Digital Commons Network^™

Park Access And Distributional Inequities In Pinellas County, Florida, Kyle Ray Hirvela

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Although environmental justice research has traditionally focused on environmental disamenities and health hazards, recent studies have begun to examine social inequities in the distribution of urban amenities such as street trees and parks that provide several direct and indirect health benefits to local residents. This thesis adds to this knowledge by evaluating distributional inequities in both distribution and access to parks in Pinellas County, the most densely populated and one of the most racially segregated counties in Florida. An important objective was to determine if neighborhoods with lower levels of park access are more likely to contain a significantly higher …

A Path Analysis Model Examining The Relationships Among Race, Gender, Poverty Concentration, Mathematics Achievement And Educational Values Of Students And Their Peers, Angelica T. James

Electronic Theses and Dissertations Archive

The purpose of the current study was to explore the effects of race, gender, school poverty concentration and students’ and peers’ educational values on mathematics achievement, controlling for prior mathematics achievement and highest level of mathematics taken. Data were selected from the Educational Longitudinal Study (ELS:2002). The sample for this analysis consisted of 1,200 native English-speaking students from urban and suburban public schools. Ordinary least squares regression analyses were used to determine the effects in the model. Results revealed that African American students, females and students who attended schools with a higher concentration of poverty had higher educational values, but …

Discretionary Pricing, Mortgage Discrimination, And The Fair Housing Act, Robert G. Schwemm, Jeffrey L. Taren

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

For generations, mortgage lending has always been the gateway to the American dream of homeownership, and, historically, has also been characterized by widespread discrimination against racial and ethnic minorities and their communities. Mortgage discrimination in the modem era has often been accomplished through a technique known as discretionary pricing, in which lenders allow their loan officers and brokers to increase borrowers' costs from an objectively determined base rate. In the past decade alone, discretionary pricing has cost minority homeowners billions of dollars in extra payments, which, in tum, has led these minorities to suffer higher foreclosure rates than whites and …

Judicial Erasure Of Mixed-Race Discrimination, Nancy Leong

American University Law Review

Jurisprudential remedies for racial discrimination presume the existence of clear categories. Indeed, Carolene Products’ classic allusion to “discrete and insular minorities” evokes racial groups that are readily identified and defined. Yet this reliance on categories renders antidiscrimination jurisprudence inhospitable to claims brought by individuals identified as multiracial and discriminated against on that basis. By addressing racial discrimination exclusively through categories, courts have lost sight of the fact that the purpose of antidiscrimination law is not to protect individuals from discrimination based on membership in recognized categories, but rather to protect individuals from the harms inflicted by racism.

This Article explores …

A Conversation About Problem-Solving Courts: Take 2, Jane M. Spinak

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.

Impossible Whiteness: Race, Gender, And American Identity In Early Twentieth-Century American Literature, Tarah Demant

All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)

In Impossible Whiteness, I reveal whiteness--though oftentimes still an implicit critical assumption of normalcy--as a complex, shifting category in the literature of early twentieth-century America, and show how gender, particularly, disrupts American whiteness. I deconstruct the various ways in which whiteness is defined legally, culturally, and in the marketplace, and demonstrate how Edith Wharton, Anzia Yezierska, and F. Scott Fitzgerald trace these standards of whiteness and the inevitable failure of such racial: and implicitly gendered) refinement. Though critical literature has been slow to consider the role of race for these authors, I reveal them as actively participating in contemporary dialogues …

The Meeting: A Transformational Train Ride Through Race In America And Apartheid In South Africa, Joseph Karl Grant

Journal Publications

No abstract provided.

Race Audits, Robin A. Lenhardt

Faculty Scholarship

The U.S. Supreme Court’s race jurisprudence suffers from a stunning lack of imagination where possibilities for meaningful local government involvement in combating structural racial inequality are concerned. Cases such as Parents. and Ricci limit dramatically the freedom that localities have to address racial inequity within their borders. Instead of constraints on local efforts in the race context, Professor Lenhardt argues that what we need, if persistent racial inequalities are ever to be eliminated, is greater innovation and experimentation. In this article, Professor Lenhardt thus introduces an extra-judicial tool called the race audit, which would permit individual cities or a regional …

Accepting Justice Kennedy's Dare: The Future Of Integration In A Post-Pics World, Daniel Kiel

