Date of Award

12-2022

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts - School Psychology

Department

Human Services

First Advisor

Dr. Nina Ellis-Hervey

Second Advisor

Dr. Daniel McCleary

Third Advisor

Dr. Elaine Turner

Fourth Advisor

Dr. Amanda Rudolph

Abstract

Racial discrimination is still very prevalent in the United States. People of color continue to face racism despite efforts to eradicate it. Sometimes it comes in a more subtle form known as a microaggression which can be an everyday occurrence for many people (Lewis & Neville, 2015). This is a unique stressor in that it targets an aspect of an individual that cannot be changed, and it requires the individual to decide to either confront their offender or handle it in a different manner. The goal of this paper is to perform a literature review to investigate if African Americans use religion and/or spirituality to cope with everyday microaggressions. For a study to be reviewed it had to include African Americans, discuss racial discrimination, and discuss religion and/or spirituality as a coping mechanism. The exclusionary factors were as follows: participants were under the age of 18 and the article did not include a study with participants. It is predicted that African Americans rely on their religion and/or spirituality to help cope with racial microaggressions.

Keywords: religion, spirituality, racial discrimination, coping

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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