class student bodies has been placed under state receivership, leaving many students in large, unmanageable classrooms and environments not conducive to learning.

The anniversaries celebrated in the years 2013 and 2014 should inspire us to consider the present and the future, as well as our roles and responsibilities as scholars, parents, and community citizens. The journal looks forward to future issues that maintain and push forward scholarship on those peoples, places, and subjects that demand our attention and expand the meaning of genuine humanity. Only through unwavering commitment to its ideal will it become a practice inclusive of all women, gender, and families of color. [End Page vii]