African Americans and the Death Industry in the United States

African Americans and the Death Industry in the United States
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Topic: African Americans and the Death Care Industry in the United States
Purpose Statement: To gather information on how the African religion, spirituality, as well as beliefs and practices, influence burial rituals and the death care industry among African Americans in the U.S.
Thesis Statement: While African American communities are losing centuries-old burial rituals due to developments such as the disappearance of black funeral homes with white-owned corporations taking over; it is essential to restore the beliefs around souls, spirits, and deaths of African Americans to protect their identity and to voice their grievances or protests over historical and current racial injustices.
Research Questions:
1 How did slave oppressors take over from African Americans in overseeing the burial of their dead?
2 Why are black funerals disappearing and white-owned corporations owning and controlling the death care industry?
3 How much money is generated from the burial activities involving African Americans?
4 What is the link between Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests and black deaths?
5 Why is it important for African American communities to get back to old burial traditions of their dead?
Main Points:
There has been a growing trend of African Americans losing control of the burial activities of their dead. These changes trace back to the slavery era when white oppressors restricted African Americans from conducting proper burial ceremonies to their dead based on their burial traditions. Moreover, black funeral homes are slowly disappearing while white-owned companies such as Service Corporation International (SCI) are now taking over and controlling the death care industry in the U.S. In the foregoing, African Americans are getting away from their burial traditions and increasingly utilizing services of the bigger white-owned corporations. Additionally, black-owned funeral homes are not sufficiently endowed with resources to compete favorably with the more established white-owned companies. However, contemporary racial injustices such as police brutality that has disproportionately claimed the lives of American Americans has led to the BLM protests and the need to use burial activities of the slain blacks in airing grievances to the authorities. As such, the significance of black funeral rites is growing; thus it’s essential for African American communities to get back to the old burial traditions in bid to protect their identity and to fight for their rights.
Rationale:
The current study will utilize the literature review methodology to describe enumerate, summarize, and objectively evaluate existing information from secondary sources on African Americans and the Death Care Industry in the United States. Consequently, data will be collected from available research evidence relevant to the aforementioned study questions in a bid to arrive at the proposed findings that African American communities need to get back to the old burial traditions in bid to protect their identity and to voice their grievances or protests over historical and current racial injustices. Ac...