Preparing Social Workers to Identify and Integrate Culturally Affirming Bibliotherapy into Treatment

Despite gains in redefining America as a ‘salad bowl’ versus a ‘melting pot’, stereotypes about racial and ethnic minorities, including African Americans, remain embedded in the fabric of the United States. By acknowledging the significance of stereotypes, race, and culture on the lives of clients, culturally affirming bibliotherapy is a tool that can empower them, validate their experiences, and promote the development of a positive self‐identity or self‐concept. This paper focuses on its use with African American youth, however, because, race impacts all individuals of African descent, this tool can and should be incorporated into their treatment as well when deemed appropriate.     

Restructuring the Past: Toward an Appreciation of the Social Context of Social Science*

The recent surge of interest in the history of the social sciences reflects the unsettled conditions which obtain within these disciplines. Historical analysis may prove an aid to the resolution of these conditions, but only if it does not fall into the genre generally called "whig history"—mythologized history which functions to legitimate contemporary practices by assimilating all previous developments to a stylized narrative of continuous, inevitable "progress." Because "whig history" is intrinsic to the "scientific ethos," its rejection entails a reconsideration of the nature of the scientific enterprise in general, and of social science in particular.     

A "Scientific Revolution": Sociological Theory in the United States, 1930–1945

Between 1930 and 1945 the sociological profession suffered an identity crisis. Its origin and resolution were compounded of both academic realpolitik and theoretical dilemmas: generational conflicts and university power blocs on the one hand, and persisting intellectual obsessions on the other. Contemporary sociologists may find our current situation to be both derivative and parallel.     

Negative Social Contextual Stressors and Somatic Symptoms Among Young Black Males: An Exploratory Study

This study examines whether negative social contextual stressors were associated with somatic symptoms among young Black males (N = 74) after accounting for background and psychological characteristics. Using Cunningham and Spencer’s Black Male Experiences Measure, negative social contextual stressors connoted those experiences connected to the personal attributes, devaluation, and negative imagery of young Black males, such as being followed when entering a store or police or security guards asking them what they are doing when hanging out (e.g., in the park or playground or on the street corner). Results showed that such stressors made a unique and significant contribution to the experience of somatic symptoms. Future research directions and implications for addressing the larger societal perceptions of young Black males are discussed.