Power through Black community and unity: Examining processes of resilience among Black youth

Black youth and communities continuously demonstrate resilience to adverse life circumstances, including challenges such as gun violence. Gun violence—one form of community violence—is a public health issue that affects thousands of individuals, particularly Black youth; yet, they are able to sustain their well-being and adapt. Most resilience studies in this area adopt an outcome-based approach that focuses primarily on reduced psychological outcomes in the face of risk. This approach decontextualizes Black youths’ experiences and perspective and provides little understanding of community resilience processes. To address these limitations, I adopted a constructivist grounded theory methodological approach to develop a youth-centered model of resilience processes. Over the course of a three-year, youth participatory action research called #PowerUp, I examined how 11 Black youth co-researchers constructed meaning around feeling well, accomplished, and satisfied in communities with high reported shootings. I identified Power through Black Community and Unity as a core resilience process through a systematic analysis of multiple data sources (e.g., field notes, transcribed group discussions, photovoice, youth notes). In essence, Black youth perceived sources of power, care, and strength when Black people from their community became involved and were united to address gun violence. This core process was associated with three sub-processes: Collective Care, Shared Racial Understanding, and Supportive Teen Services. Findings uncovered a developing model of resilience processes among Black youth that highlights collective and culturally-relevant ways Black communities demonstrate resilience. This study illustrates potential pathways that youth service agencies and community practitioners can model to enhance youth programming and strategies to promote resilience in their communities.LimitedAuthor requested closed access (OA after 2yrs) in Vireo ETD syste