As many health disparities in American minority communities (AMCs) are stress related, there has been an increased interest in the development of mindfulness programs as potential stress-reduction measures in these communities. However, the bulk of the extant literature on mindfulness research and mindfulness interventions is based upon experiences with the larger White community. The intent of this commentary is to share a framework that includes key cultural considerations for conducting research and developing culturally salient mindfulness programs with AMCs. We build on our experiences and the experiences of other researchers who have explored mindfulness in African-and Native American communities; in particular, we examine issues around community outreach with an emphatic gesture toward emphasizing protection of AMCs and their participants. Discussed are considerations with respect to attitudinal foundations in mindfulness-based research and program development with these communities. However, the overall message of this paper is not to provide a Bto-do^list of research steps, but to rather, encourage researchers to turn inward and consider the development of skillful characteristics that will increase the likelihood of a successful research venture while also protecting the cultural traditions of the AMC of interest.

This exploratory study makes a contribution to the literature on antiracism by unpacking the cultural categories through which everyday antiracism is experienced and practiced by extraordinarily successful African Americans. Using a phenomenological approach, we focus on processes of classification to analyze the criteria that members of the African American elite mobilize to compare racial groups and establish their equality. We first summarize results from earlier work on the antiracist strategies of White and African American workers. Second, drawing upon in-depth interviews with members of the Black elite, we show that demonstrating intelligence and competence, and gaining knowledge, are particularly valued strategies of equalization, while religion has a subordinate role within their antiracist repertoire. Thus, gaining cultural membership is often equated with educational and occupational attainment. Antiracist strategies that value college education and achievement by the standards of American individualism may exclude many poor and working-class African Americans from cultural membership. In this way, strategies of equalization based on educational and professional competence may prove dysfunctional for racial solidarity.

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In this essay, we reflect on the history and legacies of the U.S. Civil Rights Movement and suggest avenues of future research of interest to scholars of ethnic and racial movements. First, we unpack how the Civil Rights Movement developed as a major movement utilizing both international and domestic influences. Second, we consider the central role of technology—including television and Internet communication technologies (ICTs)—in shaping contemporary ethnic and racial activism. In so doing, we aim to enhance scholarship on movements and efforts by those committed to challenging racial and ethnic disparities. Finally, we explore how the collective memories of past racial and ethnic struggles, including the Civil Rights Movement, are constructed. We argue that activists and their opposition have stakes in how past ethnoracial oppression and movements alike will be remembered and interpreted. Such memories and interpretations can serve as the basis for additional demands that activists make on power holders and influence actions of the powerful to resist such demands.