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Racism has dominated the social fabric of American society since its founding. African-American males have been the focal point for various forms of racism given their perception as threatening. Exacerbated by media images the threatening perceptions of African-American males result in racist victimization during encounters with law enforcement agencies for otherwise law abiding citizens. Based upon the constant prevalence of racism in public life African-American males suffer from abnormally high blood pressure. The result is a health risk manifested by a correlation between skin color and hypertension. Social scientists are all but unaware of this phenomenon. Solution to the problem will require more informed research and the elimination of racism in total. Keywords Racism * Health risk * African-American males * Hypertension * Skin color

Over the past four decades, there have been numerous discussions on student achievement and school failure. Within this time, the debate over the causes and consequences of racial differences in achievement has been at the heart of the nation's social and political life. The author discusses the major developments in achievement research over the past century and examines the foremost explanations given for racial differences in school performance, namely, genetic deficiency, social class and cultural poverty, low teacher expectancy, and student oppositional identity. The article addresses the strengths and limitations of the existing body of work and concludes with directions toward a student-based inquiry approach to achievement research aimed at filling in some of the missing information in the literature. KEYWORDS: student achievement, achievement gap, Black-White performance gap, school failure, race and school achievement, school research, education research methodologies, qualitative research methods.

The study investigates the occurrence and character of skepticism and resistance towards ethnic minority care workers among older care recipients in a municipality in Sweden. Twelve representatives of caregiver organizations were interviewed about their experience of this phenomenon. Three additional interviews were conducted with ethnic minority care workers. Representatives described the problem as rare and mostly occurring as language difficulties or as a temporary problem characterized as a fear of the unknown among some care recipients. They tended to apply a pragmatic or pathologizing approach when talking about causes of and solutions to the problem. These approaches enabled care providers to comply with 'potential racism' without challenging an official ideology of anti-racism. In contrast, staff of foreign descent described the problem as more frequent and severe, particularly for short-term employees who experience many first-time encounters with care recipients. doi: 10.1300/J083v49n04_05 KEYWORDS. Discrimination, elder care, ethnic relations, racism, Sweden

There is a paucity of research on the influence of racist and sexist stereotypes in rape blame attribution, including the jezebel and matriarch stereotypes of Black women. This study extends the literature by examining how victim race, perpetrator race, and participant sex affect perceptions of a tape survivor's promiscuity (jezebel stereotype) and strength and/or toughness (matriarch stereotype). The myth of the Black male sexual predator of White women is also investigated. Data provided partial support for the jezebel stereotype. There were also contradictory findings supporting and challenging the acceptance of the Black rapist of White women stereotype. No significant differences were found for the matriarch stereotype. Reasons for and implications of findings are explored. Keywords: acquaintance rape; attitudes; Blacks; jezebel; matriarch; race; sexual assault

Race-based traumatic stress has been studied in the literature under various names including but not limited to insidious trauma, intergenerational trauma, racist incident--based trauma, psychological trauma, and racism. This article reviews and analyzes R. T. Carter's article in this issue. The author underscores and reacts to the trauma of racism as discussed in Carter's article, and also highlights efforts that should be directed to racist incident--based trauma counseling. Counselors have to be trained to effectively conduct assessment and interventions with clients who have been victimized by race-based traumas. In addition, counselors should be aware that intersecting identities can result in multiple traumas or forms of oppression, such as 1 client experiencing racism, sexism, poverty, and heterosexism. While it is important to study the dynamics of race-based traumatic stress within the United States, as Carter comprehensively does, it is also essential for counselors to examine and respond to race-based traumatic stress internationally.

In this issue, Robert T. Carter has made an important contribution to the literature in clinical psychologists' understanding of the psychological injury caused by experiences of racism. However, Carter's focus on specific encounters with racism might be narrow and limited. The author of this reaction contends that racial incidents (i.e., discrimination, racial harassment, and discriminatory harassment) represent only one of the ways that racism injures its victims. The internalization of racism might be even more damaging. Accordingly, she herein examines the concept of internalized racism as one more piece of the puzzle necessary for elucidating psychological injury that is due to racism.

The author responds to the four reactions authored by Thompson-Miller and Feagin, Griffin, Speight, and Bryant-Davis in this issue. In responding, he clarifies the purpose of the model presented in his major contribution and adds information about the model's legal and forensic applications that he did not touch on with any detail. He also discusses the purpose of the use of 'injury' to describe the harm of racism, the intersection of psychology and law, and how legal definitions are not useful in the effort to understand the mental health effects of racism. He further points out that both objective and subjective stressors are harmful since, where racism is concerned, there seems to be a tendency to discount subjective experience. Lastly, the author acknowledges points made by the reaction authors that extend and expand the model of race-based traumatic stress injury he presented.

The psychological effect that racism has on individuals is of significant interest to mental health professionals. But it is of particular interest to those professionals who treat the clinical dimensions of the trauma to those who are involved in the assessment of the trauma for forensic purposes. Robert T. Carter provides a systematic, disciplined, science-based review of the evidence bearing on this subject in his article in this issue. He also adds to his review and synthesis some novel and creative recommendations that will have considerable impact on the field. This commentary focuses on certain aspects of Carter's work from an ethics-based and forensic dimension. I also suggest slight modifications of his contributions in an attempt to make them more user-friendly for the forensic specialist.

