Digital Commons Network^™

Media Portrayals Of Police-Involved Deaths In U.S. Newspapers, 2013-2016, Jeannice Latoya Louine

Theses and Dissertations

In the past five years, there have been numerous newspaper reports on police-involved deaths (PID) in the U.S, many of which have involved African American males as victims (Shane, Lawson, & Swenson, 2017). Police-involved deaths (PID) is defined as a death of an individual that results from police action (i.e., by firearm, by electroshock weapon [commonly known as a Taser©], or by vehicle). Given the amount of coverage of police-involved deaths, it is important to investigate which PID victims receive the most coverage in U.S. newspapers. This study merges three databases (Fatal Encounters, the Washington Post, and the Guardian) which …

Reflecting On And Shattering My White Lens: A Critical Autoethnography On My Experience As A White Editor Working With Authors Of Color, Kelsey Medlin

Master of Arts in Professional Writing Capstones

This critical autoethnography aims to reveal how the cultural biases of a white majority industry impact the stories they select for acquisition and how they are edited. As an editor, I came to this topic from my personal desire to see if my own whiteness affects the way I view writers of color, their stories, and the audience that the companies market to. Thus, the purpose of this project is to explore the current conversations on the topic of diversity within the publishing industry and whether the conversation is making a connection between the lack of diversity in the workforce …

The Gender Gap In Postsecondary Enrollment Intentions: The Mediating Role Of Student Attitudes And Behaviors, Paul J. Deppen Iii

Dissertations and Theses

Current literature on the gender gap in higher education lacks in-depth exploration of how the gap between males and females in postsecondary enrollment and degree attainment differs among racial/ethnic groups and among students of differing socioeconomic status (SES). This thesis explores the potential mediating role of student attitudes and behaviors and whether or not inclusion in certain racial/ethnic or SES groups moderates the relationship between gender and intentions to continue one's education immediately after high school graduation. This study uses data from the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009. Results suggest that student attitudes mediate more of the relationship between …

Hbo Series Girls And Insecure’S Depiction Of Race And Gender, Kimberley Peterson

Honors College Theses

In this research study the identification and representation of race and gender were looked at in the primetime HBO television series Insecure and Girls. The characters that were analyzed in two episodes were the young black women of Insecure and in two episodes the young white women in Girls. The method for this study was conducted using content analysis to identify the following variables focusing on identity, racial stereotypes and names used to address one another. Additionally, variables to identify gender included emotional approaches to situations, stereotypes and gender role expectations. The comprehensive findings revealed through similarities and differences …

Exploring Factors That Enhance Career Advancement For African-Americans Across Various Criminal Justice Occupations: A Qualitative Examination, Antonio Jon Bryer

Sociology & Criminal Justice Theses & Dissertations

This study examined the factors that are important for African-Americans to reach executive-level positions within the field of corrections. Using nine semi-structured interviews with current and former executive-level corrections professionals, it was found that investments in social capital and human capital are the main career advancement enhancers. However, when it came to factors that were specific to African-American corrections professionals, a majority of the respondents mentioned proficiency as an enhancer.

Assailants Or Saints?: Racial, Ethnic, And Gender Depictions On A Social Media Based City News Website, Thomas R. Hochschild Jr., Lorna Alvarez-Rivera, Rikki Hightower, Alison Zeaser, Taylor Prain, Ra'shone Lewis

The Journal of Public and Professional Sociology

A large literature indicates that Black males are overrepresented as criminals in traditional newspapers and broadcast news. However, little scholarly attention has been paid to online-only city newspapers. The authors conducted a content analysis of a social media based city news website in a Southeastern state. Multiple coders assessed 8,142 stories that ran over the course of three years and found that, in line with previous research, Black males were disproportionately portrayed as criminals, were more likely to have mugshots accompanying their stories, and were more likely to have their race mentioned in the text of the story than any …

