Shirley A. Hill

This book shows how living in a highly racialized society affects health through multiple social contexts, including neighborhoods, personal and family relationships, and the medical system. Black-white disparities in health, illness, and mortality have been widely documented, but most research has focused on single factors that produce and perpetuate those disparities, such as individual health behaviors and access to medical care. This is the first book to offer a comprehensive perspective on health and sickness among African Americans, starting with an examination of how race has been historically constructed in the US and in the medical system and the resilience of racial ideologies and practices. Racial disparities in health reflect racial inequalities in living conditions, incarceration rates, family systems, and opportunities. These racial disparities often cut across social class boundaries and have gender-specific consequences. Bringing together data from existing quantitative and qualitative research with new archival and interview data, this book advances research in the fields of families, race-ethnicity, and medical sociology.

This book shows how living in a highly racialized society affects health through multiple social contexts, including neighborhoods, personal and family relationships, and the medical system. Black-white disparities in health, illness, and mortality have been widely documented, but most research has focused on single factors that produce and perpetuate those disparities, such as individual health behaviors and access to medical care. This is the first book to offer a comprehensive perspective on health and sickness among African Americans, starting with an examination of how race has been historically constructed in the US and in the medical system and the resilience of racial ideologies and practices. Racial disparities in health reflect racial inequalities in living conditions, incarceration rates, family systems, and opportunities. These racial disparities often cut across social class boundaries and have gender-specific consequences. Bringing together data from existing quantitative and qualitative research with new archival and interview data, this book advances research in the fields of families, race-ethnicity, and medical sociology.

This is the first comprehensive account of African American secondary education in the postwar era. Drawing on quantitative datasets, as well as oral history, this compelling narrative examines how African Americans narrowed the racial gap in high school completion. The authors explore regional variations in high school attendance across the United States and how intraracial factors affected attendance within racial groups. They also examine the larger social historical context, such as the national high school revolution, the civil rights movement, campaigns to expand schooling and urging youth to stay in school, and Black migration northward. Closing chapters focus on desegregation and the "urban crisis" of the 1960s and 1970s that accelerated "White flight" and funding problems for urban school systems. The conclusion summarizes these developments and briefly looks at the period since 1980, when secondary attainment levels stopped advancing for Blacks and Whites alike. Book Highlights: A comprehensive history, drawing on statistical analysis, archival research, and interviews with African Americans who attended school in the 1940s and 1950s. Lessons from the past, showing how parents and local communities played the most direct and dynamic role in the fight for access to education. Today’s major challenges, including the growth of inner-city poverty and changing family structures.

A brief, impactful book that provides a contemporary analysis of how economics and social class affects the concept of family todayThis book focuses on the impact of economic systems and social class on the organization of family life. Since the most vital function of the family is the survival of its members, the author give primacy to the economic system in structuring the broad parameters of family life. She explains how the economy shapes the prospects families have for earning a decent living by determining the location, nature, and pay associated with work.

In Black Intimacies: A Gender Perspective on Families and Relationships, Shirley A. Hill applies a gender lens to the multiple systems of oppression that have shaped the lives of African American women and men. She challenges the image of a monolithic black population, a legacy of the civil rights movement that she argues is impossible to sustain in the postmodern era. Through a critique of intersectionality theory, Hill examines the ways in which gender has affected experiences of intimacy, family relationships, child rearing and motherhood for contemporary African Americans. Drawing on ethnographic material, interviews, and scholarly research, Hill's work rethinks the cultural and historical definitions of black identity, and reconceptualizes the various forms of oppression faced by black women. This book will be useful to students and instructors of African American Studies, Gender Studies, Sociology, Anthropology, Marriage and Family, and Social Work.

Shifting the focus from intervention with problem populations, this book targets the everyday socialization of African American children. African American Children is a comprehensive exploration of historical and contemporary patterns of parenting in black families. Historically, it focuses on how slavery, race, the racial caste system, and the African American culture influenced the ways African Americans parented their children. This series of social forces seriously circumscribed the ability of African Americans to conform to the ideologies about the nature of children and the roles of parents that began to evolve in the early 20th century. In the context of growing diversity, Shirley A. Hill examines the work that African American parents do in raising their children and explores general child socialization patterns as well as parenting issues and challenges. Providing an analysis of the views, philosophies, and parenting strategies of parents from a variety of social class backgrounds, African American Children combines qualitative and quantitative data collected to examine a broad overview of current theoretical debates about African American families as they relate to child socialization. Topics include discipline strategies, sexual socialization, teen sexuality, self-esteem, redefining physical attractiveness, gender roles, and the role of the extended family and community. This book is an ideal supplemental text for advanced students in child development, family studies, sociology of the family, as well as students in ethnic studies, multicultural counseling, or gender studies.