Gender Differences in Coping with Racism: African American Experience and Empowerment

*Grace Jacob, Monnica T. Williams, Naomi S. Faber and Sonya Faber*

## **Abstract**

Black men and women encounter multiple forms of racism in American society and require numerous strategies to manage the stress associated with these experiences. This chapter reviews the current state of the literature regarding Black people and how they cope with racism. Findings demonstrate that Black people tend to cope with racism through social support, religion, avoidance, and problem-focused coping, with some gender differences in coping approaches. We also contrast functional versus dysfunctional coping approaches and underscore the importance of empowerment to promote well-being and social change. Limitations of this review include the predominance of American-based samples used in the literature, which often excludes other Black ethnic and national groups. Further, the experiences of other Black intersectional identities are not well represented in the literature and require more study as their experiences of coping with racism may differ.

**Keywords:** African Americans, racism, discrimination, emotion regulation, coping

### **1. Introduction**

The mental and physical stakes for Black Americans facing racism are high. A Black individual who is regularly exposed to racial discrimination is forced to integrate coping mechanisms into their daily life to combat the many and ongoing adverse effects associated with race-based stress and trauma. Racial trauma (or race-based trauma) refers to the traumatization of racialized people caused by repeated racist experiences [1]. Racism can take many forms and occurs on many levels, including on an institutional, community, and individual/interpersonal basis [2–4]. Racism is an organized system of advantages and disadvantages, founded on the categorization and ranking of racial groups that devalues and disempowers groups considered inferior [5]. Studies have identified a high prevalence of racist incidents experienced by Black Americans; notably, Lee et al. [6] found that over two-thirds encounter racial discrimination from time to time or regularly. Another study found that Black adolescents in the United States must cope with incidences of racial discrimination an average of five times a day [7].

Without specific mechanisms in place to cope with this barrage of racism, Black individuals leave themselves open to significant stress and risk facing racial trauma, which can lead to psychologically taxing responses. Persistent experiences of racism can lead to mental health problems and even chronic physical health problems [8–10].

The primary, although not exclusive, mechanisms for managing racialized stress includes processes termed "emotion regulation" and "coping". Although these are distinct concepts, they share some characteristics. This chapter will first describe the role of emotion regulation and coping as protective responses to racism-based stress experienced by Black Americans. We explore gender differences in how Black Americans react to racist incidents and provide recommendations for functional and empowering responses to race-related stress.

#### **1.1 Emotion regulation**

Emotion regulation is a critical part of the human experience and daily life. Individuals are subjected to many types of stimuli that require them to regulate their emotions. Emotion regulation has generally been defined as the efforts a person makes to influence which emotions they experience in the moment, as well as the manner in which the emotions are experienced and expressed [11]. Emotion regulation may be conscious or unconscious, automatic or controlled, modified in terms of intensity, duration, amplitude and/or quality, or evaluated as positive or negative [11, 12]. There are many reasons people regulate their emotions. When a person evaluates a situation as being relevant to their goals, emotions emerge [13]. For example, when a person experiences a bad day at work, their goal might be to reduce their anger. To achieve this goal, an individual may resort to writing in a journal to express their emotions or even confide in a friend. Emotion regulation can be understood as the activation of a goal that will change an emotional response [14].

Individuals will typically cycle through different steps or phases when regulating their emotions. For example, when presented with a situation, people are required to evaluate it and create a response. The chronological sequence begins with a situation, followed by attention and evaluation of this event, ending with the emotional response [15]. People go through the steps of this cycle quickly and the responses to each sequence will influence the ones that follow. This is a part of the process model of emotion regulation which was initially described by Gross [16], who details five families of emotion regulation processes [17]: (1) situation selection, in which an individual influences the situation they will be faced with; (2) situation modification, in which one or multiple pertinent aspects of the situation are changed; (3) attentional deployment, which influences what parts of the situation are noticed; (4) cognitive change, in which there are changes in the way the situation is represented cognitively; and (5) response modulation, in which emotion-related actions are directly altered. When a person finds themselves in a situation, at each of these five points in the processing of the experience, emotions can be regulated with the use of specific strategies.

In addition, there are various strategies that individuals may employ to regulate their emotions. The most common strategies used are mindfulness, distraction, rumination, acceptance, problem-solving, worry, reappraisal, behavioral avoidance, experiential avoidance, and expressive suppression [12]. Each of these strategies fall under the umbrella of one of the five families of emotion regulation processes mentioned previously. Using these strategies, individuals are typically able to manage their emotions and respond appropriately to their environment.

#### **1.2 Coping**

Emotion regulation is strongly tied to coping. All emotion regulation is a form of coping and involves attempts to regulate one's emotions specifically in response *Gender Differences in Coping with Racism: African American Experience and Empowerment DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.99930*

to a stressful event [18]. Coping is commonly described as an individual's changing cognitive and behavioral efforts to manage specific external and internal demands that are appraised as taxing or that exceed the person's resources [19]. Coping is a process that happens in response to stress that can change over time and can vary depending on the context. Further, over 400 different ways of coping have been identified, but both emotion regulation and coping share the following elements: they are processes of regulation, they include controlled and purposeful efforts, and they are temporal processes [20, 21]. A distinction to be made, however, between emotion regulation and coping is that the latter refers uniquely to stress. Emotional regulation can occur in non-stressful situations, but coping involves dealing with stress. In this chapter, we examine how Black Americans use emotion regulation and other approaches to cope with race-related stress.

#### **1.3 Emotion regulation, coping, and racism**

Although stress reactions can vary from person to person, because of the history of Black-White relations in America, African Americans are subject to a unique set of stressors that may influence the way in which they engage in emotion regulation and the coping process. Clark et al. [22] investigated how racism acts as a stressor for African Americans and proposed a model that highlights the biopsychosocial effects; however, they also noted that existing research in this area is insufficient. Moreover, Brondolo et al. [23] conducted a selective review which consisted of identifying individual-level strategies utilized by individuals to cope with interpersonal racism. They also emphasized the lack of research focusing on strategies people can use to cope with racism.

Faced with a dearth of definitive findings on this topic, the main goal of this chapter is to provide a review of the empirical literature, summarize the various ways Black people regulate their emotions and cope when faced with racism, and show how the deployment of these coping mechanisms can vary between men and women, and make recommendations surrounding functional versus dysfunctional approaches insomuch as they facilitate empowerment.

## **2. Methods**

A wide search for peer-reviewed articles was conducted, based on a search of the following online databases: PubMed, MEDLINE, PsycInfo, Google Scholar, Scholars Portal and Microsoft Academic. A combination of the following search terms was used to obtain relevant articles: "racism", "racial discrimination", "emotion regulation", "coping response", "coping strategies", "Black people" and "Black". Article had to have been written in English or French, peer-reviewed, related to emotion regulation, coping, relevant to racism or discrimination, and the population as Black people (any ethnicity). Additional relevant articles were found through the references section of the articles initially identified. A total of 56 articles from 1996 to 2021 were found after the initial search. Following this, a full-text review was done, and articles that subsequently did not meet the inclusion criteria were removed from the final article count. These tasks were performed by one reviewer. Articles that focused on those under 18 years old were not included. Other reasons that articles were excluded from this review include that the topic was not about coping with racism, or emphasized biological functions such as heart rate. Following the abstract and full-text reviews, 25 articles remained and were utilized to develop the current review. The main themes were identified through analysis of each paper and their findings and afterwards, the coping methods were categorized.
