African American Acculturation : Deconstructing Race and Reviving Culture

Should African Americans be defined as a race or as an ethnic (cultural) group? If the latter, what role does culture play in their lives and how can it be measured?

This groundbreaking book argues that African Americans should be classed as a cultural group, and presents a unique scale for measuring the group′s acculturation - the degree of assimilation into the dominant culture. The volume features empirical studies exploring the role of culture and acculturation in African-American behaviour, health and psychology.

Should African American be construed as a race or as an ethnic group? If African Americans are defined as an ethnic group, what role does culture play in their lives and how can we measure their culture? This groundbreaking volume argues that we reject the concept of race and define African Americans as a cultural group. It presents the first scale ever devised for measuring acculturation among African Americans, along with powerful studies that empirically explore the role of culture and acculturation in African American behavior, health, and psychology. Among the authors′ findings are how acculturation predicts symptoms--such as depression and anxiety--and physical problems such as hypertension. Public and mental health researchers and professionals will find this book an intriguing and useful presentation of an emerging approach to psychological and health theory and practice. "I found this volume to be compelling and informative. I believe that this book will stimulate a great advance in the way we conceptualize African American psychology in particular and psychology in general. The authors do an outstanding job of integrating perspectives from multiple disciplines into a psychological perspective and then in applying that perspective to their empirical work. . . . This is a wonderful book and is of great service to the field." --Hardin L. K. Coleman, Ph.D., Department of Counseling Psychology, University of Wisconsin