Browsing by Subject "Black Family"

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    It's A Family Affair: Evaluating Social Policy and Popular Representations of Black Families in the Media and their Effects on the Structure of Black Marriages and Families
    (2005-07-08) Johnson, Elizabeth "Nikki"
    The Black family is an institution that has been subjected to excessive analysis and criticism for more than a century. Many scholars hunt for an answer to explain the differences between marriages and families in the African American community while using Caucasian families as a standard of measure. Relying on the media as a highly effective method of presenting the standards or norms accepted by American society, many people attempt to model their everyday lives by media representations. Considering this idea, one might ask how popular television programs relate to social policies that affect family structures within a given community. This project is designed to compare various black television shows over increments of time, along with the social policies established for family and child welfare, in order to draw conclusions about how they influenced family structure among African American families. Projected outcomes of this research are to be able to explain how the media has affected changes in the perceptions of black families and how both media and social policy help explain those perceptions. These correlations are important because they will indicate how perceptions of black families influenced social policy and they will provide understanding of the progression of black families to better inform future policies. Limitations of this study might include the fact that it concentrates solely on television shows and does not include literature or film. Some suggestions to enhance this study are to expand the study to include perceptions presented in other forms of media or to study all shows that present family values in order to obtain a more comprehensive study.
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    What's Love Got to do With it? Analyzing the Attitudes of Black College Students on Marriage and How They Affect African American Marriage Rates
    (2004-07-09) Johnson, Elizabeth "Nikki"
    The decline of marriage rates within the African American community is an area of concern among Black families. Academic literature provides theories and explanations of the current conditions of Black marriages in the United States and explores various concepts which explain the current state of the Black family. The following study is an analytical evaluation of a survey conducted on a sample of students at Morris College in Sumter, South Carolina during the summer of 2003. Its purpose is to determine whether the attitudes and perceptions of marriage and family held by African American college students significantly influence the rate of marriage in the black community. Concepts that were regarded in the survey were the presence/absence of roles within marriage, existing problems among married couples, marriage as a dying trend, and the urgency or desire to marry, among others. The results indicate that to advocate the marriage decline, young people are becoming more and more comfortable with the idea of cohabitation. In addition to this gradual acceptance, there shows a slowly dying desire among young African Americans to be married. However, the study also displays that traditional beliefs and views on marriage and family still hold strong. Suggested further research might explore a detailed history of relationships and family models through qualitative measures to more accurately explain how attitudes on marriage influence motivations to be married.