Fordham Law Review

In the wake of the most important public schools case in decades, Parents Involved in Community Schools (PICS), the future of diversity in public schools is in doubt. This period of uncertainty comes at a moment when parents, educators, and employers are demanding high quality schools that prepare students for an increasingly globalized world. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, in his PICS concurrence, recognized this discrepancy and challenged districts to continue the important work of bringing different students together without resorting to unconstitutional means. Filling the void between what is essential to public education and what is constitutionally permissible after PICS, …

Places For Races: The White Supremacist Movement Imagines U.S. Geography, Barbara Perry, Randy Blazak

Journal of Hate Studies

Increasingly, scholars are acknowledging that racial and other forms of animus assume a spatial dimension. Not only does intercultural hostility take different forms depending on location, but so, too, does the concomitant bias-motivated violence imply “places for races.” The very intent and motive of hate crimes are grounded in the perceived need of perpetrators to defend carefully crafted boundaries. While these boundaries are largely cultural, they may also take on a real, physical form, at least from the perpetrator’s perspective. Nowhere is this more evident than in the geographical imagination of the White Supremacist movement. This paper will trace the …

Ricci V. Destefano: A Masculinities Theory Analysis, Ann C. Mcginley

Scholarly Works

This Article applies masculinity theory to explore the aspects Ricci v. Destefano and its political reverberations. Empirical evidence showed that virtually all written tests have a disparate impact on minorities, that a neighboring city had reached less discriminatory results using a different weighting system, and that other fire departments used assessment centers to judge firefighters' qualifications for promotions. While the black male and all female firefighters were made invisible by the case and the testimony, the fact that Ricci's and Vargas' testimony lionized a particularly traditional form of heterosexual masculinity was also invisible. While the command presence required of a …

Operatively White: Exploring The Significance Of Race And Class Through The Paradox Of Black Middle-Classness, Audrey Mcfarlane

All Faculty Scholarship

The black–white paradigm has been the crucial paradigm in racial geography of land use, housing and development. Yet it is worthwhile to consider that, in this context, distinctions based on race are accompanied by a powerful, racialized discourse of middle class versus poor. The black–white paradigm in exclusionary zoning, for example, involves the wealthy or middle-class white person (we need not even use the term white) protesting against or displacing the poor black person. (we also need not even use the term black). Another example of the racialized discourse of middle class versus poor is in the urban-gentrification context. The …

Journeys To 20th Street: The Inner City As Critical Pedagogical Space For Legal Education, Sarah Buhler

Dalhousie Law Journal

This essay draws on critical geographical theories to propose that the location of clinical legal education programs in inner city space can affect the production of professional identities and ideologies oflaw students. It anchors its analysis in an examination of the clinical law program at the University of Saskatchewan College of Law, where students work at a poverty law clinic in Saskatoon's inner city. The paper first turns to a critical examination of law school space, which can function to promote dominant notions about law and legal practice. The author cautions that ifnot navigated attentively, thejourney to inner city space …

'Roots Run Deep Here': The Construction Of Black New Orleans In Post-Katrina Tourism Narratives, Lynnell L. Thomas

American Studies Faculty Publication Series

This article explores the emergent post-Katrina tourism narrative and its ambivalent racialization of the city. Tourism officials are compelled to acknowledge a New Orleans outside the traditional tourist boundaries – primarily black, often poor, and still largely neglected by the city and national governments. On the other hand, tourism promoters do not relinquish (and do not allow tourists to relinquish) the myths of racial exoticism and white supremacist desire for a construction of blacks as artistically talented but socially inferior.

Race, Representation, And Recovery: Documenting The 2006 New Orleans Mayoral Elections, Katherine Cecil

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the rhetorical and visual manifestations of race as they figured in the months prior to and within the 2006 New Orleans mayoral election discourses, and examines how the Nagin campaign tapped into a strategy that capitalized upon pre-existing racial tensions exacerbated by Katrina in order to win re-election. Much of the research for this thesis emerged from the making of a documentary film that examines the intersection between race and politics within this same election, and draws upon primary source video interviews conducted between February - May, 2006, and secondary source media and communications materials to posit …

