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Children experience toxic stress if there is pronounced activation of their stress-response systems, in situations in which they do not have stable caregiving. Due to their exposure to multiple poverty-related risks, African American children may be more susceptible to exposure to toxic stress. Toxic stress affects young children’s brain and neurophysiologic functioning, which leads to a wide range of deleterious health, developmental, and mental health outcomes. Given the benefits of early care and education (ECE) for African American young children, ECE may represent a compensating experience for this group of children, and promote their positive development.

This introduction chapter provides an overview of the key issues highlighted throughout this book. First, we tackle why it is problematic to only characterize Black children’s accomplishment in terms of the “academic achievement gap.” Second, we discuss the importance of the home-school environment connection. Finally, we discuss the changes that need to be made in terms of teacher preparation in order to ensure that the workforce can practice racial equity in the classroom. All these issues are woven together by a call for closing the education opportunity gap via “equity adjustments” that can target educational and health disparities facing the Black community.

Past research on the immigrant health paradox suggests that children with immigrant parents may have a health advantage over those with US-born parents, especially if the parent is a recent immigrant. Other research emphasizes the social and economic challenges children with immigrant parents face, in part due to disadvantaged social class and racial/ethnic positions. Underlying physiological changes due to chronic stress exposures among children in immigrant families is one potential health disadvantage that may not yet be apparent in traditional health measures. To explore these biological disparities during childhood, I use national biomarker and survey data from the National Health and Nutrition Survey (NHANES) (N = 11,866) to evaluate parent nativity and educational status associations with low-grade inflammation, indicated by C-reactive protein (CRP), in children ages 2–15 years. I find that children with an immigrant parent, and particularly a low-educated immigrant parent, have higher CRP, net of birth, body mass index (BMI) and other factors, than children with a US-born parent with either a low or higher education. Comparing children with low-educated parents, those with a foreign-born parent have higher predicted CRP. The findings from this study provide new evidence that children living in immigrant families in the US may be facing higher levels of chronic stress exposure, as indicated by the increased risk of low-grade inflammation, than those with US-born parents. The physiological changes related to increased risk of inflammation, could set children in immigrant families on pathways toward mental and physical health problems later in the life course.

Inequalities in education have existed since the beginning of formal education. Educational disparities often emerge as you compare groups of students based on race, ethnicity, socioeconomic class, gender, and geography. This chapter seeks to stress the important role that early childhood experiences, including specific structures and processes during these foundational years play in potentially preventing the educational gaps of Black students. This requires intentional shifting from solely focusing on educational gaps to one that focuses on specific practices and policies that must be implemented to ensure that Black children are afforded the opportunities to meet their potential.

Family engagement is a central tenet of high-quality early education practice. However, the ways in which programs interact with families have varied significantly over time and in relationship to program type. This chapter extends traditional notions of family involvement by emphasizing the potential of early care and education programs to effectively support parents and other primary caregivers in enhancing daily interactions with their children. Specifically, home visits are described as an important mechanism to influence parent-child interaction particularly when intentional, evidence-based curricula are employed. In recent years, there has been an increasing focus on developing and implementing such home visiting models. In this chapter, we describe a specific example of the integration of the Promoting First Relationships (PFR) parent-child interaction curriculum (Kelly, Zuckerman, Sandoval, & Buehlman, 2008) into home visits in both home and center-based Early Head Start practice. Implementation aspects for enhancing existing family engagement strategies with an intentional home visiting curriculum are discussed with recommendations for future programming and research.

Black boys report experiencing more school-based racial discrimination than any other group (Butler-Barnes et al., 2019). Additionally, Black boys are viewed as older and less innocent than their peers beginning as early as 10 years old (Goff et al., 2014). Black boys are also suspended and expelled at much higher rates than other students (Graves & Wang, 2022). As such, there needs to be an investment in asset-based research designed to understand the factors that can help Black boys cope with these perceptions. Consequently, this chapter will discuss strengths based protective factors that will aid in the promotion of positive outcomes in Black boys.

In this chapter, the author critically examines the deeply entrenched practices and theories within counselor education, revealing their roots in historically dominant, Eurocentric, and often racially oppressive assumptions. This study brings to light the pervasive impact of these traditional approaches, illuminating their role in perpetuating racial oppression and disparities in mental health care. The author presents a compelling argument for adopting Critical Race Theory (CRT) as an effective pedagogical and clinical practice framework in the counseling profession, a step toward its much-needed liberation. CRT's tenets are examined as a robust alternative, promoting socially just outcomes in counseling and psychotherapy. The article highlights CRT's capacity to address the well-established relationship between racism, white supremacy, and minority mental health. It proposes a groundbreaking model for praxis, predicated on CRT, which holds potential not only to challenge and disrupt oppressive structures but also to pave the way for the liberation of both the oppressed and the oppressor. This seminal work prompts a re-envisioning of counselor education, asserting a call for a transformative shift toward a liberation-based, social justice pedagogy.