The Experience of Assimilation for Rural, African American, Hurricane Katrina Survivors

This study investigated the experiences of rural, African American, Hurricane Katrina survivors of a county in the southern United States. General theories of bereavement and assimilation are limited in contextual and cultural scope in regards to marginalized and communal populations and could not be applied to rural African Americans in the southern United States. Hence, grounded theory was used to develop a substantive theory of bereavement of land and property and the assimilation patterns of these survivors. The investigation examined how communal bereavement of land and property affected rural African American Hurricane Katrina survivors' assimilation into the larger community. The participants were selected through the snowball sampling and included 6 females and 1 male between the ages of 29 to 68, of moderate to low income, and having multiple generations of family residing in the southern United States. In-depth interviews were conducted using 2 open-ended questions focusing on the respondents' views of bereavement regarding land and property and assimilation into the larger community. Using the constant comparative method of analysis, 3 core concepts emerged from the data: belonging, perceived helplessness, and self-segregation. The concept of transpositional stress clarified the relationship between these survivors, land, and property, reflecting a unique psychological process which survivors developed to cope with the problem of historical land and property loss and subjugation from the larger community. The social change implications of the findings include the education of psychologists on the affect that generational land displacement and historical injustice has had on the assimilation efforts of rural African Americans in the southern United States.