Resiliency in the Black Family

RESILIENCY IN THE BLACK FAMILY

W. HENRY GREGORY, JR. Ph.D.

April, 2007

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to identify and explore the processes by which some Black families rebound from hazardous adversity. Nine families were interviewed for this study. The families experienced suicides, murders, illness and death, incarcerations, child sexual molestation, and the threat of children being taken by the department of social services. A constructivist approach to inquiry was used in this study because of its emphasis on power sharing among investigators and participants and the utility of its theoretical foundations. Five resilience processes, previously identified in the general population were identified as well as four previously unidentified themes. Together the nine themes may imply a culturally specific pattern of handling adversity that exist in Black families.

The five previously identified processes are:

(1) positive outlook;

(2) spirituality;

(3) connectedness;

(4) open expression of emotions; and

(5) meaning making.

The four new processes are:

(1) tenderness: empathy, compassion and forgiveness;

(2) remembering;

(3) gratitude and humility; and

(4) dreaming and clairvoyance.

INTRODUCTION

Resilience is the ability to rebound from adversity strengthened by the experience. It refers to manifest competence in the context of significant challenges to adaptation or development (Masten & Coatsworth, 1999). To identify resilience two judgments are required: first, that there has been a significant threat to the individual (or system) typically indexed by high-risk status or exposure to severe adversity or trauma; and secondly, that the quality of adaptation or development is good (Masten & Coatsworth, 1999). Resiliency entails more than merely surviving, getting through, or escaping a harrowing ordeal (Walsh, 1998). Survivors are not necessarily resilient; some become trapped in a position as victims, nursing their wounds and blocked from growth by anger and blame (Wolin and Wolin, 1993). Resilient people learn from their experiences and heal from painful wounds. They take charge of their lives, living fully and loving well. Resilient people build on their experience of adversity and become stronger, more effective people.

This study examines resilient responses in Black families to a range of hazardous adversity. While all families exist under greater stress in today’s society, Black families are particularly vulnerable. Black families are increasingly faced with growing problems: isolation from the economic mainstream; public schools that are becoming more unsuccessful; violence that abounds in our communities; and more children being raised in families by women alone (McAdoo, 1998). This study supports a competence based approach to assisting Black families by delineating the processes that currently work for some Black families in dealing with difficulty, stress and adversity.

The families in this study have experienced a variety of hazardous adversities and are in various stages of recovery from the destabilization of their trauma and are doing relatively well. Among the hazardous adversity experienced by these families there are two murders, two suicides, two incarcerations, sexual molestation of a child, an illness and related death, and a threat of termination of parental rights.

Qualitative methodology was chosen to support this inquiry because it offered the opportunity to hear from families in their own words about their struggles and the resilient processes that helped them recover from their adversity. Specifically, a constructivist methodology was used because it emphasizes power sharing in the research process. To this end this study used the process of member checking to formally and informally consult with the participants in the study to see if there was congruency between the researcher’s interpretations of their stories and their own.

Resiliency

Much of the early work on resiliency arose from the study of risk as investigators realized that there were children flourishing in the midst of adversity (Anthony, 1974; Garmezy, 1974; Murphy & Moriarty, 1976; Rutter, 1979; Werner & Smith, 1982). Such studies countered the predominant modernistic view that family and environmental risk factors and negative life events produce childhood and later adult disorders.

Reflecting Western culture’s heroic myth of the rugged individual, most interest in resilience has focused on the strengths found within individuals who have mastered adversity. These qualities have usually been viewed in terms of personality traits, temperament, disposition and coping styles (Kobasa & Pucetti, 1983; Walsh, 1998) that enable a child or adult to overcome harrowing life experiences.

Resilience from this perspective is seen as inborn, as if resilient persons were born with a biological hardiness or acquired it by pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. This fosters the expectation that they must become self-reliant and survive through fierce independence. The unfortunate corollary to this ethos is a contemptuous view of those who don’t succeed as deficient, weak and blameworthy when they can’t surmount their problems on their own (Walsh, 1998). Resiliency has been studied in a wide variety of situations throughout the world, including war, living with parents who have severe mental illness, family violence, poverty, natural disasters, and in situations with many other risk factors and stressors (Haggarty, Sherrod, Garmezy, & Rutter, 1994; Luthar & Ziegler, 1991; Masten, Best, & Garmezy, 1990).

Relational Resiliency

Resiliency research is beginning to approach the issues involved in the development of resilience from a larger relational perspective that sees the resilience as a product of human interaction and the meaning assigned to it. A relational rather than an individualistic or linear mode of adaptation may be key to understanding resiliency (Jordan, 1992; Miller, 1988; Surrey, 1985) particularly for many ethnic minorities whose worldviews can be so relationship oriented (Nichols, 1976). A relational perspective assumes the centrality of relationships in human development.

Black Family Resiliency