Race and Ethnicity Commons^™

Creating Systemic Support: Cross-Sector Partnerships As A Catalyst To Institutional Transformation For Southeast Asian Student Support, Brianna Lourdes Edoria Pascua

Master's Projects and Capstones

This paper investigates the potential impact of cross-sector partnerships between nonprofit organizations (NPOs) and universities on the educational attainment of Southeast Asian American (SEAA) students, particularly those from disenfranchised or nontraditional backgrounds. Guided by the research question, "Can cross-sector partnerships between NPOs and universities contribute to increased educational attainment among SEAA students?", the study seeks to comprehensively explore SEAA student experiences, challenge the Model Minority Stereotype, enrich SEAA higher educational achievement literature, underline the significance of disaggregated data and cross-sector collaborations, and create an adaptable framework for other communities. By adopting an Asian Critical Race Theory (AsianCrit) lens, the research …

Ambigú Trashumante Barra De Café Ambulante Ambigú Trashumante Barra De Café Ambulante, Augusto Martin Rivero

Master's Projects and Capstones

Ambigú Trashumante Barra de Café Ambulante is an applied research project which took shape over the course of a calendar year from May 2022-2023. A six-person team evolved including the personified project itself, united as one communal entity in collaboration. The project entailed creation of a bicicargo, or cargo bike–useful art becoming a mobile coffee bar and literal vehicle embodying justice through coffee offered freely in México, as facilitated through decolonized ethnography and Mesoamerican Community-Based Participatory Action Research (CBPAR). The project’s theoretical framework centers on Bruguera’s (2012) arte útil conceptualization. Five core patterns emerged, including the right to thrive in …

Planting Power Or Planting A Paradox? Urban Agriculture, Gentrification, And Community Development In Oakland, California, Elissa M. Mann

Master's Projects and Capstones

Urban agriculture has long been used as a tool for promoting food justice and urban sustainability in municipalities across the globe. From vertical and rooftop growing operations to community and residential garden plots, the idealistically transformative nature of urban agriculture is becoming an increasingly popular subject among scholars, city planners, policymakers, and activists alike. A handful of cautionary scholars, however, have begun to uncover the elusive role that food justice oriented urban agriculture projects can play in facilitating gentrification and displacement in low-income communities. My capstone project focuses on the relationship between urban agriculture and gentrification, specifically asking: How does …

Re-Centering Racial Justice In White-Dominated School Settings, Brian A. Davis

Master's Projects and Capstones

Any institution that does not give students the critical and theoretical frameworks to understand White supremacy in the United States is an active contributor in the proliferation of this hegemonic force. White supremacy is a system that produces violence educationally, socially, politically, environmentally, ontologically, and epistemologically. The study of Whiteness and White supremacy has been discounted in high school settings for various reasons. This project seeks to solve this critical issue within the field of secondary education through the implementation of a course that unpacks White supremacy while center Black history. This course will provide students with a historical framework …

The Bay Area Rail System: A Sustainable Network Or A Social Equity Phenomenon?, Whitney Libunao

Master's Projects and Capstones

Sustainable transportation, as it relates to sustainable development, aims to achieve economic stability, social equity, and environmental preservation via transit projects. However, gentrification processes and transit-oriented developments or TODs have attracted more households inward toward reinvested transit-centric areas. The San Francisco Bay Area, California has continued to see positive economic growth, with that, higher-income households inhabiting more centralized locations. Native low-income residents have started to feel displacement pressures on both a social and economic scale. Over time, displacement risk inevitably leads to residential displacement where low-income families are forced to relocate to distant, more affordable neighborhoods. As more distance separates …

Amplification Of Legal Advocacy: Public Health Approaches To Releasing Immigrant Detainees At The Otay Mesa Detention Center, San Diego, California, United States, Kaylin Rosal

Master's Projects and Capstones

This paper reviews the current health practices of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centers, focusing on asylum seekers housed at Otay Mesa Detention Center (OMDC) located in San Diego, California, United States. Many asylum seekers, or foreign nationals who have been confirmed to have a credible fear of persecution in their home countries, regardless of how they enter the United States, are placed into Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers. Two avenues for the release of detainees while they wait for their asylum cases to be heard by an immigration judge are bond and parole applications, the basis …

Examining The Intersection Of Environmental Justice, Chronic Disease, And Pandemics; How A Mobile Health App Could Improve Health Outcomes And Inform Policy, Jessica Snow

Master's Projects and Capstones

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the intersection of environmental justice, chronic disease and illness, and pandemics. The inequitable distribution of polluting factories, landfills, and hazardous waste sites have been a long-standing concern in the field of environmental justice. Local zoning codes and land use policies have been tools for segregating people and concentrating pollution in low-income communities and communities of color. Many studies have found that pollution varies among racial and minority groups, and the burden of pollution is not one that is evenly shared. Communities of color and low income communities are disproportionately affected by air …

