ABSTRACT

The most positive aspect of writing about the strengths of Black families within a self-help and empowerment context is the theme's tendency to generate instant excitement, fervor, enthusiasm, and scintillation. Martin and Martin (1985) are more typologically cryptic, identifying positive and negative social forces. On the positive side, they propose that a "pattern of Black self-help was spread from the Black extended family to institutions in the wider Black community through fictive kinship and racial and religious consciousness". Black helping tradition refers to the largely independent struggle of Blacks for their survival and advancement from generation to generation. Black extended family consists of a multigenerational, interdependent kinship system held together basically by a sense of obligation to the welfare of members of the kin network. Racial consciousness is the keen awareness by many Black people of their history and condition as a people and their overwhelming desire to uplift their race to a state of dignity and pride.