In this blog, I have explored some of the impacts of stress on health. Stress can be a result of numerous factors. It can come from environmental settings. It can be passed down through generations and cause negative health outcomes. It can even take years off your life.
At Penn State’s National Symposium on Family Issues – Boys and Men in African-American Families held on October 26 and 27, I came to realize a different kind of stress in a group of people who often go unnoticed in scientific research.
African-American boys and men experience stress every day because of their skin color, including racial profiling and discrimination. These are issues embedded in our society that no one yet knows how to change.
Gathered in the Nittany Lion Inn Ballroom, attendees listen as symposium speakers from across the United States present their research. Photo by Jeanine Wells
Many of the speakers at the symposium presented their research results to policymakers to improve the future circumstances of African-American men and boys.
Symposium speaker Dr. Cleopatra Howard Caldwell, University of Michigan professor of behavior and education, said one of the things she liked about the symposium was that it gave researchers the freedom to say, “I don’t know” and “I want to do more.”
Caldwell talked about African-American men’s health, highlighting men’s beliefs about masculinity, individual health behaviors and socialization. She also discussed how society’s structural barriers can limit these men from reaching their goals, how experiences that cause medical mistrust can result in poor health, and how failing to succeed in their roles can give rise to risky health behaviors like substance use.
Caldwell also talked about African-American men’s marital relationships and fatherhood as experiences that can promote their health and well-being.
One of the things Caldwell liked about the symposium was that it gave researchers the freedom to say “I don’t know” and “I want to do more,” she said.
Dr. Velma McBride Murry from the Department of Human and Organizational Development at Vanderbilt University reported the statistics about African-American boys and men: “They have the highest mortality rates and highest rates of academic disabilities. Black children represent 18 percent of preschool enrollment, but 48 percent of these children receive more than one out of school suspension.”
There is a trend here: Most of the research on these boys and men is based on a deficit model. Murry noted the detrimental effects of stereotyping these young men and the labels that are placed upon them before they even know they are there.
“It’s not you,” Murry said as if addressing African American boys and men, “it’s the world you live in.”
Current research also ignores the role of families. “Which is just crazy to me,” Murry said. “How do these little boys get here? How are they raised and cared for before they get to school?”
Wizdom Allava Powell, associate professor of health behavior at UNC Chapel Hill, elaborated on the points made by Dr. Caldwell and Dr. Murry.
Wizdom Powell explains her study on young adult African-American males while sharing personal experiences relating to her study. Photo by Jeanine Wells
“My work focuses on neighborhood contact context biology and behavior in black men who are transitioning into adulthood,” Powell said. In other words, some of the participants in her studies have the best intentions to live and thrive with healthy behaviors, but they reside in an area where there is violence, alcohol, and drug activity as well as structural barriers such as the absence of jobs that make it hard to play upon these good intentions.
Powell chose to study the important time period of life between the ages of 18 and 29 because it is the period of “identity negotiation,” and she stressed that men in this age group are often trying to figure out who they are, how to regulate their emotions and how to make the right choices for themselves. And this is not specific to African American males.
Young adulthood is also a sensitive developmental period when some risky behaviors escalate. “So when you put individuals in that particular period in that antagonistic environmental context, the intersection of those two are likely to produce negative behaviors if they aren’t managed and understood well,” Powell said. “We don’t understand how structural factors affect behavioral motivations.”
Powell and her collaborators are now studying coping processes for dealing with stressors such as discrimination, and how these can be altered to limit some of the negative health and behavioral outcomes of stress.
She also pointed to the importance of social change. “Changing hearts and minds about biases and discriminatory practices or perceptions is about a century’s worth of work,” said Powell. “I think it’s so individually determined — what changes your heart or mind or perception about a person who is in a different racial or ethnic group — as to what we can do in terms of moving the process forward without changing individual beliefs and structures that keep those things alive.”
The final speaker at the symposium was the CEO of BMe Community, Trabian Shorters. His engaging conversation with the audience left them with information and a perspective that will not soon be forgotten.
“Who do you think we are?” he asked, referring to African American men. Shorters presented two lists of questions about African American men and asked the audience to raise their hands or stand up if they knew the answers to these questions.
It just so happened that members of the audience were better able to answer questions that were deficit-focused such as the number of incarcerated black males or the number of black males unemployed, while positive statistics about black males, such as the number of black male millionaires and the fact that black males have the highest rate of charitable donations of any group in the U.S. were unknown.
Shorters’ point was to shift the narrative about black men and boys.
“To define a person by their challenges is the definition of stigmatizing them,” Shorters said.