Racial Identity Tied to Happiness, Study Finds

Posted by Good German on March 8, 2011

Photo: vargas2040 (CC)

ScienceDaily reports:

African American people who identify more strongly with their racial identity are generally happier, according to a study led by psychology researchers at Michigan State University.The study, funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, appears in the current issue of Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, a research journal published by the American Psychological Association.

“This is the first empirical study we know of that shows a relationship between racial identity and happiness,” said Stevie C.Y. Yap, doctoral candidate in psychology at MSU and lead researcher on the project.

Previous research has found a relationship between racial identity and favorable outcomes such as self-esteem, Yap said, but none has made the link with happiness.

For the study, the researchers surveyed black adults in Michigan. The results suggest the more the participants identified with being black — or the more being black was an important part of who they are — the more happy they were with life as a whole, Yap said.

The study also explored the reasons behind the connection. Yap said it may be fueled by a sense of belongingness — that is, blacks with a strong sense of racial identity may feel more connected to their racial group, which in turn makes them happy.

Read more here.

What might this say about the White Pride movement? Could they become legitimate if they dropped their delusions of being persecuted by ethnic and sexual minorities and realized who their real oppressors are?

Posted in: Diversity, Happiness, Psychology, Race

http://voxmagi-necessarywords.blogspot.com/ VoxMagi

I am exceedingly bias conscious…especially with regard to my own (yes I have them…but knowing I have them means I can work to counter them…you’re right about the ignorance…its everywhere)…which have been picked through in minute detail over the course of my life.

I fall into Example B…and live among Example A in my examples above. I’ve seen first hand the benefits that come with my slight difference of class. I speak the language, and know how to deal with the manager class that decides our fates when we become entangled with the law or administration. The further one goes into Northern Michigan, the population of black citizens dwindles…but the crime and poverty are still high…and the arrest records shift exclusively to a class based direct attack on the impoverished, who receive little or no legal counsel/aid (except the usual assigned reps who instruct you to plead guilty and beg for mercy). Rolls for unemployment are high, underemployment is a way of life, and opportunity is slim. All the whiteness in the world has not lent the lower class a lofty position.

I am familiar with white privilege, but again…I still contend that much of these perceived advantages from whiteness alone are actually sourced elsewhere. There is much written regarding white privilege…and its often subject to the same bias that all other humans suffer from: a non-white persons POV regarding the lives and advantages of whites. Likewise a white, wealthy author from an ivy league background…their experience is largely limited to insulated wealth and safety…which isn’t the POV for about 90% of the rest of us. The writings may include valid observations…but also inaccurate ones because there’s as much experience in being white among blacks as there is being black among whites. Likewise a well off author can postulate about being poor…but the f*cker hasn’t drunk water from public fountains to keep his belly full after day 3 without food…I have.

Am I less likely to be stopped by a cop? Almost certainly in certain areas (LA, NYC, Detroit, Chicago etc)…but go north and rural until race ceases to be an issue…and the racial aspects vanish…but the harassment, intimidation and discrimination doesn’t end…it just becomes invisible because its white on white/police&courts vs the rest of us. Racism can get cameras on it…classism is everywhere and largely lost in the ‘white noise’.

I’m grateful for the parents I had, the education I sort of got in a rural area school that repeatedly crashed from underfunding, for only getting in fights where sticks, bottles and knives were involved instead of guns (it was the 70s and 80s tho…times have changed). Most of my advantage comes from parents who had education, spoke like educated people, and gave me a passion for books that allowed me to educate myself far beyond the parameters of the town and life I was born in. I used a lot of public resources at first, because Locke and Voltaire and more are found easily in any library…but I worked out how to use my advantages to best effect after graduation. Erect posture, polite speech, firm handshake, easy smile…all the tools you need to get a chance from a stranger and show them you can work well with others. They aren’t derived from melanin…but from having the good fortune to absorb these lessons from parents that passed them down. I don’t get the credit for them…that goes to my parents and grandparents…I just get a nod for having the good sense to observe the tools for access to opportunity…and picking them up and using them instead of rejecting them as BS.
Tuna Ghost

Like I told Chaorder Gradient, money or the lack thereof can indeed be a barrier higher and stronger at times than race, but in a class system you’re more often than not competing against those in your own class stratum. Oprah competes against people like Bill Gates, and who do you think wins that battle?