Correlates Of Intake And Disposition Decisions By Child Protective Services Professionals., Lisa Michele Johnson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examined intake and post-investigative disposition decision making among professionals engaged in child protective services to understand disproportionality and disparities in the child welfare system. Using child welfare, decision making, and attribution theories as a framework, a multivariate 2x2x2 factorial vignette design was used to examine intake and post-investigative disposition decision making among 400 child protective caseworkers and supervisors employed in a Midwestern state. Data were gathered through an online self-administered survey. Among the key variables of interest--race, socio-economic status, and family structure--only the family's socio-economic status was found to influence the intake decision but none were associated with …

Healers And Helpers, Unifying The People: A Qualitative Study Of Lakota Leadership, Kem M. Gambrell

Department of Agricultural Leadership, Education, and Communication: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The purpose of this critical grounded theory qualitative study was to explore Lakota Leadership from a Native perspective. Interviews were conducted with enrolled members of a Lakota tribe in an urban setting as well as on the Rosebud reservation to gain better awareness of leadership through a non-mainstream viewpoint. Previously, in order to understand leaders and followers, research limited its scope of discernment to dominant society, implying that non-mainstream individuals will acquiesce, or that differences found are inconsequential. Leadership scholars also have implied that leadership theory is “universal enough”, and can be applied globally regardless of influences such as race, …

Race And City-County Consolidation : Black Voting Participation And Municipal Elections., Angela Stallings Hagan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Despite the fact that few large metropolitan areas have had city-county consolidations, interest remains high in these mergers as a means of restructuring urban government. Evaluation literature on city-county consolidations generally focuses on the criteria of efficiency and efficacy, not equity. Economic growth, cost savings, and tax levels and service provision are discussed more than the distribution of resources and power. There is a particular dearth of literature on political equity as it pertains to racial minorities. This study attempts to fill that void through the examination of black political participation levels prior to and following the four large-scale city-county …

"No Modern Joshua": Nationalization, Scriptures, And Race, Vincent L. Wimbush

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

With the United States as primary context and point of reference, this essay aims to show how inextricably the modern world phenomena of nationalization, scriptures, and race have been inextricably woven together in the United States. The rhetorics and ideological and political orientation of Frederick Douglass offer an analytical wedge. A speech Douglass delivered in Washington, D.C., in 1883 was part of the celebration of the twentieth year of the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, an event seen as an appropriate and meaning-charged occasion to take stock of the plight of black peoples in the country. His assessment that in …

Getting Real About Race And Prisoner Rights, Michael B. Mushlin

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article explores the nexus of two stories central to contemporary American jurisprudence and--for tens of millions of citizens--central to the American experience: the rise of the “carceral state” through steep increases in the incarceration of non-whites, and the decline, over the very same period, in legal protections for prisoners. The Article suggests that these two stories cannot be considered in isolation from one another. Nearly everything we know about race from the social sciences suggests that, in the highly pressured context of prison life, racial tensions will play a role in the decisions that guards and administrators make concerning …

Getting Real About Race And Prisoner Rights, Michael B. Mushlin, Naomi Roslyn Galtz

Fordham Urban Law Journal

This Article explores the connection between the dramatic increases in the incarceration of non-whites and the parallel decline in the legal protections for prisoners over the same period. Using the social sciences, the Article suggests that racial tensions play a role in the decisions made by both guards and prison administrators. Further, the authors argue that the communities of these non-white prisoners are the least well equipped to advocate for their well-being. Ultimately, the Article concludes that the law is not currently equipped to confront the possibility of dealing with race-based tensions and structural inequities that are present in the …

Dealing With The Realities Of Race And Ethnicity: A Bioethics-Centered Argument In Favor Of Race-Based Genetics Research, Michael J. Malinowski

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Learning From Their Own Learning: How Metacognitive And Meta-Affective Reflections Enhance Learning In Race-Related Courses, Nancy L. Chick, Terri Karis, Cyndi Kernahan

International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning

This interdisciplinary project examined how students think and feel about their learning in race-related diversity courses. Students in four classes (literature, psychology, geography) reflected on cognitive and affective dimensions of their own and their classmates’ learning. The Color Blind Racial Attitudes Scales (CoBRAS) confirmed qualitative analyses of learning patterns in three of the classes that resulted in moving from lack of awareness about racism to increased understanding and in the fourth class that lacked this movement. Findings include what helped students learn, cognitive and affective obstacles to learning, and the benefit of exposing students to multiple perspectives, empathy-enhancing activities, and …

