Racialized Health Covid 19 And Religious Responses

Racialized Health, COVID-19, and Religious Responses: Black Atlantic Contexts and Perspectives explores black religious responses to black health concerns amidst persistent race-based health disparities and healthcare inequities. This cutting-edge edited volume provides theoretically and descriptively rich analysis of cases and contexts where race factors strongly in black health outcomes and dynamics, viewing these matters from various disciplinary and national vantage points. The volume is divided into the following four parts: Systemic and Socio-Cultural Dimensions of Black Health Ecclesial Responses to Black Health Vulnerabilities Public Education and Policy Considerations Spirituality and the Wellness of Black Minds, Bodies and Souls Part I explores ways social and cultural factors such as racial bias, religious conviction, and resource capacity have influenced and delimited black health prospects. Part II looks historically and contemporarily at denominational and ecumenical responses to collective black health emergencies in places such as Nigeria, the UK, the US, and the Caribbean. Part III focuses on public advocacy, particularly collective black health, both in terms of policy and education. The final section deals with spiritual, psychological, and theological dimensions, understandings, and pursuits of black health and wholeness. Collectively, the essays in the volume delineate analysis and action that wrestle with the multidimensional nature of black wellness and with ways broad public resources and black religious resources should be mobilized and leveraged to ensure collective black wellness. "The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license."

Examines how the dynamics emerging from the pandemic affect our most vulnerable populations and shape a new religious landscape The COVID-19 pandemic upset virtually every facet of society and, in many cases, exposed gross inequality and dysfunction. The particular dynamics emerging from the coronavirus pandemic have been felt most intensely by America’s most vulnerable populations, who are disproportionately people of color and the working poor, the people whom the Bible refers to as “the least of these.” This book makes the case that the pandemic was not just a medical phenomenon, or an economic or social one, but also a religious one. Religious practice has been altered in profound ways. Controversies around religious freedom have been re-ignited over debates concerning whether government can restrict church services. Christian white supremacists not only defied shelter in place orders, but found new ways to propagate racist attacks, with their White Christian identity fueling their reactions to the pandemic. Some religious leaders, including those in communities of color, saw the virus as an indicator of God’s wrath, or as a divine test, and viewed altering their traditional practices to mitigate the virus’s spread as a weakening of faith. Religion, Race, and COVID-19 argues that there is a religious hierarchy in US society that puts “the least of these” last while prioritizing those who benefit most from white privilege. Yet these vulnerable populations draw on theological and religious resources to contend with these existential threats. The volume shows how social transformation occurs when faith is both formed and informed during crises, offering compelling insight into the saliency and lasting impact of religiosity within human culture.

This edited collection brings together social scientists working on race and ethnicity to address the question of the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, with a focus on issues linked to racial and ethnic inequalities. The fourteen chapters that make up this collection were produced during the pandemic in 2020 and are intended to address key facets of the impact of the pandemic in contemporary Europe, the United States, and globally. Individual chapters address the pandemic by drawing both on empirical research and conceptual analysis. They also seek to draw important connections between broader dimensions of racial and ethnic inequalities and the health inequalities that have been highlighted by the sharp impact of the pandemic on particular communities and groups. This volume speaks to the need for researchers working on race and ethnicity to respond to the Covid-19 pandemic through both original research and by reflection on current policy challenges and interventions. The chapters in this book were originally published as a themed issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies.

In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.

