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W.E.B. DuBois, in his 1903 collection of writings entitled The Souls of Black Folk, describes what he calls “The Veil,” which succinctly sums up the deadly and adverse experiences of African Americans in the US. With DuBois contemplations of a Veil under which US Blacks alone live and die as context, this paper takes a look at the modern condition of African Americans in the US, whether they continue to exist within DuBois Veil in modern times (twentieth and twenty-first centuries), and if so, to what extent. As a routine examination and inspection of the condition of Blacks in the US, focus is placed on black lives lost, beginning with an appraisal of their size in the US population overtime, and in comparison with other racial and ethnic groups in the US. US census data, health data collected from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and crime data collected from the Federal Bureau of Investigation are examined to construct a composite of the condition of contemporary Blacks in the US as compared to other groups in the US, focusing attention specifically on the rates at which their lives are lost compared to others through infant mortality, low fertility rates, abortion, and high rates of homicide. This analysis concludes with a look at death from homicide before, during, and after the post-1990s drop in the crime rate.

This essay studies disconnections between the macrolevel societal problems of a state and more microlevel political alignments.

Using a dataset composed of macrolevel measures of state problems and microlevel responses to a 2008 election survey, this essay applies multilevel statistical models to explain the state-to-state variance between the states on anti-abortion and pro-gun sentiments. This analysis uncovers the macro- and microlevel factors that disconnect a state’s neglect-of-children indicators from its citizens’ sentiments about abortion, and the factors that disconnect a state’s crime indicators from its citizens’ sentiments about guns.

The initial associations between a state’s indicators of neglect of children and anti-abortion sentiments are explained by the state’s lower human development (HD) and social attributes, especially religious beliefs, which predict social conservatism. The initial associations between a state’s indicators of crime and incarcerations are also explained by a state’s lower HD and the social attributes, especially religious beliefs, which predict social conservatism. Considering both abortion and guns as key indicators of social conservatism, the voters’ political choices exhibit a moralistic axiological rationality rather than a more pragmatic instrumental rationality.

The moral absolutism associated with sentiments about abortion and guns suggests that social conservatism and authoritarianism are intertwined but separate conceptions, which have similar consequences and determinants. Both may be influenced by the same changes in social and educational policies, especially the quality of education.

The dramatic increase in the fraction of all Afro‐American families headed by single women accounts for approximately two‐fifths of the Afro‐Euro family income gap. Examines the empirical objections to the conclusion that family structure is a major factor behind ethnic inequality and found to be largely without merit. Also critically examines the more normative and more important objection that the family structure argument undercuts the struggle to achieve economic justice for Afro‐Americans. Argues that an emphasis on family structure does not absolve society of responsibility for inequality, nor does it imply that government activism is futile. The family structure argument recasts but does not negate the struggle for economic justice for Afro‐Americans.

To explore the politics of gender, health, medicine, and citizenship in high-income countries, medical sociologists have focused primarily on the practice of legal abortion. In middle- and low-income countries with restrictive abortion laws, however, medical sociologists must examine what happens when women have already experienced spontaneous or induced abortion. Post-abortion care (PAC), a global reproductive health intervention that treats complications of abortion and has been implemented in nearly 50 countries worldwide, offers important theoretical insights into transnational politics of abortion and reproduction in countries with restrictive abortion laws. In this chapter, I draw on my ethnography of Senegal’s PAC program to examine the professional, clinical, and technological politics and practices of obstetric care for abortions that have already occurred. I use the sociological concepts of professional boundary work and boundary objects to demonstrate how Senegalese health professionals have established the political and clinical legitimacy of PAC. I demonstrate the professional precariousness of practicing PAC for physicians, midwives, and nurses. I show how the dual capacity of PAC technologies to terminate pregnancy and treat abortion complications has limited their circulation within the health system, thereby reducing quality of care. Given the contradictory and complex global landscape of twenty-first-century abortion governance, in which pharmaceutical forms of abortion such as Misoprostol are increasingly available in developing countries, and as abortion restrictions are increasingly enforced across the developed world, PAC offers important theoretical opportunities to advance medical sociology research on abortion politics and practices in the global North and South.

