This volume examines how family communication affects our understanding of race and race relations. For scholars studying diversity issues, intercultural communication, family communication, and related areas.

In Race and Family: A Structural Approach, author Roberta L. Coles looks at ethnic minority families in a novel way— through a structural lens. Unlike many texts on race and family, this book offers an approach that illustrates overarching structural factors affecting all families as opposed to examining each ethnicity in isolation from one another. By focusing on various structural factors such as demographic, economic, and historical aspects, this book analyzes various family trends in a cross-cutting manner to exemplify the similarities and distinctions among all racial and ethnic groups.

Building on their past work in race and family communication, Rhunette C. Diggs and Thomas J. Socha gather in this volume contemporary theory and research concerning ways that families use communication to transform inherited cultural legacies for the better (Communication 3.0). The book expands the field of communication’s understanding of the life-long impact that family communication has on the managing diverse and clashing cultural relationships, identities, meanings, and communication practices. It spotlights the economically disenfranchised alongside the economically secure, the systematically oppressed next to beneficiaries of Whiteness, and those actually or metaphorically killed and or threatened by violence and hateful systems outside of home. Together, the contributions address omissions of diverse family contexts in family communication research and reconsider qualitative and quantitative approaches that bring respect and equality to the participant-researcher relationship. This book is suitable as a supplementary text for courses in family communication, family studies, race and ethnicity in communication, and intergroup communication.

"The breadth of theories presented and collected in this text is an impressive accomplishment. The editors have done a great service to the field with this book." —Lynn H. Turner, Marquette University "The chapters are very informative, useful, and accessible. There is a huge need to better ground family communication in theory, and this text will provide an important start for students and researchers." —Douglas Kelley, Arizona State University To date, scholars from disciplines other than communication have dominated the study of family communication. Engaging Theories in Family Communication: Multiple Perspectives covers uncharted territory in its field, as it is the first book on the market to deal exclusively with family communication theory. In this volume, editors Dawn O. Braithwaite and Leslie A. Baxter bring together a group of contributors who represent a Who′s Who in the family communication field. These scholars examine both classic and cutting-edge theories to guide family communication research in the coming years. Key Features: A clear overview of theory and three meta-theoretical discourses— logical empirical, interpretive, and critical—to provide readers with a current landscape of family communication research Chapter-opening notes help students understand the paradigm into which a theory falls and the historical roots of each theory Foreword by renowned scholar Anita Vangelisti frames the current state of family communication and provides a unique perspective on theory-building in family communication Engaging Theories in Family Communication is designed for students studying family communication in courses such as Family Communication, Personal Relationships, Communication Theory, Applied Communication, and Advanced Interpersonal Communication. It can also be used in a variety of Family Studies, Sociology, and Psychology courses focusing on family communication.

Integrating the varying perspectives and issues addressed by researchers, theorists and practitioners, this edited collection presents an analysis and synthesis of cutting-edge research and theory on family interactions.

Racial and ethnic disparities in health care are known to reflect access to care and other issues that arise from differing socioeconomic conditions. There is, however, increasing evidence that even after such differences are accounted for, race and ethnicity remain significant predictors of the quality of health care received. In Unequal Treatment, a panel of experts documents this evidence and explores how persons of color experience the health care environment. The book examines how disparities in treatment may arise in health care systems and looks at aspects of the clinical encounter that may contribute to such disparities. Patients' and providers' attitudes, expectations, and behavior are analyzed. How to intervene? Unequal Treatment offers recommendations for improvements in medical care financing, allocation of care, availability of language translation, community-based care, and other arenas. The committee highlights the potential of cross-cultural education to improve provider-patient communication and offers a detailed look at how to integrate cross-cultural learning within the health professions. The book concludes with recommendations for data collection and research initiatives. Unequal Treatment will be vitally important to health care policymakers, administrators, providers, educators, and students as well as advocates for people of color.

Race(ing) Intercultural Communication signals a crucial intervention in the field, as well as in wider society, where social and political events are calling for new ways of making sense of race in the 21st century. Contributors to this book work at multiple intersections, theoretically and methodologically, in order to highlight relational (im)possibilities for intercultural communication. Chapters underscore the continuing importance of studying race, and the diverse mechanisms that maintain racial logics both in the U. S. and globally. In the so-called ¿post-racial¿ era in which we live, not only are disrupting notions of colour-blindness crucially important, but so too are imagining new ways of thinking through racial matters. Ranging from discussions of new media, popular culture, and political discourse, to resistance literature, gay culture, and academia, contributors produce incisive analyses of the operations of race and white domination, including the myriad ways in which these discourses are reproduced and disrupted. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of International and Intercultural Communication.