A silent minority: Battered American Indian women

Sixteen American Indian women requesting counseling for domestic violence at an urban Indian health center were interviewed using standardized measures. The majority of the women were not married, had low family incomes, and both the women and their partners abused substances. All of the women experienced increased depression and stress as a result of the battering. A mental health needs assessment survey of 198 American Indian women is presented for comparison. Women who reported a history of domestic violence on the survey were more likely to be separated or divorced and reported more problems with alcohol than the women with no history of domestic violence. The results of the domestic violence program interviews are compared to the mental health needs assessment survey and studies of battered women in shelters.     

美国国内政治生态与台湾问题上的“双轨政策”——以里根时代为例

中美建交以来,美国对台湾问题奉行"双轨政策".文章以该政策的始作俑者--里根时代的台湾问题为例展开论述.首先,简述里根时代"双轨政策"的表现.接着,从美国国内政治的角度透视了里根奉行该政策的缘由,认为这是由总统个人的外交哲学以及美国国内政治生态中的诸因素共同决定的.最后,通过回顾建交以来历届美国总统"双轨政策"的演变得出结论,认为在透视当前和预测未来的美国对台湾问题政策时,要关注美国政治生态中诸项因素的作用.     

Y chromosome STR haplotypes and allele frequencies in Illinois Caucasian, African American, and Hispanic males

POPULATION: Population: Illinois Caucasian ( n =117), Illinois African American ( n =218), and Illinois Hispanic ( n =68).     

当前美国保守主义外交的国内根源及其表现

当前美国外交政策表现出明显的保守性,这有它深刻的国内根源,主要是官僚政治因素、地理与人口因素和宗教派别因素。在反恐问题、伊拉克问题、北朝鲜核问题、伊朗核问题和中美贸易等一系列美国外交所面临的现实问题上,保守主义的影响都已得到相当的体现。     

Coparent Support and Conflict in African American Single Mother-Headed Families: Associations With Maternal and Child Psychosocial Functioning

This longitudinal investigation examined main and interactive effects of coparent support and conflict on mother and child adjustment in 248 low-income, African American, single mother-headed families. The findings indicated that coparent conflict was a more robust predictor of mother and child maladjustment both cross-sectionally and longitudinally than was coparent support. Moreover, findings revealed that coparent conflict and support interacted to predict one parenting behavior, monitoring, both cross-sectionally and longitudinally. Coparent relationships characterized by high levels of support and low levels of conflict were associated with the highest levels of parental monitoring behavior, whereas coparent relationships characterized by low levels of support and high levels of conflict were associated with the lowest levels of monitoring. The findings highlight the importance of examining both positive and negative aspects of coparent relationships in this at-risk, but understudied, group.     

Coparenting Conflict and Parenting Behavior in Economically Disadvantaged Single Parent African American Families: The Role of Maternal Psychological Distress

Substantial research has focused on the negative associations between coparenting conflict, parental psychological functioning, and parenting behavior in European American, middle-income, families. However, less attention has been given to ethnic minority families and to families that are nontraditionally structured. In an effort to address this gap, the current longitudinal study examines the relation between conflict with the mother-identified primary co-caregiver and parenting practices in single parent, economically disadvantaged African American families. Participants included 234 mother–child dyads. It was hypothesized that conflict would relate to less utilization of positive parenting practices and that this association would be mediated, at least in part, by maternal psychological distress. Hypotheses were examined using structural equation modeling (Lisrel 8.3): Conflict with a co-caregiver was significantly related to parenting both directly and indirectly through maternal psychological distress. Implications of the findings are discussed.

Margaret Fuller's Rome and the problem of provincial American democracy

ABSTRACT

Margaret Fuller's visit to Italy as a correspondent for the New York Tribune at the time of the 1848 revolutions gave her a unique perspective on them, not only as a feminist intellectual but also as a commentator on the American relationship with revolutionary Europe. In her Tribune writings she addressed issues at once more partisan and more global than those she had covered inside the United States, including the political condition of Italy as a subject state under Austrian imperial control, and as an object of ridicule by many American observers, and the condition of American slavery. Italian peoples and slaves, in her mind, were, like women, oppressed by a transatlantic patriarchy whose prejudices allowed only for white males to enjoy political independence. Fuller called for American support for the Roman republic, but her sympathies did not reflect the thrust of American opinion. Many Americans did not believe Italians were capable of maintaining republican self-government, which was different, they alleged, from their own version, part of the inheritance of the American Revolution. That heritage conferred a unique American revolutionary ‘exceptionalism’. For these Americans, the 1848 revolutions provided evidence that Europe was impulsive, reactionary and flawed; they saw in them confirmation of the superiority of American race relations and democratic society. After her death in 1850, the American Civil War would confirm Fuller's implicit sense that the United States and Europe were more alike than many Americans of her generation believed or realized. Her critique of American attitudes to the prospect for democracy in Italy provides perspective on the ambiguity of American global leadership today.     

Faithful Servants and Dangerous Beasts: Race,Nationalism and Historical Mythmaking

Quispel explores the relationship between racism, nationalism and historical mythmaking. When comparing the role played by antisemitism and racism in nationalist ideologies in Europe, South Africa and the American South some common features emerge: in all three cases nationalism has employed historical myths to prove not only the superiority of the 'own group', but also the inferiority of 'others'. However, in both South Africa and the American South, there was an important change. At first these myths were used to interpret a recent past in which people of European descent, the English and the Yankees respectively, had been the enemy. During the process of white reconciliation, which gathered momentum in the South during the last decade of the nineteenth century, and more slowly in South Africa during the 1930s, the character of the mythologies started to shift. In South Africa anti-British myths, like Slagtersnek, gave way to myths concerning the battle at the Bloedrivier in which anti-African elements were much more prominent. In the American South pre-Civil War society came to be seen as perhaps as close to paradise as human society could achieve. Even Blacks were depicted as having been happy: being slaves under the close supervision of their white masters helped them to control their dark passions and to perform the task that God had created them for in the first place, hard physical labour to boost the white economy. After emancipation things changed dramatically. Without white supervision Blacks were seen as regressing to a natural primitive state. Historical myths then became an important justification for white supremacy.     

Kenneth B. Clark and the problem of power

ABSTRACT

During the early 1960s African American psychologist Kenneth B. Clark, known primarily for his involvement in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education US Supreme Court desegregation decision, began organizing an ambitious anti-poverty programme called Harlem Youth Opportunities Unlimited, Inc. (HARYOU). Dissatisfied by the lack of progress in school desegregation in New York City and discouraged by the inability of traditional social welfare organizations to address the problems of race and poverty, Clark argued that a new approach had to be developed to mobilize the black poor to gain the political and economic power that would solve their problems. At the same time, he theorized that a new form of racial segregation was beginning to develop in urban areas that foreshadowed increasing social isolation, economic dependence and declining municipal services for many African Americans. He called this new development ‘internal colonialism’ and hoped that HARYOU would be a demonstration project in the Kennedy–Johnson administration's War on Poverty that would address these problems from multiple perspectives. Nonetheless, the plan aroused the political opposition of Harlem Congressman Adam Clayton Powell. The dispute with Powell drove Clark from HARYOU and caused him to re-evaluate his thinking regarding African American leadership. He increasingly viewed the ‘ghetto’ as both a prison and a cocoon that satisfied white and black social, economic, political and psychological needs. By the end of his HARYOU experience, Clark coined the term ‘the new American dilemma’ to describe and theorize about an increasingly isolated and powerless black population in many urban centres. The term also signified his belief that the problem of power was intricately tied up in, while also separate from, the problem of race.