Race and Ethnicity Commons^™

A Blackgirl Artivisionary Mosaic: Art-Based Participatory Refusals To School Punishment, Tyese A. Brown

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The study participants were co-research partners and engaged in a Project Based Learning six-week summer project in an urban northeastern metropolis community-based non-profit where they received stipends for participation. This dissertation explored how Blackgirls (aged 14 -21) express their experiences with disparate school punishment through community-based participatory artmaking. We called the photos, poems, collages, sculptures, storyboards, digital art, visual art, songs, spoken word, and videos Artivisions (art I vision). In the Jam Sessions, a subset of the partners we called curators discussed the pieces, shared their experiences, and offered insight into Blackgirls’ responses, coping skills, and decision-making regarding school punishment. …

Conservative And Cultural Clashes With Comprehensive Sexuality Education, Bryan Z. Anderson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis analyzes the multifaceted debate over the use of comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) in United States public schools, while also emphasizing the ways in which withholding CSE is a strategy to uphold the white supremacist patriarchy. The work begins by historically framing the evolution of sexuality education through the United States’ history. This leads to the current discourse around CSE and the ways in which it is the optimal support for American youth today. After setting this foundation, the thesis looks at conservative figures and groups who are seeking to prevent public school adoption of CSE standards, as well …

Dream City: Post-Millennials And Millennials Navigate School, Work, And Housing In New York City, Omar Montana

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the experiences of the “Post-Millennial” (those born after 1996) and “Millennial” (those born between 1981 - 1996) generations, as they pursue their dreams of studying, working and living in New York City. According to Karl Mannheim’s (1923) classic formulation, a “generation” can be perceived as a particular type of social location typified by common “patterns of experience and thought”. Through seventy-five in-depth interviews, the qualitative data revealed a social location characterized by a common pattern of “time is money” – as the German theorist Georg Simmel (1903) postulated more than a century ago – and stress as …

Counterstories Of Black High School Students And Graduates Of Nyc Independent Schools: A Narrative Case Study, Kahdeidra M. Martin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Public youth resistance movements in 2019 and 2020 exposed the entrenchment of racism, sexism, heteronormativity, and classism across New York City independent schools (NYCIS). In order to support the imminent need for schools to provide effective diversity, inclusion, and equity supports that address broad issues of school climate, relationships, and pedagogy, there is a need to better understand the specific, hyperlocal experiences of Black/African Descendant (BAD) students, who occupy several unique, unexplored spaces in educational research. The following four research questions helped to conceptualize the experiences that support and hinder the academic success and long term well-being of BAD students …

A Re-Evaluation Of The Hyper-Selectivity Perspective: The Case Of Second-Generation Filipinos, Brenda B. Gambol Gavigan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Scholars Jennifer Lee and Min Zhou (2015) argue that the upward mobility of one racial group --- Asian Americans --- in the U.S. can be explained by its “hyper-selectivity”: the Immigration Act of 1965 brought in Asian migrants who are more highly educated than their compatriots back home and the average American. These middle-class immigrants bring with them a success frame based on exceptional achievement and generate ethnic capital (i.e. resources and information available in the community) that ultimately benefits all members of an ethnic group, including the second-generation. In addition, the educational leaps of the second-generation have altered racial …

Can Gentrification Improve Education For Low-Income Minority Students?, Edir Coronado

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Gentrification is the process of investment into disinvested neighborhoods. The development of gentrification brings a reduction in crime, new job opportunities, and better government services, but these new neighborhood amenities are not available to all residents within the gentrified location. Newark, NJ one of the poorest municipalities in the northeast has long been one of the faces for urban blight and is one of the most troubled cities in the state of New Jersey in terms of crime, poverty, and academic performance.

Out of gentrification expensive chain stores, high priced rental units, and charter schools are born. Structurally the neighborhood …

Agentive Personhood: Finding Yourself Through Serving Others, Sasha M. Miller

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

At the core of this study, at the core the transformative experiences that will be described, is agency and what can occur when it is at the forefront of development and learning. I discuss educational spaces that give young learners the opportunity to recognize their ability to shift their perception of themselves and the world and lead to social change. I address this topic through the lens of my own experiences and the experiences of my peers. This study is a reflection on my experiences of participating in a social justice program. I hold a mirror to myself and contemplate …

Against Criminalization And Pathology: The Making Of A Black Achievement Praxis, Charles M. Green Sr.

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Utilizing 29 in-depth semi-structured interviews, the life-course narratives of Black male scholars who, as victims of varying manifestations of structural violence, have “beat the odds” academically. Findings suggest that Black men and boys benefit from positive, racially-informed socialization that assists in the development of an internalized identity that (a) acts as a protective and resistant barrier against some of the impediments of institutional racism, (b) operates as a counter-criminogenic influence, and (c) facilitates educational resilience. Criminogenic Resistance Theory (C.RT) is presented as an alternative conceptualization of the process by which Black boys resist the criminogenic influences of structuralized violence.

Pipeline To Failure: Social Inequality And The False Promises Of American Public Schooling, Adia Wilson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My experience as a New York City public school student was absolutely electrifying, though filled with many trials. While my mother would have preferred to put me in private school, having access to some of the world’s greatest institutions and resources offered unique opportunities and exposures. The performing arts provided me with an outlet to express myself and build skills and confidence. In particular, dance education kept me occupied and disciplined in a large city full of danger. Every so often, I witnessed hostile, or even violent exchanges between students, or students and staff. While some of my schoolmates became …

Culture And Class In Marginalized Minority Educational Attainment, Alan R. Takeall

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Using a national sample of Black and Latino high school students, I ask: What is the relative impact of demographic factors, aspirations, adherence to an ideology of achievement, and sociocultural capital on future educational attainment? Additionally, how do poor students compare to their non-poor counterparts on these measures? Employing the Educational Longitudinal Study (2002 & 2012) and multivariate statistical techniques, this dissertation examines the role of cultural and other factors on the educational attainment of Black and Latino students and then explores the role of poverty on those outcomes.

In recent years educational reform efforts have placed considerable emphasis on …

Dominance & Survivance: Urban Latino Communities And Education In Racial Neoliberal Urbanism, Edwin Mayorga

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

U.S. Latino youth are as undereducated and underprepared today as they were in the 1960s, leading some to declare that there is a national “Latino education crisis” that is affecting the lives of millions. While this problem is national in scope there are multiple narratives that underpin this story. Of particular interest in this study is the intersection of urban Latino core communities and public schools. This dissertation is based on the Education in our Barrios Project, #BarrioEdProj, which is a digital, critical participatory action research study of urbanism and urban education in the Latino core community of East Harlem …

Understanding School And Interethnic Relations Of Mexican Immigrant Youth In A Post-Industrial Community, Roberto Martinez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

There is a dearth of literature on how immigrant groups understand minority groups in the United States, in particular, African-Americans. Increased technology and more rapid global movement in the 21st Century challenges 20th explanations of assimilation (Chicago School) and necessitates more research focused on how immigrant groups and racialized minorities interact to negotiate new worlds. This ethnographic research was conducted over thirteen months during 2012 and 2013 in a post-industrial neighborhood in the northeast that had been the site of 11 purported anti-bias attacks against Mexican immigrants during the summer of 2010. Research questions focused on: 1) Mexican immigrant youth …