El daño moral en la jurisprudencia colombiana

Two theories were central to understanding the analysis: symbolic interactionism and black feminist thought. Symbolic interactionism was indispensable for understanding black aunts’ self-identities, how their self-identities were formed within their families and communities, and the ways in which their self-identities affect their choices to become kinship care providers within black families. Black feminist thought posited a unique and distinct black female consciousness that affects black women’s self-identities.

Interactions among black women across many generations facilitate the construction of this black female consciousness that differs from the consciousness of white women and of men. A synthesis of symbolic interactionism and black feminist thought allowed for a fuller understanding of the data than either perspective alone.

Symbolic Interactionism

Symbolic interactionism is based on the assumption that human beings actively construct their own realities through interaction with members of social groups. LaRossa and Reitzes (1993) argued that the unique contribution of symbolic interactionism to family studies is, first, the emphasis it gives to the proposition that families are social groups and, second, its assertion that individuals develop a concept of self and their identities through social interaction.” Moreover, Berger and Luckman (1966) asserted

that identities are formed by social processes and are maintained, modified, and reshaped by social relations.

Klein and White (1996) stated that symbolic interactionism, more than other family theories, calls for paying attention to how events and things are interpreted by actors. It assumes that a culture is composed of commonly shared signs and symbols from which actors construct the meanings found in the culture. They argue that we cannot understand a behavioral response unless we know what meaning the situations and the stimuli have for the actor. Symbolic interactionism represents a diverse set of theories; therefore, only a few assumptions of symbolic interactionism apply to the study of black aunts who serve as kinship care providers within black families, and those assumptions are noted below.

What humans define as real has real consequences. Also known as the Thomas Theorem after W. I. Thomas, this assumption highlights the fact that whether a situation required black aunts to intervene in the lives of their nieces and nephews depended on how black aunts conceptualized the situations. Various people can view the same situation or event differently, leading to diverse responses to the situations or events.

Individuals have minds, meaning that there is an individual self that perceives, reasons, senses, and imagines. This notion of mind includes memory and willing actions as retrospective and prospective operations. Black aunts utilized the memories of times with their own aunts in deciding how to play the role of aunts to their nieces and

nephews. Self-concepts, once developed, provide an important motive for behavior. The ways in which black aunts viewed themselves affected their decision-making.

Familiesshare in the “public” dimension of the common everyday world, but they generate their own “private” understandings. The private understandings constructed by family members are based on their shared history, perspectives, and interpretation of the events in their lives. In every case, the respondent, another family member, or the nieces and nephews defined a situation as critical enough to need intervention by black aunts. What constituted critical events in one black family may not be viewed the same in other black families, as black families are heterogeneous entities.

Black Feminist Thought

Black feminist theory recognizes that black women construct social realities that are significantly different from whites as well as black men, and that the realities of black women often center on the needs and concerns of family, rather than the needs of black women (hooks 1984; Collins 1986, 2000). Collins (2000) states,

U. S. Black women as a group live in a different world from that of people who are not Black and female. For individual women, the particular experiences that accrue to living as a

Black woman in the United States can stimulate a distinctive consciousness concerning our own experiences and society

overall. (pp. 23-24)

Stanfield (1998) asserted that the experiences of white women cannot be imposed on black women; the racialized ethnic differences between white women and black women must be taken into consideration. To understand the processes by which black women become kinship care providers within black families and how their choices to become kinship care providers affect their self-identities, several assumptions of black feminist thought listed by Collins (2000) were integrated into the analysis as sensitizing ideas.

Oppression describes any unjust situation, where, systematically and over a long period of time, one group denies another group access to the resources of society. Race, class, gender, sexuality, nation, age, and ethnicity among others constitute major forms of oppression in the United States. The fact that black aunts systematically receive fewer benefits than non-relative foster caregivers constitutes a form of oppression that increases the financial burden on black aunts.

Black women have long been included in the organizational structure of black organizations, including black families. Black women do not experience patriarchy in black families in the same ways that white women experience patriarchy in white families. While black women are not matriarchs within black families, in the sense of white males as patriarchs with authority and power over scarce resources, black women have historically displayed strength and courage in protecting their families and creating stability and continuity within black families.

Social theories emerging from and/or on behalf of U. S. black women and other oppressed groups aim to find ways to escape from, survive in, and/or oppose prevailing social and economic injustice. Social theories reflect women’s efforts to come to terms with lived experiences within intersecting oppressions. The ways that black aunts defined their lived experiences as kinship care providers underscored the affect of history on biography.

Despite the common challenges confronting black women as a group, individual black women neither have identical experiences nor interpret experiences in a similar fashion. The heterogeneity of this sample of black women highlights the variation among

black women, but also the commonalities of some of their experiences demonstrate the persistence of racism and discrimination.

Black feminist thought must both be tied to black women’s lived experiences and aim to better those experiences in some fashion. One of the study’s goals was to generate information that would allow for the creation of interventions to assist black aunts in their role as kinship care providers.

Through the process of rearticulation, black feminist thought can offer black women a different view of themselves and our world. This study recognized and celebrated the courage and strength of the 35 women in this sample who made/make tremendous sacrifices to ensure the stability and continuity of black families by serving as kinship care providers for their nieces and nephews.

Synthesis of Symbolic Interactionism and Black Feminist Thought

Asynthesis of symbolic interactionism and black feminist thought enriched an understanding of how the identities of black women are often derived from their

definitions of family. Definitions of family include who are considered to be the members of family, what are member’s obligations to each other, and when as well as how those obligations should be met. Black women who acted as kinship care providers may have different definitions of the situation about responsibilities to children within their families who need assistance. Their construction of the social realities of this need may have impacted their decisions to become kinship care providers.As black women who are oppressed within this society, they know the risks that black children experience by just

being born black in America. Statistics on the lack of academic achievement for black children, incarceration rates for blacks, HIV/AIDS in black communities, police brutality, and incidents of black-on-black crime attest to the need for black women to take

responsibility for black children.