MY GREAT-GRANDMOTHER, Elizabeth “Lizzie” Johnson, was born in 1890 in Camden, S.C., with a different last name from all the other people in her household. Three generations later, we have no idea where the name Johnson came from.
Lizzie grew up working plantation land owned by her grandmother, Lea Ballard. Lea received the land in the wake of the Civil War: We don’t know how or why, though one theory speculates that Lea, who was listed as a 42-year-old mulatto widow on the 1880 U.S. Census, may have been the daughter of her slave owner. He may have given the land to her after the Civil War. We don’t know. We only know that Lea owned it, that she had 17 children who worked that land, according to family lore, and that the city of Camden eventually stole the land from her by the power of eminent domain. This we know from records I hold in my possession.
Lizzie married a railroad man named Charles Jenkins. Lizzie and Charles had three children; Charles later died in a railroad accident. Lizzie had a choice: endure the brutality of the Jim Crow South alone with three kids, or move with the stream of black bodies migrating north. Lizzie migrated to Washington, D.C., and, eventually, to Philadelphia and took her lightest-skinned child with her.
Both mother and child were light enough to pass for white. My caramel-toned, straight-haired grandmother, Willa, and her brother, Charlie, were too dark. So they were left behind in the care of their elderly great-grandmother. Willa and Charlie joined others on the plantation and earned their keep working the fields.
Lizzie eventually sent for Willa and Charlie, calling them north to Philadelphia after her white cover had been blown. She fell in love and married a dark-skinned man and settled in the southern part of Philadelphia, in a neighborhood directly adjacent to another set of recent Philadelphia immigrants: Italians.
This is my family, one branch of the tree. My family’s patterns, textures, tragedies, and triumphs have been shaped on a fundamental level by the soil from which it sprang—slavery—and by the water and drought it endured in the searing sun of Jim Crow oppression. Our intergenerational strengths, insanities, and brokenness, our view of land and money, and our very view of family itself has been fed and shaped by the soils of our history.
A history of separation
My family is not unique. The shared history of black folk in the United States bequeaths common language, mores, strengths, and difficulties forged in the furnace of oppression.
What is the psychological impact of generations of family separation, first through forced tearing apart of families in the industrial complex of human bondage, then through migratory partings catalyzed by Jim Crow, and finally the severances caused by the unrelenting drumbeat of mass incarceration and early death on U.S. soil?
What is the psychological, social, and economic impact on families of 15 generations of hard labor with no pay, release from captivity, re-enslavement through Jim Crow, and peonage for another five generations, then release from Jim Crow, then re-enslavement again through mass incarceration for another two generations?
And what is the impact on families when this history is the low-level hum behind all of the events of human relating: making friends in grade school; relating to healthy, alcoholic, or single parents; having loyal or abusive siblings, nurturing aunties, distant uncles, or doting grandparents; falling in love, getting married, and having babies; employment or job loss and even illness and death—what is the impact when the whole shebang we call life is carried out in the context of this history?
This is the burden of black families in the United States.
A 2012 Census Bureau study pointed out that “Black men and women were married in greater proportions than white men and women until 1960 for men and 1970 for women.” The study identified cultural components—such as the prevalence of female-led homes, current-day low marriage rates, and the long history of the presence of extended family in the home—as key factors in black family formation. “Structural components,” the study noted, “are more influential than cultural components in determining race differences among never married individuals.”
The study highlights the deep impact of structural factors such as mass incarceration and drug policy. “Social inequality in imprisonment,” the study pointed out, “is becoming so extensive that incarceration is becoming a normative life course stage among low-educated, black men.” The study adds: “The absence of young black men in the household population as a consequence of such policies might be observable in differential marriage patterns by race over the last century.”
‘A family is like a bicycle ...’
Dr. Claudia Owens Shields, chair of clinical psychology at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology, specializes in the impact of psychosocial and environmental stressors on individuals. In a recent interview Shields explained to me the impact of the structural and systemic stressors on black individuals and families.
“Psychosocial stressors are caused by relationships and larger social structures,” Shields explained. “A perfect example would be every time you turn on the news and see an African-American male being shot by police—that’s a psychosocial stressor, because it’s interpersonal and it happens in society.”
Shields explained further: “General family systems theory says that anytime one individual in the family is affected by something, it sends a ripple through the whole family. A family is like a bicycle. If you take the chain off that bike, you can pedal all you want, but that bike isn’t going anywhere ... because that bicycle functions as a system. A family functions in the same way. Most people in families have a particular role ... if you lose a family member, you have no one to fill that role.”
Systemic racism has a huge impact on families. Shields said that many years ago, a young man who had just lost his mother came to see her for psychotherapy, requesting help with the grieving process. “But one of the things he also wanted to talk about,” Shields said, “was the way police and other students were treating him on that college campus. For instance, he could be sitting in the lounge in his dorm, watching television. And people would call the police saying, ‘There’s this black guy in our dorm.’” With little other information, the police would come and question the young man, Shields said.
