Contemporary African American Families, written in a style that would be accessible to undergraduates, provides an important supplement to the many texts and readers on African American families that focus primarily on within-family dynamics. By taking a look at various structural factorseducation, incarceration, housing, and other public policies, this collection of articles delivers a structural framework and an essential social context within which to study todays Black families.
Roberta L. Coles , Professor of Sociology,
Dept. of Social & Cultural Sciences, Marquette University, USA
Contemporary African American Families is a truly comprehensive and compelling attempt to place the Black family in an analytically and politically robust social and conceptual context. It asks questions about what everything from mass incarceration and housing discrimination to Diasporic differences and health disparities mean for the everyday lives and macrostructural possibilities of African American family membersfathers, mothers, grandparents, and children. This book takes a traditional social scientific subject and drags it undeniably into the present. Clearly written, it will work well in classrooms and for more casual readers simply interested in learning more about the topic.
John L. Jackson, Jr. , author of Real Black: Adventures in
Racial Sincerity and Dean of the School of Social Policy
& Practice at the University of Pennsylvania
Contemporary African American Families
For decades the African American community has been perceived, both in the United States and around the world, as one which thinks alike, acts alike and lives alikein poor and downtrodden environments. Following the persistent effects of the Great Recession (20072009) and the American elections of 2008, now more than ever the political and socio-economic state of America is crying out for this deficient and prejudiced conception to be dispelled.
Focusing primarily on black families in America, Contemporary African American Families updates empirical research by addressing various aspects including family formation, incarceration, housing, schooling, health and parenting. Exploring a wide class spectrum among African American families, this text also modernizes and subverts much of the research resulting from Moynihans 1965 report, which arguably misunderstood the lived experiences of black people during the movement from slavery to freedom in a Jim Crow society.
A timely subversion of the myth that America is successfully in a post-racial era, this new anthology on the black family in America will appeal to advanced undergraduate students and research scholars interested in black studies, Africana studies, women and gender studies, sociology, political science, anthropology, criminal justice, education, psychology, public policy, healthy policy and social work.
Dorothy Smith-Ruiz is Associate Professor of Africana Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
Marcia J. Watson is Assistant Professor of Elementary Education at Towson University in Baltimore County, Maryland.
Sherri Lawson Clark is Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Routledge Research in Race and Ethnicity
For a full list of titles in this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com
10 Making Diaspora in a Global City
South Asian Youth Cultures in London
Helen Kim
11 A Moral Economy of Whiteness
Four Frames of Racializing Discourse
Steve Garner
12 Race and the Origins of American Neoliberalism
Randolph Hohle
13 Experiences of Islamophobia
Living with Racism in the Neoliberal Era
James Carr
14 Immigration, Assimilation, and the Cultural Construction of American National Identity
Shannon Latkin Anderson
15 Blackness in Britain
Edited by Lisa Palmer and Kehinde Andrews
16 The End of Black Studies
Conceptual, Theoretical, and Empirical Concerns
Clovis E. Semmes
17 Contemporary African American Families
Achievements, Challenges, and Empowerment Strategies in the Twenty-First Century
Edited by Dorothy Smith-Ruiz, Marcia J. Watson and Sherri Lawson Clark
First published 2017
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2017 Dorothy Smith-Ruiz, Sherri Lawson Clark and Marcia Watson
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Contemporary African American Families: Achievements, Challenges, and Empower ment Strategies in the 21st Century edited by Dr. Dorothy Smith-Ruiz, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Dr. Sherri Lawson Clark, Wake Forest University, and Dr. Marcia Watson, Towson University is an engaging and insightful anthology aimed at three audiences: the undergraduate student population; social and behavioral science graduate students; and especially research scientists. It is a book that is long overdue.
Beginning with William Edward Burghardt Du Bois in 1909 up through the twenty-first century, the African American Family has been studied, analyzed, dissected and studied again by every conceivable social and behavioral scientist, but also including social workers, lawyers, and journalists (Coates 2015).
The result: confusion and disbelief about the status and well-being of the offspring of those first brought to these shores on boats as human chattel slaves to Jamestown, Virginia in 1619 (Bennett 1962).
What makes this volume a must read is that editors Smith-Ruiz, Lawson Clark, and Watson have amassed a collection of top scholars from many different disciplines to make up the contents of the book.
There are thirteen chapters, including an Introduction and Index. While space limitations prevent me from highlighting each and every chapter in the book, here I mention a few:
