In response to racial tensions, injustices, health disparities and economic gaps exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, an increasing amount of scholarly attention has focused on the racism, oppression and inequities that affect our youth.
But for Dr. Mia Smith-Bynum, this is her life’s work.
As a professor of family science at the University of Maryland School of Public Health, Dr. Smith-Bynum has spent her career studying African American mental health, family interaction and communication in ethnic minority families, parenting and racial identity.
She has spent the last few years spotlighting the long-standing challenges that African American kids growing up in the US face within the context of the Black Lives Matter movement.
This focus is echoed in Dr. Smith-Bynum’s most recent Journal of Research on Adolescence (JRA) publication, “It's About Time Black Lives Matter: The Urgency of Research on Black Youth Development.”
An introduction to JRA’s special series, “Dismantling Systems of Racism and Oppression During Adolescence,” the article underscores the importance of dedicating “scholarly spaces to the nuanced lived experiences of Black youth and adolescents.”
In the piece, Dr. Smith-Bynum highlights publications published in the JRA special series that expand and extend the investigation of the role of racial-ethnic identity and ethnic-racial socialization in the lives of Black youth.
Now, while on sabbatical from her position at the UMD School of Public Health, Dr. Smith-Bynum is crossing over to the administrative side of the effort to advance cutting-edge research that aims to deconstruct institutional racism across systems within her new role with the American Psychological Association (APA).
As the APA’s Senior Director for Science Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Dr. Smith-Bynum will address policies and strategies for ensuring diversity within the psychological sciences.
For Dr. Smith-Bynum, this work is an important step in accomplishing real change.
“We need to close the federal funding gap for Black scientists conducting this incredibly important and nuanced work,” she wrote in the JRA article.
“Through careful scholarship on structural racism, we can hold the institutions in our society accountable for the ways the racist policies and practices maintain an ideology of White supremacy and dehumanization of Black people.”