As numerous scholars have noted, the law takes a strikingly incoherent approach to adolescent reproduction. States overwhelmingly allow a teenage girl to independently consent to pregnancy care and medical treatment for her child, and even to give up her child for adoption, all without notice to her parents, but require parental notice or consent for abortion. This chapter argues that this oft-noted contradiction in the law on teenage reproductive decision-making is in fact not as contradictory as it first appears. A closer look at the law’s apparently conflicting approaches to teenage abortion and teenage childbirth exposes common ground that scholars have overlooked. The chapter compares the full spectrum of minors’ reproductive rights and unmasks deep similarities in the law on adolescent reproduction – in particular an undercurrent of desire to punish (female) teenage sexuality, whether pregnant girls choose abortion or childbirth. It demonstrates that in practice, the law undermines adolescents’ reproductive rights, whichever path of pregnancy resolution they choose. At the same time that the law thwarts adolescents’ access to abortion care, it also fails to protect adolescents’ rights as parents. The analysis shows that these two superficially conflicting sets of rules in fact work in tandem to enforce a traditional gender script – that self-sacrificing mothers should give birth and give up their infants to better circumstances, no matter the emotional costs to themselves. This chapter also suggests novel policy solutions to the difficulties posed by adolescent reproduction by urging reforms that look to third parties other than parents or the State to better support adolescent decision-making relating to pregnancy and parenting.

This chapter examines how the intersection of race, class, and gender impact the experiences of Black women and their children within a broader socio-historical context.

The epistemological framework of feminist criminology and the invisibility of Black women are used to draw an analysis on the American dominant ideology and culture that perpetuates the racial subjugation of Black women and the challenges they have faced throughout history as it relates to the mother-child dynamic and the ideals of Black motherhood.

By conceptually examining the antebellum, eugenics, and mass incarceration eras, our analysis demonstrated how the racial subjugation of Black women perpetuated the parental separation and the ability for Black women to mother their children and that these collective efforts, referred to as the New Jane Crow, disrupt the social synthesis of the black community and further emphasizes the need for more efforts to preserve the mother/child relationship.

Based on existing literature, there is a paucity of research studies that examine the effects of maternal incarceration and the impact it has on their children. As a part of a continuous project we intend to further the discourse and examine how race and gender intersect to impact the experiences of incarcerated Black women and their children through a socio-historical context.

African American men and women suffer from health problems such as hypertension, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, AIDS, sickle cell anemia, and various forms of cancer, often at a higher rate than the rest of the population. There is a need for information about these and other health problems affecting this particular community. This annotated bibliography includes recent articles, books, Internet resources, and Web sites. The audience for this essay includes the layperson, health‐care professionals, and information specialists who wish to provide information to patrons on these important health issues.

The purpose of this paper is to propose that black churches in the USA are best suited to curtail the rising incidence of suicide, and suicide ideation among African-American adolescents. Presently, little is known about the best preventive practices and mental healthcare interventions for the black adolescents assailed by suicide and suicidal ideation.

A review of the extant literature was conducted to understand and synthesize the current knowledge base about suicide rates among African-American adolescents. To retrieve and review relevant literature that focussed on suicide among African-American adolescents and the preventive roles of black churches the authors searched the following databases: PsychINFO, CINAHL (Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature), Social Work abstracts, and Google Scholar.

Findings indicate that black churches could implement, and profusely replicate the lay health advisors and HAVEN models to successfully mitigate the rate of suicide among black adolescents. In addition it was found that the gatekeeper suicide prevention program model also holds promise for suicide prevention among black adolescents in black churches.

The result of this research synthesize is limited to African-American adolescents and may not be generalizable to other minority adolescents’ experiencing suicidal challenges. Furthermore, future research should utilize qualitative research methodologies to document lived experiences of African-American adolescents who are survivors of suicide attempts with a view to preventing suicide and suicidal ideation among black adolescents.

Healthcare professionals, and policy makers, are provided a panoramic view of culturally competent and spiritually sensitive prevention interventions within black churches that are most appropriate for reducing suicide rates among minority black adolescents.

Analyses how HIV/AIDS has affected African Americans, who are acknowledged as a vulnerable racialized group, along with Puerto Ricans. Defines the term of racialized social system as a society where part of the stratification system is designed to reank people based on their racial classification. Sheds light on AIDS and ethnicity through copious use of figures and tables. Summarizes that there is little control over tehir own community economics for African Americans, legitimately, as HIV runs riot. Urges a race‐conscious approach to the HIV/AIDS epidemic.