Race and Ethnicity Commons^™

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 …

Precarious Empowerments: Sexual Labor In The Coffee Shops Of Santiago, Chile, Pilar Ortiz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Precarious Empowerments analyzes sexual labor in ‘tinted cafes,’ spaces hidden from public view where women dance for their male clients and clandestinely perform sexual services. Drawing from an embodied ethnographic account of the everyday lives of five coffee shops that fit into the lower status ‘tinted cafes’ where sexual labor is common, this thesis examines sex workers’ experiences at the intersection of class, racial, and gender hierarchies. From an intersectional perspective, my study examines how inequalities based on class, gender, race, nationality, and body capital are reproduced and contested by sex workers. Based on the multiple facets of the precariousness …

Making Muslim Americans: Parenting Practices, Parochial Schools, And The Transmission Of Faith Across Generations In Metropolitan Detroit, Rebecca Karam

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

At present, it is estimated that there are 3.45 million Muslims living in the United States, the vast majority of whom are immigrants and the children of immigrants. While religion has typically been found to foster assimilation among immigrant newcomers, Islamophobia is rampant and threatens to challenge this process. This dissertation project intervenes in this empirical puzzle by asking the following research questions: How do we explain the conscious attempt by second generation Muslim parents to foster a distinctly Muslim and American identity among their third-generation children? More specifically, how have the parenting decisions of upper-middle class, second-generation Muslim Americans …

Original Gangsters: Genre, Crime, And The Violences Of Settler Democracy, Sean M. Kennedy

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Building upon examinations of genericity, subalternity, and carcerality by Black, Indigenous, and women-of-color feminist scholars, my dissertation offers an account of how truth claims are produced and sustained to limit social change in representatively governed societies. Taking the gangster genre as my lens, I first resituate the form, assumed to depict white-ethnic conflict in the U.S. and Europe, as a type of resistance to race-based political economic policies imposed by imperial regimes. After linking the subaltern classes of pre-20th-century southern Europe, southern Africa, South Asia, and the U.S. South—all subjected to criminalization as a mode of colonial and capitalist control—I …

And Ain’T I A Man: An Examination Of Violence Against African-American Men By Caucasian Men In The United States, Bryan L. Greene

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Various scholars, particularly feminist scholars of color, have examined the experiences of women in the realm of violence perpetrated by men, particularly Caucasian/white men against women of color. Critical Race Theory has proven beneficial to discussing violence perpetrated by Caucasian men in the United States against various communities of color broadly. Using these two premises, this thesis seeks to bring into the conversation the subjugation of men of color by white men. By looking at classical theories concerning the dualities that people of color encounter and struggle with along with womanist theories of feminism, this thesis seeks to spark a …

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 …

Examining The Contextual Effects Of Racial Profiling, And The Long-Term Consequences Of Punitive Interventions: Testing Labeling Theory With The National Longitudinal Study Of Adolescent To Adult Health Data, Margrét Valdimarsdóttir

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The overrepresentation of minority youth in the juvenile justice system has been well documented. More research has, however, been needed on levels of discrimination, particularly on potential biases in the earliest point of contact, such as police decisions to stop and arrest young people. Further, few studies have examined individual and neighborhood characteristics simultaneously, which has limited the understanding of citizens’ experiences with the police. Focusing on potential biases in the juvenile justice system is essential as recent studies indicate that most types of interventions have different negative consequences for the lives of young people, such as increasing the probability …

Humanizing Higher Education: Disrupting Racial Injustice In Teacher Preparation Through Critically Caring Communities, Melissa M. Boronkas

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Institutions of Higher Education have played a foundational role in upholding racial inequities within the teaching profession. Eighty percent of public school teachers in the United States are white and female while more than 50% of the total student population is composed of minoritized students (Boser, 2014; NYSED, 2019a). There is a lack of cultural synchronicity between teachers and students in classrooms which is believed to result in unequal outcomes for minoritized students as compared to their White peers (Ingersoll, May, Collins, 2018). These findings are indicative of an underlying problem: racial and social integration has not been achieved. In …

“I’M Real I Thought I Told Ya”: Developing Critical Media Literacy Through U.S. Latinx Digital Media Representations, Solange T. Castellar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis explores how audiences engage with U.S. Latinx media representations through the practice of critical media literacy. I interrogate how media consumers construct critical media literacy through interacting with U.S. Latinx figures on digital media platforms, particularly on the social-media app, Twitter, and the user-generated video content platform, YouTube. Throughout this thesis, I argue that users on these platforms who engage with U.S. Latinx pop culture figures, like Jennifer Lopez and Belcalis Almanzar (Cardi B), read, digest, and comprehend a variety of multimedia images, texts, or videos, and that this engagement becomes an accessible form of critical media literacy, …

The Freddie Gray Uprising: Persistence And Desistance Narratives Of Community-Engaged Returning Citizens, Maurice Vann

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study explored how selected returning citizens in Baltimore who experienced the Freddie Gray Uprising of 2015 quelled community violence, stopped looting, and cleaned up the community in the aftermath made meaning of their experiences of the unrest. The central purpose of this study was to collect and analyze the life stories of returning citizens in Baltimore who experienced the Uprising. These men who had been incarcerated for between 5 and 20 years responded to government officials who called on them to quell violence in their neighborhoods that stemmed from the in-custody homicide of Freddie Gray.

The informants provided narratives …

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 …

Familismo, Fafsa, And Sallie Mae: A Study Of Second Generation Latinx Student Loan Debt, Jasmine Gonsalez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

As college expenses continue to skyrocket, borrowing thousands of dollars to pay for college has become a rite of passage towards achieving the American Dream. Very little has explored the problem of rising student loan debt thorough a sociologically-oriented lens, and even less work has examined the variations in the lived experiences of underrepresented student borrowers. This study focuses on second-generation Latinx students who have used student loans to pay for college. As American citizens with Latin American roots, this generation lives in a precarious situation, often straddling the lines between their traditional family-oriented values, and the more individualistic values …