Investigating the possible overlap between depressed and presumably strong Black women, this article maintains that women's experiences of depression are both gendered and raced. A review of clinical and popular literatures examining Black women's experiences of depression as well as findings from an interview study with a nonclinical sample of 44 Black women suggest that the discourse of being strong may normalize a distressinducing level of selflessness and powerlessness among such women. Implications of this study include the need to consider the racially specific ways in which women are placed at risk for and experience depression.
The purpose of this article is to examine culturally relevant teaching as a political pedagogy and a contemporary manifestation of what was considered “good” teaching in many African American communities served by black segregated schools. Through examining several ethnographies and autobiographical accounts of segregated schools that were valued by black students and families, I assert that the “good” of these institutions hinged not simply on the cultural similarities between teachers and students, but more importantly on the “political clarity” of the teachers. That is, these educators recognized the existence of oppression in their students’ lives and sought to use their personal, professional, and social power to encourage children to understand and undermine their subordination. I also contend that because they use their knowledge of society's inequities and their influence to empower their marginalized students, the pedagogy of contemporary culturally relevant teachers might be more accurately called “politically relevant teaching.” I conclude the article by discussing how recognizing the political and historical dimensions of culturally relevant teaching may broaden its application, as issues of racism and social injustice are relevant to all Americans and not only to people of color.
An emerging feminist paradigm likens depression to silencing, as women disconnect from important aspects of their realities in an attempt to meet cultural standards of feminine goodness. While offering a provocative re-evaluation of hegemonic feminine norms and depressive episodes, little in this literature explores connections between silencing and depression within other, non-white constructions of feminine goodness. Employing a voice-centered method that illuminates areas of conflict between cultural scripts and individual meaning making, I forward that being strong is both the depiction of Black feminine goodness and an important contributor to depressive episodes. Drawing on interview data from a nonclinical sample of 58 Black women, I illustrate three depressionrelevant aspects of Black women's gendered experiences: the promotion of their stoicism, silence, and selflessness through the prevailing discourse of the "strong Black woman"; the active suppression of discourse-discrepant realities which the women associate with depressive experiences; and the psychological healing attendant on supplanting this discourse with experience-based knowledge of their social realities. Voice-centeredness, I conclude, brings a needed sensitivity to depression as a racialized and gendered experience of distress tied to the normative conditions of Black women's lives.Keywords Depression . Silencing . Voice . Strength . Black women The silencing paradigm: A feminist understanding of depression Many women in our society live in an untenable position, wedged between sociocultural expectations and their own human growth potential.... Yet women thirst to be more than the roles and behaviors that are ascribed to them, and therein lies the trap of depression. (Schreiber 1996, p. 490) To explain the fact that women are overwhelmingly the victims of depression, some feminist theorists and researchers have argued that its incidence is tied to normative
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