Risk and the Black American child: representations of children’s mental health issues in three popular African American magazines

Abstract

Risks abound with the increasing diseasing of childhood in North America. However, the incidence and meanings and therefore the risk of children’s mental health issues differ in distinctly racialised groups. In this article, we examine the portrayal of the risk of children’s mental health issues in articles published in the three highest circulating African American magazines (Jet, Ebony and Essence) from 1990 to 2012. Based on a qualitative content analysis, we document how the representations of risks of children’s mental health issues are inextricably bound up with racism, inequity and oppression. It is these social conditions that are represented as constituting the chief risk factors for a range of behavioural and emotional difficulties in the lives of Black children. This representation contrasts sharply with that of children’s mental health issues in mainstream magazines during the same time period. It does not reflect their dominant neoliberal or individualising understanding of risk nor the possibilities of raising ‘successful children’ through actively parenting within discourses of medicalisation. We discuss the theoretical explanations and pragmatic consequences of the contrasting risk representation in the select magazines.

Keywords:

• risk
• risk representation
• African American
• children
• mental health issues
• magazine
• portrayal
• media

Acknowledgement

A special thank you to Professor Alaszewski for his thought-provoking comments and editorial suggestions.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council under Grant 410-2011-2099.