Symposium examines end-of-life care for blacks
Symposium examines end-of-life care for blacks
Death and dying has been a fundamentally different experience for African-Americans over the past century than for whites or members of other ethnic groups in the United States, according to Karla F.C. Holloway, PhD, dean
of the humanities and social sciences at Duke University in Durham, NC.
That experience, all too often marked by inadequate health care and violence, has in turn shaped a very different perspective about suffering, care, and mourning. According to Holloway, understanding these differences will be essential to improving end-of-life care, both for African-Americans and for other groups.
Holloway, who is William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of English and African-American literature, was the featured speaker May 24 at "Crossing Over Jordan: African-Americans and Care at the End of Life," the second annual symposium of the Duke Institute on Care at the End of Life. "Crossing Over Jordan" examined end-of-life care in the African-American community from a variety of perspectives, including medicine, the humanities, and theology.
The day-long conference looked at bereavement, death, dying, and burial in black America in the 20th century. Holloway’s presentation, titled "My Memory Stammers, but My Soul is a Witness," drew heavily from her new book, Passed On: African-American Mourning Stories.
Other featured speakers were: Richard Payne, MD, chief of the Pain and Palliative Care Service and Anne Burnett Tandy Professor of Neurology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, who discussed racial and cultural differences in health outcomes and attitudes toward end-of-life care; and The Rev. William C. Turner Jr., associate professor of the practice of homiletics at Duke Divinity School, who gave a theological perspective on the African-American community and care at the end of life, focusing particularly on the role of the African-American church.
The Duke Institute on Care at the End of Life, launched in January 2000, is an interdisciplinary program that brings together scholars from throughout Duke and partnering institutions to conduct research, educational initiatives, and public outreach aimed at improving care for the suffering and dying.
"For this symposium, we wanted to bring together leading individuals from very different fields to talk about end-of-life care in the African-American community," says Keith Meador, MD, director of the Institute.
The conference not only addressed the challenges that African-Americans face in improving care for the dying, but also the gifts and strengths that this particular ethnic community brings to the task of caring for one another at the end of life.
In writing her new book, Holloway researched African-American death, burial, and mourning practices, both in libraries and in the field. As part of her research, she interviewed black funeral home directors, attended their annual trade meetings, and visited the grave sites of famous African-Americans, such as singer Billie Holliday, jazz legend Louis Armstrong, and author Richard Wright.
Seeking out narrative of death and dying
Holloway readily admits that such interests may seem odd for an English professor, at least initially. What draws her to the subject is a deep appreciation of and respect for "narrative."
"If those moments of death and dying — both the outer contexts of care and the inner realms of spirit — are not narratively engaged, then we risk sculpting these ends of days to meet our own focused understandings," she says. "I want to engage and explore a fuller story about death and dying, and the context of culture is one way to that story."
Over the past century, Holloway says, the African-American narrative of death and dying has been marked more than that of other communities by violence — whether through lynchings early in the century, police shootings, or, more recently, retaliatory killings by warring gang members. At the same time, she says, the African-American narrative of death and dying has also been a story of great communal strengths that have been embodied in extraordinary practices of shared suffering and deeply held obligations of mutual care.
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