Kinship refers to social relationships that constitute an essential part of people’s lives in different societies. As a rule, kinship is understood as the relationship between the members of one family. However, this concept is complex and broad, and various cultures approach it differently. According to Scodari (2017), understanding kinship from a genetic or biological perspective would be incomplete because culturally determined family relations often form and need to be considered. Therefore, kinship interrelates with the concept of cultural inheritance as well as ethnic and racial identity issues. In this regard, the Black Lives Matter movement represents a notable phenomenon that can be studied in regard to the idea of family. This paper aims to discuss how kinship is related to the Black Lives Matter community.
In the African American context, kinship does not only refer to the nuclear family that includes two parents and their children, a notion common to the United States and Western Europe. Instead, as Belgrave and Allison (2018) report, kinship is the extended family based on “the communal values of solidarity, mutual helpfulness, interdependence, and concern for the well-being of every individual member of society” (p. 133). As can be seen, cultural relatedness plays an important role in defining kinship for the African American community. Therefore, the Black Lives Matter community is an important system that supports the idea of cultural kinship and unity.
Overall, Black Lives Matter is an organization aiming to eliminate white supremacy and support black communities. In this regard, the difference in the idea of family and kinship for white and black cultures is essential to understand because Western values are often imposed on the African-American community. Kinship is a unique characteristic that is not solely based on a generic relationship. The Black Lives Matter community supports the idea of unity and mutual helpfulness in the black culture.
References
Belgrave, F. Z., & Allison, K. W. (2018). Kinship and family. In F. Z. Belgrave & K. W. Allison, African American psychology: From Africa to America (4th ed.) (pp. 127-157). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Scodari C. (2017). When markers meet marketing: Ethnicity, race, hybridity, and kinship in genetic genealogy television advertising.Genealogy, 1(22), p. 1-14. Web.