Saying “class is more of an issue than race” is tempting, but its also a method people use to push race issues to the backround. It’s easy for white people to ignore race. That is white privilege. Non-whites aren’t able, do not have the option, of ignoring race.

Because some non-whites are wealthier than whites does not mean white privilege doesn’t exist, that institutionalized racism doesn’t exist, that being white doesn’t give you advantages that non-whites don’t have.
Tuna Ghost

Really good lecture on white privilege and how insidiously invisible it is to those who enjoy its benefits, and how damaging it is to us all regardless of race or class

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UJlNRODZHA&feature=related
http://voxmagi-necessarywords.blogspot.com/ VoxMagi

I’m sure there are places where entrenched, institutionalized racism is worse than usual. Shit…one of those places is Howell MI…where Klansmen are still active and militias are a dime a dozen, a satellite north of Detroit where bigots fled in the aftermath of the 60s and 70s. I may have the ‘privilege’ of not worrying about my race…but it doesn’t mean much when, even with no crimes underway, violations outstanding or anything else to draw fire, I’m still spooked as hell when cops pull me over because I and so many others I know have been railroaded, strip searched, perp walked and generally abused and degraded at random. (Cripes…in one case it was my brothers wife getting the riot act on the way to work…as a nurse. She got chewed out and almost got arrested for asking what she’d done to merit a search. We may never know what the reason was…but clearly whiteness and professional status didn’t protect her from harassment and intimidation. All that spared her was the good sense to suddenly clam up and just wait til it was over without any further complaint.)

I liked the Tim Wise video…but hes selling goods his audience enjoys hearing…and its a lot more valid in the South than anywhere else. I’m from so far north that there is no slave culture historically. None. Shit…slavery was already en route to ending by the time that part of the U.P. was incorporated as a Michigan territory. It was thinly populated by Irish, Welsh, Swede and Polish farmers and miners. Tim Wise hastily poo-pooed anyone white who claims a non-racist, non-privileged heritage…by saying that if they bother to make the argument, they must be sensitive about it, which means they’re lying or wrong. Pure fallacy.

There were no 10000 acre land grants for us (and he did make surveying an entire state sound like a cakewalk for his ancestor…clearly his tubby butt has never surveyed an acre in his life. I’ve surveyed only 120 acres…its exhausting…don’t try it if you can avoid it.) The family farm is intact after over 150 years. Still tiny, never worked by any hand that wasn’t born into the family. Our heritage is passed down poems and an old bible and the instruction to read because no one will do it for you. My dad’s education from running like the wind and getting a scholarship…not from his dad being a pillar of the community or drawing a loan or being bailed out by a wealthy ancestor (we had none). My dad didn’t escape Vietnam through privilege…he was drafted and chose to volunteer and buck for pilot rather than go the route of infantry. He passed the classes because he was smart and hated to fail.

It may be an accident of birth…but when you come from a place where there are literally NO black people to ‘get one over on’ or have advantage over, where you yourself are the low class farmers and ditch diggers for crap wages and there were no slaves to compete for that status with…its hard to swallow a collective notion of guilt, but damned easy to believe that all persons who apply themselves and work hard deserve a chance. You can stand against racism not based upon some vague guilt…but because it is self evident that it is wrong and cheapens all persons involved in it.

The driving force for change in racial dynamics is to return the support of public education and put a stop to the cycle of drug war hyper-sentencing WHILE returning investment to urban areas and making access to opportunity…but we also have to begin a cycle of VESTING young people of color with the tools that allow opportunity to be grabbed hold of and used. You can legally strip away all institutional bias, offer free perks and gifts of every kind…and a person with no ability to make use of those gifts effectively can still fail to thrive. Changing this is probably the single most desperately necessary factor.
http://hormeticminds.blogspot.com/ Chaorder Gradient

Yeah… As I writing it, that sort of clicked in my mind, I had to sit down for a bit and think it over. I need to do a little re-writing in my mind I guess…

There are things to be aware of, and I see things in a different light, but I think there is a younger generation arising (I’m probably at the oldest tip of this surfacing iceberg) who see things the way I have.