The Journey To Antiracism: White Identity Development For White Faculty Members At Predominantly White Higher Education Institutions, Morgan Harthorne

Master's Projects and Capstones

Students of color experience feelings of isolation, exhaustion, and tokenization in predominantly white higher education spaces (Smith, Yosso, Solorzano, 2006). Specifically, students of color feel ostracized and tokenized in the classroom. This experience contributes to an overall culture of Whiteness within higher education and leads to the lack of engagement and belonging of students of color. It also supports the systems of racism and White supremacy within the academy. This field project analyzes the experiences of students of color and provides a series of seven workshops for White faculty to begin their journey toward antiracism in the classroom. This field …

Race, Ethnicity, Or Kapwa: (Re)Conceptualizing Filipinoness In A Settler Society, Julienne (Eugenie) Mamuyac

Master's Projects and Capstones

Despite being the fourth-largest immigrant group in the U.S., Filipino Americans are deemed “the forgotten Asians” or “the invisible minority.” Who is our kapwa(community) amid this paradox? Given the U.S.’s imperial legacy of settler colonialism, this research attempts to interrogate this “invisibility” and further asks, "What does acculturation entail for Filipino Americans in a settler society?” Using the Indigenous methodology of kwentuhan(storytelling), I highlight the breadth of Filipino American experiences vis-a-vis their ethnic identity and, conversely, the hindrance to ethnic identity empowerment in a settler society.

Hollywood Media And The Model Minority Myth: The Representation Of Asian American Masculinity And Its Effects, Khanhlinh Le

Master's Projects and Capstones

Asian Americans are becoming one of the largest growing minority groups in the United States, almost surpassing the Latinx community. Asian Americans, however, are rarely ever represented in Hollywood films and are limited to stereotypical roles. Asian American actors have a difficult time finding roles playing characters that are three-dimensional and complex. While both Asian American men and women face this challenge, it seems that in Hollywood films and television shows, Asian American males are even less represented than females and are typically portrayed as the quiet nerd, sexy doctor, martial arts expert, or the villain. These media stereotypes impact …

Korean Soil, Japanese Faces, American Empire: Repatriation And The Korean War Experiences Of Japanese Laborers And Japanese American Soldiers, Jaclyn S. Knitter

Master's Projects and Capstones

This paper compares the Korean War experiences of two ethnically Japanese groups that served the US military on the Korean Peninsula – second-generation Japanese American (Nisei) soldiers in the US Military Intelligence Service (MIS) and Japanese laborers – to demonstrate the salience of citizenship in the post-1945 Asia Pacific. In particular, this research addresses the question, “how did the politics of repatriation differentiate the experiences of Japanese Americans from those of Japanese nationals, both serving the US military during the Korean War?” This service ranged from (Nisei) American repatriation interrogators of Korean and Chinese civilians, to prisoners of war (POWs), …

Decolonize Your Diet, Jasmine A. Deras

Master's Projects and Capstones

With the industrialization of the food system in past decades, convenience foods have become the cornerstone of the standard American diet. This spike in obesity rates has been more impactful for some populations than for others. In low-income communities of color, fast and processed foods are often the most accessible and affordable source of sustenance. Critical indicators of status and well-being, health disparities are one example of the social barriers faced by predominately low-income people of color.

The Decolonize Your Diet project channels principles of resistance into its mission to improve the health of people of color in Oakland, California. …

Incorporating Community Cultural Wealth In A Community-Based Organization, Henriette S. Ako-Asare

Master's Projects and Capstones

This project examined how Hack the Hood, a Bay Area non-profit organization, successfully works with low-income youth of color in an outside of school context using technological skills to empower them. Critical Race Theory, community cultural wealth, and the many studies on academic success provided a model through which to examine the efficacy and cultural relevance of Hack the Hood programming using interviews and data already gathered on the organization. Based on the analysis of Hack the Hood and the promising findings related to how their work advance several of the tenets of the community cultural wealth model, this project …

Leadership And Communication As Opportunities For Growth: Refining Discipline With Cross Cultural Relationships Beyond The Classroom, Sabrina D. Sanchez

Master's Projects and Capstones

Overt disciplinary tactics disproportionately affect scholars of color. This field project aims to shed light on discipline policies across a variety of learning environments and provide scholars of color with the opportunity to self-advocate. I utilize a culturally relevant pedagogy in my framework component to stress the need for reciprocal relationships based on dignity and mutual respect. I provide effective alternative strategies, framed by culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP) and Gregory and Mosely’s theory of culturally relevant discipline (CRD), for addressing misconduct that emphasize stronger communication and greater leadership opportunities. My project consists of three parts: a modified communications policy in …