The purpose of this article is to discuss the psychological and emotional effects of racism on people of color. Psychological models and research on racism, discrimination, stress, and trauma will be integrated to promote a model to be used to understand, recognize, and assess race-based traumatic stress to aid counseling and psychological assessment, research, and training.

In this reaction article, the authors support and extend Robert T. Carter's excellent analysis of the impact of racism today on Americans of color. Drawing on their own data, they suggest important extensions of his arguments in regard to the cumulative and long-term effects of racial discrimination and other racial oppression--as well as in regard to the ways in which both the accumulating pain of and the developed coping strategies for, racial discrimination are passed across several generations of those racially oppressed. The authors argue that a major reality underlying individual coping with racial discrimination is a huge energy loss for individuals, families, and communities. In conclusion, they strongly urge that all educators dealing with the training of clinicians first consider and counter the old and mostly White-generated racist framing of society that is imbedded to some degree in most of the minds of those who seek to join the counseling professions.

The preliminary evidence of the relationship between perceived racial discrimination and intimate partner violence (IPV) and the interaction of these exposures to affect the mental and physical health of Black women is provided. A higher prevalence of anxiety and nonspecific physical health symptoms are shown by women who reported both exposures compared with women who reported either or neither exposure.

Objectives. We sought to determine whether childhood health disparities are best understood as effects of race, socioeconomic status (SES), or synergistic effects of the two. Methods. Data from the National Health Interview Survey 1994 of US children aged 0 to 18 years (n = 33911) were used. SES was measured as parental education. Child health measures included overall health, limitations, and chronic and acute childhood conditions. Results. For overall health, activity and school limitations, and chronic circulatory conditions, the likelihood of poor outcomes increased as parental education decreased. These relationships were stronger among White and Black children, and weaker or nonexistent among Hispanic and Asian children. However, Hispanic and Asian children exhibited an opposite relationship for acute respiratory illness, whereby children with more educated parents had higher rates of illness. Conclusions. The traditional finding of fewer years of parent education being associated with poorer health in offspring is most prominent among White and Black children and least evident among Hispanic and Asian children. These findings suggest that lifestyle characteristics (e.g., cultural norms for health behaviors) of low-SES Hispanic and Asian children may buffer them from health problems. Future interventions that seek to bolster these characteristics among other Iow-SES children may be important for reducing childhood health disparities. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2004.048124)

This research examined how Black and White raters view Black and White employees in terms of salary, training, race, and perceptual characteristics. These characteristics were measured in a primarily Black university with a sample of 283 Black students and in a primarily White university with a sample of 258 White students. Aversive racism was used to explain the lower ratings of Black women in the White sample. Blacks' stronger rating of other Blacks was explained by relational demography, which argues that strength in numbers is evidenced by more positive feelings of minorities toward those of their own groups. Results are discussed with regard to changes that must occur in order for organizations to be more inclusive of Blacks and women.

The moves that hip-hop women make to eradicate the problem and shred the veil of racism, sexism, and classism within the African American communities and America in general is examined. The focus is on how hip-hop performers use discursive strategies to transform the notion of real American womanhood through public performances that became resources for racial and feminist identity.

Research identifies prejudices that operate in juries in death penalty cases involving defendants from minority groups. Jury bias is a likely manifestation of unconscious intrapsychic and institutionalized racism originating in cultural dominance and manifested as 'White privilege.' Consequently, the likelihood that the fate of death penalty defendants from minority groups is decided by either juries 'of their peers' or actual representatives of community standards is highly suspect in death penalty cases. This article describes and advocates use of a social work intervention, the narrative, in capital trials. Focusing on death penalty cases involving African American defendants from lower socio-economic strata, where justice problems stand in boldest relief, this article explains how use of narratives could (1) prove therapeutic for defendants; (2) encourage jurors' serf-awareness, in turn, mitigating bias and prejudice; (3) add to a trend toward therapeutic jurisprudence; and (4) encourage a systemically more humane judicial response to death penalty defendants. KEYWORDS. Forensic social work, death penalty, racial bias, juror bias

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship of racism and blood pressure (BP). Participants were 162 urban African American adults. Measurements included the Racism and Life Experiences Scale, Krieger Racial Discrimination Questionnaire, State-Trait Personality Inventory (anxiety and depression), State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory, and automated measures of BP. Correlational and multiple regression analyses were done to examine relationships among key variables, t tests and ANOVA tested group differences by age, gender, and racism category. There was a high prevalence of perceived racism, which was not associated with higher BP. The racism/BP relationship was moderated by age with significant age related differences noted. Older participants (40 years or older) experienced more distress from racism, more anger suppression, and higher BP but lower levels of stress emotions. The highest levels of BP were noted in older adults reporting the lowest level of perceived racism, raising the issue of 'internalized oppression.' Keywords: racism; hypertension; stress; emotions