One of life’s biggest questions is how to measure satisfaction, contentment, and contentment, the foundations that inspire joy. The first thing to note is that joy is replaceable With happiness and positive happiness. Second, while joy is difficult to define and quantify in general, it becomes more of a hindrance when characterized from a Black perspective. Despite the presence of systemic racism, police brutality, economic inequality, and other factors; Black people are reported to be happier compared to white people. So how can we better understand Black joy?
If you think about it from the perspective of happiness, Harvard University researchers After decades of research, the authors found that the key to joy may lie in embracing community and social relationships. This is especially important for Black people. We have experienced countless complex challenges based solely on our race, with shared disappointments and shared victories. From these, we have developed a unique community culture that embraces Black joy. Importantly, these are safe spaces. black church, Black fraternities and sororities, family cookouts are just a few examples, but organized activities like black brunches, black parties, and black hikes are also ways we experience and cultivate joy. Black joy is oneness.
katherine knight steele, director of the Black Communication Technology Institute at the University of Maryland, agrees. “Black joy is less about being happy and more about the process of creation and recreation. Joy has historically come through our relationships with each other and our ability to create community.”
This is reflected in how Black Joy relates to Black families through community. “The Black family is like the joy of Black people, a product of their creation and recreation. The beauty of the Black family is that even in the midst of concerted efforts to tear us apart, Black people has shown us how to stay connected and make new connections,” Steele says. “Just as we strive to stay connected to our existing families and build our chosen families, Black joy is about choosing hope, choosing community, and choosing community through our communication with each other. It’s a deliberate process of choosing enthusiastic demos.”
This is backed up by a 2023 study that found that black mothers are equally happy as childless black women, but white mothers are significantly less happy than childless white women. It is being Additionally, Black fathers report higher levels of happiness than non-parent male fathers. This shows the importance of family to black people, despite the negative stereotypes surrounding black mothers and fathers.
The perspective that Black community is synonymous with Black joy is further tied to research suggesting that loneliness poses serious health risks.a A recent report by the U.S. Surgeon General A lack of social connection was found to increase the risk of heart disease by 29% and the risk of stroke by 32%. Also, the risk of early death increases by almost 30%. As one study highlights, collectivism and solidarity are highly valued as “Afro-centric values.” This encouraged the black community to come together, given that black people have historically been excluded from society.
Illustration by Eliana Rogers for Kindred by Parents
a 2011 survey They found that “the more participants identified as Black, or the more Blackness was an important part of who they were, the more satisfied they were with their lives overall.” This he repeated in 2022. pew research We found that for Black Americans, race is integral to their identity and influences how they connect with each other. This may indicate that the ability to identify with blackness and black culture itself can bring joy and help quantify it. Steele emphasizes that this is essential because, through black culture, “our language, our music, our humor is constantly changing, renewing, renewing, and therefore cannot be taken away.”
researchers from University of Warwick We’ve outlined several ways to measure happiness, including health and money. While true from a general perspective, those indicators may not correlate from a Black person’s perspective. for example, According to research White Americans live longer than black Americans, and black Americans are at higher risk for serious health conditions than other racial groups. Black Americans also Systemically inadequate treatment of pain It leads to poor care. Despite evidence of disparities in health outcomes based on race, one study found that the link between health status and well-being is weaker among Black Americans. This means that Black people who are unhealthy are still more likely to self-report being happy.
too well documented This means that black people are having a harder time economically. This is due to deep-rooted inequality issues such as intergenerational poverty, wage and wealth disparities, and declining homeownership rates. 2018 survey Poor black people were found to be happier and more optimistic than poor people of other races.
While health and money may not help quantify Black joy, this study found that there are higher levels of resilience and optimism among Black people, which may help quantify Black joy. This indicates that it has the potential to become an important indicator for “Resilience is built into the history of the Black diaspora. It’s just a fact,” Steele comments. “You can see how Black discourse emerges from oral culture, how pidgins and creoles develop on this continent, and how signification moves from off to online spaces. ”
“Thinking about how Black people, whose collective conversations were once preserved on certain social media platforms, are transitioning and moving to situations where those sites have turned into hostile spaces and spaces of joy are no longer available. “Who we are and how we create joy requires resilience,” she continues.
Additionally, research has found that mental health disorders such as depression and anxiety are more prevalent among Black Americans than white Americans, which may be associated with resilience. Shown. A 2022 study reiterated this, saying, “Despite being exposed to stressors known to negatively impact mental health, Black Americans have lower rates of depression and anxiety than white Americans. suggests that it is low. As a caveat, this could also be due to black people having it. Protective factors from childhood it protects them to some extent negative effects of stress.
Progress may be another way to quantify Black joy. Common goals like equality and addressing systemic racism are critical. For example, despite being consistently lower than whites and varying across countries; The average life expectancy of black people has increased It shows progress. Voting rights, educational attainment, and policy changes are just a few examples of ways Black people have collectively advanced over the decades. We can no longer be silent, and many of the cruel ways in which racism itself has been presented are no longer openly acceptable. Although gains and victories have declined and progress has plateaued, this is still visible long-term growth that can help quantify Black joy.
In its purest form, Black Joy is also about moments of feeling good and free.It’s about surviving and living unwaveringly. Optimism (associated with longevity). It’s about smiles and laughter. Although it is difficult to quantify, laughter itself has been shown to be effective. Coping Mechanisms Among Black People.
While there are many metrics that help quantify joy in general, joy for Black people appears to derive primarily from community and culture. It is not based on individualistic ideals, but on collective lived experience, and that is what makes it special.
It is a rejection of the never-ending onslaught of images and stories about Black pain and trauma that seem more prevalent and visible than joyful depictions. Black joy is radical, a form of resistance, and an unapologetically reclaimed freedom to be ourselves, with pride and passion. That freedom also means shedding the feelings of burden that come with being black and finding safety and comfort in collective well-being.
“There’s a real connection between joy and hope in the black community,” Steele says. “Hope and joy are not naive; they are the product of a deep awareness of what it takes to thrive, not just survive. I embrace and explore this resilience and optimism. But we should not ignore the labor and exhaustion of those ideals and goals. In doing so, we create space for Black joy that can also develop from rejection and respite.”
