Digital Commons Network^™

Appalachia: Putting The "Critical" In Race And Crowdsourcing A Pathway Model On Institutional Racism, Lauri Andress, Keri Valentine

Journal of Appalachian Health

As the website Understanding and Dismantling Racism: Crowdsourcing a Pathway Model in Appalachia explains, we are seeking assistance in refining a pathway model that elucidates institutional racism from the unique standpoint of Appalachia. We think that Appalachia has a distinctive cultural toolkit that shapes its orientation on issues. Our goal is to use crowdsourcing to harness this unique Appalachian ethos to refine the Pathway model on Institutional Racism based on comments, edits, questions, and ideas left on the website.

Reimagining Care: Surviving And Thriving Among Lgbtq African Americans In Birmingham, Alabama, Stacie Lynn Hatfield

Theses and Dissertations--Anthropology

This dissertation draws on fieldwork with Black LGBTQ identifying individuals and communities in Birmingham, Alabama conducted from 2015-2019 as part of a project that reimagines theories of care. Informed by scholars of Black and feminist studies, I conceive of forms of care as negotiations of survival and tactics of thriving that are worked out in everyday practices and discourses among LGBTQ African Americans. I show how histories of racial inequality and centuries of resistance, surviving, and thriving among communities of African descent intersect with LGBTQ politics, space, and identity to create strategies and places of individual and community care. My …

Race Youth In Twentieth-Century American Literature And Culture, Claire E. Lenviel

Theses and Dissertations--English

Race Youth in Twentieth-Century American Literature and Culture argues for the centrality of black youth, both real and literary, to the trajectories of African American literature and its repudiation of white supremacy. Drawing on research into the rise of the adolescent and teenager as distinct social categories, I argue that age-based subjectivity should inform how we read race-based subjectivity. My first chapter explores how early twentieth-century black periodicals push back against white supremacist theories of human development in an explicit appeal to what I call “race youth,” the children and adolescents who would take up the mantle of racial uplift. …

Utilizing A Community-Based Doula Care Intervention To Reduce Race-Based Perinatal Health Inequities In Jefferson County, Kentucky, Brendan Mathews

Theses and Dissertations--Public Health (M.P.H. & Dr.P.H.)

Target Population and Need

The United States is currently the only industrialized nation in the world experiencing increasing rates of

pregnancy-related mortality.

1,2

Black women die at 3-4 times the rate of their white counterparts.

1-5

This disparity

is likely caused by the experience of systemic racism, which increases allostatic load and produces epigenetic

modifications linked to higher likelihood for poor birth outcomes. Biases perpetuated by health care providers

result in black women being less likely to receive quality healthcare and more likely to experience poor perinatal

1-7 to all pregnant women.

health outcomes.

The provision of doula-based care can …

Criminalizing Pregnancy, Cortney E. Lollar

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The state of Tennessee arrested a woman two days after she gave birth and charged her with assault of her newborn child based on her use of narcotics during her pregnancy. Tennessee's 2014 assault statute was the first to explicitly criminalize the use of drugs by a pregnant woman. But this law, along with others like it being considered by legislatures across the country, is only the most recent manifestation of a long history of using criminal law to punish poor mothers and mothers of color for their behavior while pregnant. The purported motivation for such laws is the harm …

Life And Death In Kentucky: Past, Present, And Future, Roberta M. Harding

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This article provides a historical survey of capital punishment in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, paying particular attention to gender and race. The author concludes that given the lack of recent executions that it is perhaps time to make legislative changes to the Commonwealth’s death penalty practice.

Performing Discretion Or Performing Discrimination: An Analysis Of Race And Ritual In Batson Decisions In Capital Jury Selection, Melynda J. Price

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

Research shows the mere presence of Blacks on capital juries--on the rare occasions they are seated--can mean the difference between life and death. Peremptory challenges are the primary method to remove these pivotal participants. Batson v. Kentucky developed hearings as an immediate remedy for the unconstitutional removal of jurors through racially motivated peremptory challenges. These proceedings have become rituals that sanction continued bias in the jury selection process and ultimately affect the outcome of capital trials. This Article deconstructs the role of the Batson ritual in legitimating the removal of African American jurors. These perfunctory hearings fail to meaningfully interrogate …

Distributing Discipline: Race, Politics, And Punishment At The Frontlines Of Welfare Reform, Richard Fording, Joe Soss, Sanford F. Schram

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

Numerous studies have confirmed that race plays an important role in shaping public preferences toward both redistribution and punishment. Likewise, studies suggest that punitive policy tools tend to be adopted by state governments in a pattern that tracks with the racial composition of state populations. Such evidence testifies to the enduring power of race in American politics, yet it has limited value for understanding how disciplinary policies get applied to individuals in implementation settings. To illuminate the relationship between race and the application of punitive policy tools, we analyze sanction patterns in the TANF program. Drawing on a model of …

Litigating Salvation: Race, Religion And Innocence In The Karla Faye Tucker And Gary Graham Cases, Melynda J. Price

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

The cases of Karla Faye Tucker and Gary Graham represent two examples of the renewed public debate about the death penalty in the State of Texas, and how religion and race affect that debate. This article explores how the Tucker and Graham cases represent opposing possibilities for understanding contemporary narratives of the death penalty. Though the juxtaposition of these two cases is not completely symmetrical, if viewed as a kaleidoscope—a complex set of factors filtered through the shifting identities of the person who is at the center of the immediate case—the hidden operations of race and religion can be examined. …