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The present study examined a model of Black Cultural Strength and its relation to psychosocial health (N = 496). The purpose of the current study was to test a model of Black Cultural Strength, an interdependent combination of Black racial identity, communalism, cultural spirituality, positive racial socialization, and effective racism-related coping. Further, the study sought to understand if Black Cultural Strength could predict psychosocial health, a combination of life satisfaction and psychological well-being. The Black Cultural Strength model, which was tested through Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), hypothesized that higher levels of Black Cultural Strength lead to increased self-reported psychological well-being and life satisfaction. Results from this study indicated that Black Americans’ levels of mature racial identity, exposure to positive racial socialization (preparation for bias and cultural socialization), effective racism related coping (constrained resistance, empowered action, confrontation, and spiritual coping), culturally-based spirituality, and communalism were all interdependent and loaded onto one factor, Black Cultural Strength. Further, results showed that Black Cultural Strength was positively predictive of Blacks’ psychosocial health. Although the proposed hypotheses were supported, and an overall acceptable model fit was found, two modifications were made to the original proposed model. These modifications were conducted with theory and past empirical findings in consideration, therefore the current study provides strong evidence to support that interdependent Black cultural values are positively predictive of psychosocial health. Limitations, clinical implications, and further directions of research are discussed.

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Africa, as both a place and as an idea, looms large in the construction of Black identity in Brazil and plays an increasingly important role in the identity processes of many Afro-American societies. Consequently, this dissertation seeks to explore how the idea of Africa is used and manipulated in the discourse and formulation of Blackness in the northeastern Brazilian state Bahia. Today, Afro-Brazilian elites and academics---particularly anthropologists---privilege the cultures of the Bight of Benin as crucial markers of a new Black identity in Black Bahia's religious spaces, cultural institutions and social movements. This new form of Black identity seeks to reject the dominant ideology of 'racial democracy' in Brazil and replace it with one that articulates an Africanised approach to Blackness. In this model, Yoruba religious practices are emphasised and placed at the centre of an array of cultural forms including carnaval, Afro-Brazilian religion, language instruction, culinary practice and the remnant maroon communities of the Bahian interior. In analysing these movements, the present work eschews the need to define Afro-Brazilian cultural practices in the historical context of a plantation society that contained so-called 'survivals' of African culture. Rather, this work adopts a perspective that simply attempts to understand how ideas such as 'Africa', 'slave', 'roots', 'orixa', 'Yoruba' and other, similar African concepts are deployed in the creation of Bahian, and more generally, Brazilian Blackness. Further, the construction of Africanised Blackness in Bahia needs to be understood in the context of an ongoing live dialogue between the cultures and peoples of Afro-America and different regions of the African continent. This dissertation explores this dialogue and also investigates the extent to which these redefinitions actually resonate and penetrate the diverse Black populations of Bahia, including those that are not actively involved with Bahia's Black movements, such as evangelical Christians and residents of the impoverished Bahian interior---the sertao. / Keywords: Africa, Bahia, Blackness, Brazil, dialogue, elites, ethnography, identity, Yoruba.

Transracial adoption occurs when a child of one race is adopted by parents of another race. Transracial adoption increased in the 1960s as racial integration policies developed. In the 1970s, however, transracial adoption became a controversial issue. The National Association of Black Social Workers posed several problems with this practice such as institutional racism, cultural genocide, and providing inadequate coping skills to combat racism.This study examines the racial identity of White parents who adopt transracially or inracially. It provides a racial identity profile to determine if White parents who adopt a Black or Biracial child encourage the transracially adopted child to experience Black culture. Currently, adoption agencies utilize some selection process for parents who adopt transracially. This study will further examine the White parents' racial identity and the level of commitment they have to exposing the transracially adopted child to Black culture in an effort to instill a positive Black racial identity in the adopted child. / Department of Counseling Psychology and Guidance Services

There is no abstract available for this thesis. / Department of Communication Studies

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of Project BIG on the self-concept and black pride of urban black children at the fourth-grade level. The study was conducted as a part of Project BIG (Black Image Growth), a Model Cities-supported inservice social studies program, which emphasized the concerns and contributions of black people in the study of Indiana history. The curricular emphasis was implemented by project teachers who used image-rehabilitation social studies materials developed in consultation with Project BIG directors.The sampling population was restricted by grade level and Model Cities School membership. Enrollment in a graduate course, "Seminar in Elementary Education," and participation in bi-weekly teacher training workshops during the 1971-72 school year were additional requirements for the teachers. Four of the original twelve project teachers met these criteria. Students of these four teachers were considered the experimental group. Students from the remaining nineteen Model Cities fourth-grade classrooms were considered the control group.

A most deafening silence is the effect created by the omission of Whiteness from racial discourses. Those within the social work profession, who seek to eradicate racism have for the most part, restricted their analyses to dissecting and defining the racial "Other". This has perhaps unwittingly implied an acceptance of "Whiteness" as an all-powerful, unnamed normality, exempted from the requirement of definition. This examination of White racial identity is an attempt to engage in a discussion of a different sort---exploring racism at its source. Those actively involved in the practice and/or study of Social Work in Montreal (Quebec) were asked to contemplate the meaning of "Whiteness" in society and in their own lives. Their interpretations were aligned with social and cultural interpretations, as well as my own interpretations. This study illustrates that, in spite of its elusive nature, Whiteness does indeed have very powerful meanings for those who have access to this racial category, those excluded, and the society in which we live.