I think the problem is a little deeper than an ability to ignore color though. An ability implies a choice. I’m so blind to color in such a way because I don’t have a racial identity to speak of. It has been destroyed essentially, so much that I have reservations that racial identity could ever be a good thing. However, I’m torn; I cannot say whether that is just a bias from years of the lack of a racial identity.
http://hormeticminds.blogspot.com/ Chaorder Gradient

Yeah… As I writing it, that sort of clicked in my mind, I had to sit down for a bit and think it over. I need to do a little re-writing in my mind I guess…

There are things to be aware of, and I see things in a different light, but I think there is a younger generation arising (I’m probably at the oldest tip of this surfacing iceberg) who see things the way I have.

I think the problem is a little deeper than an ability to ignore color though. An ability implies a choice. I’m so blind to color in such a way because I don’t have a racial identity to speak of. It has been destroyed essentially, so much that I have reservations that racial identity could ever be a good thing. However, I’m torn; I cannot say whether that is just a bias from years of the lack of a racial identity.
Jordan

I understand this has already been talked to death, however, I’m going to go out on a limb here and just say that, I think, the point of the article is ‘acceptance.’

For example:

“The results suggest the more the participants identified with being black — or the more being black was an important part of who they are — the more happy they were with life as a whole, Yap said.”

“The study also explored the reasons behind the connection. Yap said it may be fueled by a sense of belongingness — that is, blacks with a strong sense of racial identity may feel more connected to their racial group, which in turn makes them happy.”

I think you could replace the word ‘black’ with any minority.
chubby

another for the last word junkies…..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oYtzBf3z6g
Tuna Ghost

He’s got another good video on class that supports some of your points, over here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3Xe1kX7Wsc
Tuna Ghost

Oi! C’mon guy, it’s not a last-word contest. It’s a discussion that I’ve been enjoying. (hides “last word” trophies under sofa)
Tuna Ghost

Shit, you’re from the UP?? I lived in Detroit for a few years…damn the UP is barely part of America, I can believe things up there function a bit differently than in the D…
Tuna Ghost

yeah, their method of assimilation was more successful than previous empires because it was far less brutal. They tied conquered nations to the Roman Empire through indigenous peoples joining the army (as you mentioned), through economics (trade routes running through conquered territories) and through religion (all homes in the Roman Empire were to have at least one area devoted to a Roman diety). This is why they had such a problem in Israel, because the Jews weren’t down with joining a foreign army, worshipping foreign gods and they definitely had their own ideas about the economics of their own country. Pretty much 0-3 there…
Tuna Ghost

Yeah it’s a bit tricky, isn’t it? The US is pretty much bankrupt as far as culture goes, at least compared to other countries. I was basically raised as much by TV as by my parents, so I shudder to think what constitutes my native “culture”…

This whole topic is a minefield, but you seem like an open-minded person who genuinely gives a shit, which is more than I can say for a lot of people. Thanks for listening, apologies if I was a bit aggressive. This is an important issue for me.
http://voxmagi-necessarywords.blogspot.com/ VoxMagi

Yeah It’s a beautiful place. The old homestead is across the bridge and east toward Sault Ste. Marie. Every tiny town up there is a trip into a time machine. The rural poverty is only reduced by a small amount of aid…its mostly mitigated by barter and ingenuity. It’s hell on the young though. The ones that don’t leave and don’t have opportunities hit the skids…badly. Meth has been a problem in every rural county for years now. I fear for the future.
chubby

I remember one of my professors use to comment on how the people who assimilated the native americans on this continent were more racists than the romans because they would not intermingle with them, indeed, going so far as to say “the only good indian…” or having a movie like the searchers where the main character is searching for his niece just so he can kill her, somehow becoming the heros for the natives raised in the boarding school system, etc etc…or maybe Im just skewed….
Efrixione

What about us mutts? Mixed race people with no racial identity?

Racial Identity Tied to Happiness, Study Finds

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