Dual Pandemics: Creating Racially Just Responses to a Changing Environment through Research, Practice and Education commits to promoting and disseminating knowledge that calls for the dismantling of systemic racism and creating racially just responses to the dual pandemics. COVID-19 and anti-racist uprisings as a result of the murders of Mr. George Floyd and many other African Americans and other people of color due to police violence has unprecedented impact on our society. While these two pandemics appear to be different in nature, both pandemics attest to the fact that systemic racism continues to be a grand challenge and that COVID-19 differentially affects communities and people of color as well as socially disadvantaged groups. This book offers intellectually sound examination, conceptualization, and rigor in providing viable, socially just, responsive paths forward. The volume include chapters that focus on anti-racist pedagogy in social work education, conceptual discussion contributing to refining a shared understanding of constructs relevant to anti-racist social work, and micro, mezzo, and macro social work practice that aims to prevent or eliminate the negative impact of racism as well as promote racial justice, equity, and inclusion among individuals, families, groups, organizations, or communities. This book will be of great value to students and scholars of Social Work, Public Policy, Race and Ethnic Studies. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Journal of Ethnic & Cultural Diversity in Social Work.

This volume explores how Christians around the world have made sense of the meaning of suffering in the context of and post-COVID-19. It interrogates the question of God, suffering, and structural injustice. Further, it discusses the Christian response to the compounded threats of racial injustice, climate injustice, wildlife injustice, gender injustice, economic injustice, political injustice, unjust in the distributions of the vaccine and future challenges in the post-COVID-19 era. The contributions are authored by scholars, students, activists and clergy from various fields of inquiry and church traditions. The volume seeks to deepen Christian understanding of the meaning of suffering in the context of COVID-19 pandemic. It explores the fresh ways the pandemic can contribute to reconceptualizing human relations and specifically, what it means to be human in the context of suffering, the place of or justifications of God in suffering, human place in creation, and the role of the church in re-articulating the theological meanings and praxes of suffering for today.

Human beings tend to romanticize history or idealize historical figures. This is nowhere more apparent than the civil rights era of the twentieth century. The problem is that when we idealize history, we fail to learn from it. The result is that history repeats itself along with its sins and atrocities. The January 6 Capitol insurrection and the current racial reckoning we are experiencing is unoriginal to the American experience. We have been here before. This book seeks to humanize people we have idealized. Readers are invited to challenge racial hatred and injustice in their own context by looking to the lives of historical figures who have faced the challenges we currently face. By examining the self-care practices of personalities like Ida B. Wells, Fannie Lou Hamer, Benjamin Elijah Mays, and Martin Luther King Jr., this book examines the practices of introspection and self-work these historical figures engaged in that enabled them to fulfill the body of work they are celebrated for today. By humanizing these historical titans, we can emulate similar practices of self-care and introspection in our own lives that can equip us in continuing the ongoing work of dismantling structures of racial hatred and oppression, and promoting freedom, love, equity, and justice to redeem the soul of a nation.

How the 1863 elections in Perry County changed the course of Alabama's role in the Civil War In his fascinating, in-depth study, Bertis D. English analyzes why Perry county, situated in the heart of a violence-prone subregion, enjoyed more peaceful race relations and less bloodshed than several neighboring counties. Choosing an atypical locality as central to his study, English raises questions about factors affecting ethnic disturbances in the Black Belt and elsewhere in Alabama. He also uses Perry County, which he deems an anomalous county, to caution against the tendency of some scholars to make sweeping generalizations about entire regions and subregions. English contends Perry County was a relatively tranquil place with a set of extremely influential African American businessmen, clergy, politicians, and other leaders during Reconstruction. Together with egalitarian or opportunistic white citizens, they headed a successful campaign for black agency and biracial cooperation that few counties in Alabama matched. English also illustrates how a significant number of educational institutions, a high density of African American residents, and an unusually organized and informed African American population were essential factors in forming Perry's character. He likewise traces the development of religion in Perry, the nineteenth-century Baptist capital of Alabama, and the emergence of civil rights in Perry, an underemphasized center of activism during the twentieth century. This well-researched and comprehensive volume illuminates Perry County's history from the various perspectives of its black, interracial, and white inhabitants, amplifying their own voices in a novel way. The narrative includes rich personal details about ordinary and affluent people, both free and unfree, creating a distinctive resource that will be useful to scholars as well as a reference that will serve the needs of students and general readers.