Resilience Reconsidered: The Brilliance of Black Children and Families as Axiomatic

Session Type: Conversation Roundtable

Abstract

The scholarly literature on resilience has evolved from assertions of rare and special qualities making children resilient to the belief that resilience is accessible and core within the human condition: ordinary magic (Masten, 2001). This conceptual shift is still not coherently applied to the study of Black children where positive outcomes are frequently framed as rare, exceptional, and extraordinary. Thus, Black children and their families are denied human capacity for the ordinariness of magic. This roundtable responds to SRCD’s call to consider anti-bias approaches to research. Where brilliance is axiomatic (Martin, 2011; Gholson, Bullock, & Alexander, 2015), Black children are adaptive, success is inevitable, and the need for resilience promotion is shifted from the individual to the system that does not promote this potential. This roundtable will provide tools for anti-bias approaches to the study of positive developmental outcomes of Black children. The panelists and moderator represent diverse methodological approaches in the developmental sciences. Dr. Riana Anderson will describe the development of intervention research and considerations of bias at multiple process levels. Dr. Fantasy Lozada will discuss positive approaches to parenting and child development within mixed methods approaches. Dr. Lauren Mims will describe school-based qualitative research that centers students’ voices with respect to their identities and school-based experiences. The moderator, Dr. Erika Bocknek, conducts community-based participatory research with families using traditional quantitative methods in the lab and community. Our different approaches adopt the shared axiom of brilliance, underscoring thriving as ordinary, and not extraordinary, magic within Black children.

Sub Unit

• Solicited Content: Anti-Bias Research or Interventions

Moderator

• Erika London Bocknek, Wayne State University

Panelists

• Riana Elyse Anderson, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

• Fantasy T. Lozada, Virginia Commonwealth University

• Lauren Mims, New York University