Other Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Reluctance Of African-Americans To Engage In Therapy, Monique Estelle Williamson

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis is presented with the intent to explore the reasoning behind why members of the African-American culture are reluctant to enter into therapy. While the numbers of African-Americans who enter therapy continue to rise there are still persistent stigmas that make therapy a taboo option for solving problems. The goal of this qualitative study is to identify (1) if there truly is reluctance in the African-American community, (2) why the African-American community is reluctant, (3) what are the stigmas regarding mental health and therapy from the perspectives of American participants, and (4) what would help break the barriers to …

Beyond Biracial: The Complexity Of Identity Construction For Women With One Black And One White Parent, Roxanne Kymaani

Dissertations

In the United States, the post-Civil Rights Movement era changed forever the social perceptions about race and the self-perceptions of people who are born with mixed racial origin. Choosing to identify as mixed race in America inevitably leads to a racial cross-examination linked to America’s continued struggle with its racial heritage and the enduring legacy of a dominant discourse.

This dissertation focuses on the lived experience of women with one Black and one White parent. While subject to labels such as Black and White, Black, mulatto, biracial, mixed, or other, the central question is what do these women wish to …

Male Hypergamy And Social Status, Cedric N. Floyd

Oglethorpe Journal of Undergraduate Research

Male hypergamy, a social pattern rarely observed, has been prevalent throughout history as a symbol of social status for men. Hypergamy is the act of marrying into a higher social class or caste. This paper analyzes a few exemplary men ranging from the Italian Renaissance to Twenty-First Century America to make note of this pattern and attempts to understand how it affects the social order in middle-to-upper class society. The research, gathered from various books on class and society, presents an idea of various men who have, in some way or another, used their marriages as a social asset and …

Theorizing More Inclusive Cities: A Relational Model Of Boundary Transformation And Urban Research Agenda, Leigh Graham

Publications and Research

To generate more inclusive environments for marginalized urban communities of color demands a strategy that privileges symbolic boundary change and uses it as the inroad towards spatial changes. This paper theorizes a three step relational process of a) communicative democratic activism, b) "multicultural" capital brokers providing access to the policy making process, and c) practices of community building that reflect the role of cities as key sites for sociospatial boundary transformation. An emphasis on discursive and ideational change, relying on communicative democratic processes steeped in historical, comparative analysis opens up our minds towards different classification schemes for stigmatized groups. Participating …