“What’s interesting to me,” Shields continued, “is that he came to talk to me about the loss of his mother, a family issue. But one of the things that came up was how unsafe and out of place he felt on campus.” There are layers to that black student’s grief experience that would not be present for one who just had to deal with the grief. Structural and systemic issues added complicating factors to the young man’s grieving process.
Shields offered another example, about an actual person: “Someone can say to me ‘I’ve had 25 job interviews and no one will hire me. What’s wrong with me? Maybe I need to redo my resume. Maybe I need a different suit. I’ve got a master’s degree. I’ve got all this experience and no one will hire me.’ At some point, you ask, ‘What’s wrong with me that I can’t get hired?’”
Shields said, “Of course, you have to ask that. And for people with race, gender, sexual orientation privilege, the story ends with: ‘I just have to step up my game.’ In the context of systemic racism, which privileges some and denies access to others, that isn’t the whole picture. There is this other piece that may also be working against him. The person might give up and become discouraged. They might start to experience feelings of low self-efficacy. Now the person is at higher risk for anxiety, depression, and substance abuse. And they enter a downward spiral.”
In 2003 the National Institutes of Health published a study titled Racial/Ethnic Differences in Rates of Depression among Preretirement Adults. The study concluded: “Major depression and factors associated with depression are more prevalent in minority populations than whites.” The NIH research indicated that “the presence of fewer economic resources—less education, income, or wealth; lack of private health insurance coverage or employment—was associated with a greater frequency of depression.”
A taller mountain to climb
Now consider the impact of mass incarceration on black families.
There are 1.5 million black men and boys missing from black communities across the United States, according to an April 2015 nytimes.com analysis titled “1.5 Million Missing Black Men.” They are “missing” due to the racialized impacts of mass incarceration and early deaths in black communities, according to the article.
“The disappearance of these men has far-reaching implications,” the article said. “Their absence disrupts family formation, leading both to lower marriage rates and higher rates of childbirth outside marriage.”
“The imbalance,” the article continued, “has also forced women to rely on themselves—often alone—to support a household. In those states hit hardest by the high incarceration rates, African-American women have become more likely to work and more likely to pursue their education further than they are elsewhere.”
“As a psychologist,” Shields explained, “my job is to help people to identify the social structures that are working against you. If we can say to a person: ‘The mountain you have to climb is a taller mountain. You’re a good climber. Don’t stop. You can do it. Let’s get you an extra pair of hiking boots (chuckles). Your experience may be different than other people around you.’ Then the person stays encouraged and is more likely to stay engaged.”
Beyond the stereotypes
Today’s stereotypes of the black family highlight single mothers, unemployed or absent fathers, at-risk youth, and domineering matriarchs who spew spiritual wisdom and threaten “whuppings” just as fast. But these are hard-drawn, inhuman caricatures, not real humanity.
The gale-force winds of history have hewn the shapes of the black family, a fact that too often is ignored. Rather, many decry the results of that history—from marriage rates to poverty statistics—and assume that black people must simply be less capable of healthy family life.
Such a conclusion is only possible when black families are lifted out of their lived experience and placed instead in a petri dish for examination. Removed from the historical context—ignoring centuries of legal, social, and economic exclusion—we seem to be a hot mess. But place us back in the context of history, with eyes wide open to the seemingly insurmountable barriers we have had to overcome, and—remarkably—we become the clearest case for the existence of the divine on earth: The black family as an institution is a miracle.
“I had a student compare how well white families have done in comparison to black families,” Shields said to me.
“Okay. Say I have two trees in my back yard. They were planted at the exact same time. They received the same sun. The seedlings grew up to be the same size, same height.
“And I have one person who’s responsible for cutting one down and another person who’s responsible for cutting the other one down. One person gets an ax, the other gets a butter knife. The person with the ax cuts the tree down in about a day. The person with the butter knife, about three years later they got the tree down. Who is the better chopper?”
“One of the things you ask,” Shields explained, “is ‘How does the family cope? What are the strengths?’ Spirituality is huge for us. The fact that the black family has survived for 400 years says a lot about us. I think it speaks to our resilience.
“The question shouldn’t be ‘How come there are still so many black men in jail?’ The question should be: ‘How come there are still so many black men?’ How did they manage to stay alive at all?”
I look back on my own family—the impacts of generations of slavery and rape, migration and family separation, colorism, economic struggle, red-lining in housing and employment, multiple wars, drug and alcohol addiction—and I marvel: If families are like bicycles, then how is our family still here? And how are other black families still here? We all went through it. And some were forced to cope with even more systemic and structural intrusion than ours. How has the black family survived at all?
I am reminded of the Bible handed down to me by my Grandmother Willa. Written in perfect cursive are the names of my great-grandparents and the date of their marriage, etched into a special page placed at the heart of the sacred book.
That’s how we did it.
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