“Black Health and Wellness” is the national theme for Black History Month 2022. The focus is not only on physical health, but also emotional and mental health. With a nod to that inclusive definition of health, USC adopted the theme of “Celebrating Black Joy: Embracing Health and Vitality” for its own campus-wide events and activities. The USC Black History Month kick-off event with President Carol L. Folt will take place on Feb. 1 at noon.
USC experts share their thoughts about Black health and wellness, and how Black communities are finding and creating joy.
Contact: Jenesse Miller, (213) 810-8554 or jenessem@usc.edu
Our shared vulnerability to COVID-19 is an opportunity
“The COVID pandemic has exposed nationally, and repeatedly, the vulnerability of African American people—and generally speaking, Black and brown people—within the healthcare context. Health disparities are something we’ve known about for a long time. But this is the first time in my lifetime that this has been a repeated subject of conversation, which provides us with a big opportunity to hopefully evolve as a nation and as a people.
“Historically, when negative outcomes have been described as having a higher impact on minoritized people, they receive less attention. But the vulnerability that every American feels with COVID means that people who aren’t Black may share a sensibility with African American people that they might not have shared before. Because it’s a shared experience, one would hope that we’re able to leverage the trauma of having gone through that experience together to come out of it and build more access for everyone together.”
Christopher Manning is USC’s first chief inclusion and diversity officer, a historian and an advocate for diversity in higher education.
Contact: manningc@adm.usc.edu
Creating beauty and “radiating pride” in Blackness
“The Black Lives Matter movement has, in the past few years, rightfully turned the focus of the world to the persistence of violence against Black people and their bodies. But focusing solely on death, violence, and oppression unfairly obscures the diversity of the Black experience.
“Sometimes motivated by the experience of that violence, Black people have created beauty, expressed joy, and radiated pride in their Blackness. My research focuses on the ways that Black people engaged with religion, specifically, as a way of dreaming of a better, more equitable, and more just world. These religious movements went beyond theology, finding ways to express the beauty and joy of being Black through belonging in a Black religious community. Examining these formations, as well as other forms of Black production like art, music, poetry, and literature, respects the complexity of Black people as human beings who are resilient, creative, productive, and yes, joyful.”
Alaina Morgan is an assistant professor of history at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences who researches the historic utility of religion, in particular Islam, in racial liberation and anti-colonial movements.
Contact: alainamo@usc.edu
The blessings of Blackness don’t get enough attention
“We focus a lot of our public discussions of racial justice on the burdens of Blackness, including unconscious bias, police brutality, and systemic racism. Consequently, what does not get enough attention and celebration is the upside of being a proud part of the African diaspora and indomitable American descendants of slaves. The Black community has been like the proverbial rose that grew from a crack in the concrete—suffering savage racial oppression in America since 1619, it learned to walk without having feet.
“By keeping its dreams alive, the Black community has amplified the energy of our American shopfronts and tenements, our cinder yards and body shops, our lecture halls and C-suites. By tapping deep reservoirs of creativity, it has forged original art, music, literature, design, and dance that have taken the world by storm. The blessings of Blackness are many and varied. In the words of Tupac Shakur, ‘long live the rose that grew from concrete.’”
Jody Armour is the Roy P. Crocker Professor of Law at the USC Gould School of Law and studies the intersection of race and legal decision making.
Contact: jarmour@law.usc.edu
The Black church continues to nourish the community
“To tell the story of social change in L.A. and not bring in the Black church would not be a truthful account. My faith informs my activism. I think that’s the case for a lot of people in the Black church.
“How we do activism might differ. That activism might take place through the arts, through protest, through the pen.
“During the pandemic, we had to go from pew to virtual and still serve the community. The church is not defined by its walls and pews and pulpit. It’s defined by what we do for the people — feeding people in need, testing for COVID, providing information to communities of color. It also maintained that place where people can come and get their spirit fed. That’s so important in a pandemic.”
The Rev. Najuma Smith-Pollard is the assistant director of community and public engagement at the USC Center for Religion and Civic Culture and leads programming for the Cecil Murray Center for Community Engagement.
Contact: damalism@usc.edu
Songs of the past have meaning for today
“Even though we are no longer fighting for seats on the bus, we are still battling discrimination and social injustice; still fighting for voting rights; still hated by some for the pigment in our skins and still singing ‘We Shall Overcome’ instead of ‘We Have Overcome.’ All of this, on top of the COVID pandemic, has worn us out. We are mentally fatigued and emotionally drained.
“Let us get to a place where we can all sing ‘My country ’tis of Thee, sweet land of liberty’ and mean it. Let’s sing ‘America the Beautiful’ knowing that God will shed his light on thee. Most importantly, let’s re-imagine the lyrics of the national anthem so that we can fully evolve into the land of the free and the home of the brave.”
Miki Turner is an associate professor of professional practice at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and director of the Minority-Serving Institutions Graduate Recruitment Conference. A spoken word presentation of her poem, “That Something Within,” inspired by the gospel hymn “Something Within Me,” is available here.
Contact: mpturner@usc.edu
Tapping into Black Joy to affirm our “sacred humanity”
“In spite of our existence in an oppressive culture that seemingly seeks to dehumanize us, we have fought with both secular and religious tools to hold on to our true worth and value as human beings.
“Some of the tools include receiving community and family support, engaging in activism, participating in mental health treatment and support, connecting with faith communities, and engaging in religious practices.
“As theologian Rev. Canon Kelly Brown Douglas points out, our heritage allows us ‘not simply to survive, but perhaps most importantly to affirm [our] sacred humanity.’ In this affirmation of our humanity and value, we are able to tap into Black joy; a priceless joy that comes with the recognition that we have held on to our humanity in the face of impossible odds.”
Broderick Leaks is director of counseling and mental health services at USC Student Health and a clinical associate professor of psychiatry and the behavioral sciences and pediatrics at the Keck School of Medicine of USC.
Contact: Broderick.Leaks@med.usc.edu
A shared responsibility for creating a safe space to thrive
“As we take this time to recognize and celebrate accomplishments of the past during this month devoted to Black History, and specifically Black Health and Wellness, it is critical to focus on self-care, family, and life balance.
“We continue to face unprecedented challenges requiring a focused response on a safe environment to thrive. Racism, extremism, anti-Semitism, and related issues can only be addressed collectively, if we take care of ourselves individually. Let’s acknowledge the strengths of our differences and the power in our ability to embrace a shared responsibility toward creating that safe space.”
Erroll Southers is Associate Senior Vice President, Safety & Risk Assurance at USC and the former director of the Safe Communities Institute at the USC Price School of Public Policy.
Contact: southers@usc.edu
Black Joy is at the center of Black identity
“At the core or center of Black culture, Black identity, Black art, Black ideology, and Black community is joy. Black joy is the heartbeat and pulse of our survival, our resiliency, our perseverance, our health and wellbeing. Black joy is found and felt in our songs, our dances, our stories, our histories, our oral traditions, our customs, and our beliefs, including the belief in seeing, knowing, and imagining ourselves outside of the space of dehumanization and trauma imposed upon us.
“Joy has been our weapon and superpower in the face of injustice and structural racism.”
Anita Dashiell-Sparks, a professor of theater practice and Associate Dean of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion at the USC School of Dramatic Arts.
Contact: adashiel@usc.edu
Photo via Unsplash
