Conceptual, Operational, and Theoretical Overview of African American Health Related Disparities for Social and Behavioral Interventions

Abstract

The purpose of this handbook is to share information about evidence-based approaches for the reduction of health disparities in the USA. It brings information about intervention research that affects African Americans. For this project, there are three initial concepts: African Americans, health disparities, and intervention. This chapter reviews selected literature to provide definitions and framing. In this process, the chapter offers conceptual, operational, and theoretical reconsiderations. African Americans and Health Disparities There are at least three conceptual, empirical, historical problems associated with the concept African American. The literature on African Americans (1) generally divides the concept of African American as an externally imposed identity, internally developed identity, or as an identity that comes from processes of social reaction, internalization, and identification (Cross, 1991; Hacker, 1992). Moreover, (2) the concept has different meanings across time (Yancey, 2003). For example, colored, Negro, black, and African American are terms that recent history used to identify African Americans. Social scientists usually distinguish between ethnicity and race; nonetheless, throughout US history, colloquially US Americans have understood the notion of US Americans from Africa as referring to a racial group. In fact, some scholars make it clear that black and white distinctions represent the racial classes in the USA (Marx, 1998; Steinberg, 2007). Moreover, (3) we can quickly discern the nomenclature equivocation within the term African American; immigrants from Botswana living in the USA and having US citizenship would become confused with descendants of slaves whose cultural characteristics marginally survived experiences with the transatlantic slave trade and US organized slavery (Fullilove, 1998). From a scientific standpoint, the concept becomes virtually meaningless. Imagine that we conceptualized the term to mean anyone with at least onedrop of African blood (Lemelle, 2007); the confusion would escalate since we know that “biracial” experience is different in some ways from uniracial experience.