Red, Gold, Black, And Green: Black Nationalist Aesthetics, Crispin Sartwell

Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)

This paper tries to show that black nationalist movements have been pervasively influential on the music and visual culture of the world. In particular, it focuses on the Marcus Garvey movement and some of its religious expressions or extensions - Rastafarianism and the Nation of Gods and Earths - and on reggae and hip hop music. This is also an illustration of a wider conceptual point: that political ideologies are not only constellations of texts and doctrines but multi-media aesthetic environments. Race itself is articulated in aesthetic categories, not only in terms of body appearance and color, but in cultural …

Infectious Agents: Race And Environment In Nineteenth-Century America, Kristen Renee Egan

Dissertations

This dissertation critically examines the relationship between race and nature in nineteenth-century America by analyzing texts that attempt to discover, create, or preserve a pure national identity. Historical events in the nineteenth-century U.S. - such as mass immigration, Native American displacement, industrialization, westward expansion, and the rise of science - frustrated the quest for a unified American identity. While these events seem various, each one exacerbated a nation already bewildered by one central question. What is the traffic between body and space? Nineteenth-century American literature frequently portrays the American environment as an ideal space in need of preservation and at …

Strutting It Up Through Histories: A Performance Genealogy Of The Philadelphia Mummers Parade, Corey Elizabeth Leighton

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This study examines the cultural performances of the parade community in one of the oldest and largest parades in the country: the Philadelphia Mummers Parade. The modern parade celebration consists of groups of mostly working-class white men from South Philadelphia who dress up in extravagant sequined and feathered costumes and, beginning in South Philadelphia, march toward City Hall on one of the largest streets in the city on New Year’s Day. The parade is competitive and marked by performance competitions at the end of each parade. The parade’s history in the city of Philadelphia is extensive but contested. Many locals …

Weaving Color Lines: Race, Ethnicity, And The Work Of Leadership In Social Change Organizations, Sonia Ospina, Celina Su

Publications and Research

For social change organizations working to address intractable social problems throughout the USA, tackling race may not only be unavoidable; it may represent a way to fully engage stakeholders in social change work. We argue that illuminating the relationship between race and leadership can advance our under- standing of how social change leadership happens in practice. We build upon scholarship that emphasizes the ways in which seemingly essentialist, intractable racial categories are actually mutable, and the simultaneous emergence of academic research calling attention to the constructed and collective dimensions of leadership. Using a constructionist lens to analyze narratives from 22 …

Utilitizing And Moving Beyond A Constructionist Approach To Trace The Emergence Of Racial And Ethnic Identities Among Pre-Mexican, Mexican And Americans Of Mexican Descent, Owen Williamson

Theses and Dissertations

Cornell and Hartmann (2007) developed a constructionist framework that can describe the development of racial and ethnic identities. Yet this framework has greater utility than its authors have intended as it also provides the best rubric to date for comprehending the transitions between collective identity group types. This study engages in a thorough investigation of the development of racial and ethnic identities within the context of those that precede it via an ethnohistorical analysis. It also demonstrates that this framework is capable of describing pre-modern religious and national identity types in addition to racial and ethnic identity types. This permits …

Use And Misuse Of ‘Race’ In Biomedical Research, Karama C. Neal Ph.D., M.A.

Journal of Health Ethics

Scientific research provides substantial evidence that there is no genetic or biological basis for our social understanding of race. The confounding social and biological uses of race complicate its use in scientific and biolomedical research; thereby, prompting this discussion of how research informs the concept of race. Recommendations for the use of race in scientific study are provided. Scientists must critically consider when and how to use race in their research so that data are not compromised. Parsing of social, environmental, and biological contributors to health status will contribute to scientific advancement and improved medical care. Clear, consistent, and medically-relevant …

Law Enforcement In Subordinated Communities: Innovation And Response, Richard Delgado

Michigan Law Review

Policing styles and policy reform today exhibit a ferment that we have not seen since the turbulent sixties. The reasons propelling reform include some of the same forces that propelled it then - minority communities agitating for a greater voice, demands for law and order - but also some that are new, such as the greater premium that society places on security in a post-9/11 world. Three recent books discuss this new emphasis on styles of policing. Each centers on policing in minority communities. Steve Herbert's Citizens, Cops, and Power: Recognizing the Limits of Community examines the innovation known as …