Cultural Ethic Of Care: The African American Community

The African American community has a cultural ethic of care that centers around their children and older adults, that at times is stressful as they struggle to nurture their youth and revere their older loved ones (Wimberly, 1997) while attempting to care for your own. Studies have shown that African Americans prefer to rely on family and fictive kin (nonrelatives), and avoid using formal eldercare service providers due to distrust of their services (Apesoa-Varano et al., 2015), and their perceptions of racism (Lampley-Dallas, Mold, & Flori, 2005). Reinhard, Levine, and Samis (2012) found that African American, Asian American and Hispanic communities experience a higher number of older loved ones with enduring illnesses, shorter hospital stays, and limited health care services, which lead to more complications and prevalence of care provided by informal elder caregivers. In addition, research shows there is a history of health and socioeconomic disparities in African American, Hispanic and Native American communities, (Braun & LaCounte, 2014; Wallace, 2015) with only Asian Americans being the exception within the non-white racial
Although there are similarities amongst informal elder caregivers, in contrast, there are also disparities in assessments of caregiving prevalent among diverse groups, at 20.3% for African Americans, 19.7% for Asian Americans, 21% for Hispanics, and 16.9% for whites, according to NAC and AARP