A Synthesis of Evidence of The Unique Psychosocial Challenges Faced By Quebec’s English Speaking Black Communities During the COVID-19 Pandemic
The McGill Human Motivation Lab and the Black Community Resource Center (BCRC) have collaborated on 8 research studies over the last two years to examine the resilience of Quebec English-speaking Black communities in the face of the greatest public health crisis in a century. Our results uncovered numerous important themes, such as how involvement in the BLM movement allowed Black young adults to recover from the social isolation imposed by the pandemic, how it was particularly Black women who assumed leadership roles despite having been especially burdened by the pandemic, and how social support from both family and friends were importantly related to young adults’ psychological adjustment. More recently, with funding provided by the Health Care Access for Linguistic Minorities Network, we conducted studies that compared members of Quebec’s English and French-speaking Black communities and found significant group differences in important real-life outcomes such as experiences of discrimination, barriers to physical and mental health care, and hesitancy regarding vaccination for the COVID-19 virus.
Across all studies, English-speaking Black communities struggled more than French-speaking Black communities. We propose to synthesize these findings into a single cohesive knowledge translation effort that can be used to prepare workshops, presentations, technical reports, publications, web-based tools, school curricula, and webinars. Our partnership with the BCRC will support the development of these educational and community-building events. Highlighting the unique challenges of English-speaking Black communities is critically important as this community faces a Quebec government that intends to use the not-withstanding clause to pass laws that will restrict English language rights in many spheres of Quebec life. Such language restrictions are likely to have devastating impacts on the health and vitality of English-speaking Black communities. These laws will also weaken the natural alliance that exists between the English and French-speaking Black communities. The purpose of this knowledge translation will be to increase community awareness of unique barriers of accessing health care and social services faced by Quebec’s English-speaking Black communities. It will contribute to improving access to resources and evidence-based information on the status and needs of the English-speaking Black communities.
Outcomes:
Lafreniere, B., Audet, É. C., Kachanoff, F., Christophe, N. K., Holding, A. C., Janusauskas, L., & Koestner, R. (2023). Gender differences in perceived racism threat and activism during the Black Lives Matter social justice movement for Black young adults. Journal of community psychology, 51(7), 2741–2757. https://doi.org/10.1002/jcop.23043
Nweze, N., Davids, J., Fang, X., Holding, A., & Koestner, R. (2023). The Impact of Language on the Mental Health of Black Quebecers. Journal of racial and ethnic health disparities, 10(5), 2327–2337. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40615-022-01412-5
Audet, É. C., Thai, H., Holding, A. C., Davids, J., Fang, X., & Koestner, R. (2023). The depth of stories: How Black young adults' disclosure of high arousal negative affect in narratives about the COVID-19 pandemic and the BLM protests improved adjustment over the year 2020. Journal of community psychology, 51(4), 1504–1517. https://doi.org/10.1002/jcop.22929