Resiliency and Fragility Factors Associated with the Contextual Experiences of Low-Resource Urban African-American Male Youth and Families

There has been a quite interesting and unvarying finding from our program of research in low resource communities that suggests a particular human capital investment strategy of minority families. The patterned finding for African American families stands in opposition to many social science presumptions concerning the group and its cultural values. In general, independent of economic resources and years of completed education, families are consistent in their valuing of competence and positive youth outcomes. Parents consistently report a desire to rear healthy children and report a definite valuing of schooling as the critical conduit for life course success (e.g., Spencer, 1983, 1990).