Religion and Spirituality as a Coping Mechanism for Racial Microaggressions: A Literature Review

<p>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.</p> <p><em>Keywords: religion, spirituality, racial discrimination, coping </em></p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts - School Psychology

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Human Services

Year dc:date.available

2022

Author dc:creator

• Anderson, Ashia

Contributors dc:contributor

• Dr. Nina Ellis-Hervey
• Dr. Daniel McCleary
• Dr. Elaine Turner

• religion
• spirituality
• racial discrimination
• coping
• Social and Behavioral Sciences

Repository record dc:identifier

https://scholarworks.sfasu.edu/etds/481

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholarworks.sfasu.edu:etds-1506