Interracial Dating On Campus, Marisa Andersen

Social Sciences

The purpose of this study is to use mixed methods research and grounded theory to determine what obstacles a predominantly White university contains for interracial couples. Previous research involving interracial couples on college campuses has only focused on quantitative surveys. A sample size of 234 students from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo participated in a quantitative survey as well as 12 interracial couples that were separately interviewed. This data was used to gain insight on interracial couples’ experiences on campus. The data revealed that Cal Poly students felt interracial couples were generally supported on campus. However, the racial or ethnic …

"Playing It Safe" With Empirical Evidence: Selective Use Of Social Science In Supreme Court Cases About Racial Justice And Marriage Equality, Russell K. Robinson, David M. Frost

Northwestern University Law Review

This Essay seeks to draw connections between race, sexual orientation, and social science in Supreme Court litigation. In some respects, advocates for racial minorities and sexual minorities face divergent trajectories. Among those asserting civil rights claims, LGBT rights claimants have been uniquely successful at the Court ever since Romer v. Evans in the mid-1990s. During this period, advocates for racial minorities have fought to preserve earlier victories in cases such as Regents of the University of California v. Bakke and have failed to overturn precedents that strictly limit equal protection possibilities, such as McCleskey v. Kemp. Nonetheless, we argue …

Sprints Of Citizenship: Black Women Track Stars And The Making Of Modern Citizenship In The United States And Jamaica, 1946-1964, Catherine "Cat" Ariail

Open Access Dissertations

In the postwar period, nations and territories used international sport to codify their ideal citizenries. For the United States and Jamaica, black women athletes complicated these efforts. This dissertation analyzes the ideological influence of black women track stars, examining how they destabilized dominant ideas about race, gender, sexuality, and national identity. The strivings and successes of American and Jamaican black women track athletes at international sporting events forced sport cultures in the United States and Jamaica continually to wrestle with the meaning of black women’s athleticism. Their struggles to fit black women athletes into their respective visions of their national …

Toward A Theology Of Transformation: Destroying The Sycamore Tree Of White Supremacy, Hannah Kathleen Griggs

Celebration of Learning

Black liberation theologians come to terms with white supremacy by collectively remembering the story of the Exodus and Jesus' crucifixion--affirming God's preference for freedom and in-the-world salvation. The particular history of white American Christianity requires a different story to provide the foundation for our social memory. As white American Christians, we have certain blind spots—blind spots created by historical and social privileges that have given white people unequal access to power and resources. The story of Zacchaeus has the potential to help reframe white Christianity’s conception of race relations in the United States, shifting from a reconciliation paradigm to a …

Contributing Factors To Mass Incarceration And Recidivism, Nayely Esparza Flores

Themis: Research Journal of Justice Studies and Forensic Science

The United States has been historically known for having the most incarcerated individuals in its country. Approximately 2.3 million adults can be found under some type of penal control. Since the 1960s, the number of incarcerated individuals can be attributed to decades of tough on crime policies, controversial police practices, and racism. Mass incarceration has raised significant social justice issues, especially since it has been heavily concentrated on poor, uneducated African American men. Moreover, recidivism rates in the United States are at an all time high with over 76.6% of offenders reoffending and returning to prison (National Institute of Justice, …

Medical Apartheid: A Book Review, Carmen Kennedy

Themis: Research Journal of Justice Studies and Forensic Science

No abstract provided.

Reshaping What Emerges: Empowering Student Employees To Be Authentic, Amber Williams

M.A. in Higher Education Leadership: Action Research Projects

The purpose of my study was to understand who my students are authentically and discover what keeps them from being authentic within the workplace. I focused on culturally minoritized students in the context of professional expectations and intersecting identities. The research questions that guided my study are: How do I help students be authentic in their role as culturally minoritized employees at a multicultural center? What does authenticity look like for the students I work with, and where do they find it most difficult to express their most authentic selves within the United Front Multicultural Center? What interventions and/or practices …

Intersections Between Gender, Race, And Justice-Involvement: A Mixed Methods Analysis Of Women's Experiences In The Oregon Criminal Justice System, Breanna Lynne Boppre

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Since the 1970s, the rate of female incarceration in the United States skyrocketed, with highest imprisonment rates among Black and Latina women. Nonetheless, few studies examined disparities in female imprisonment and the distinct experiences of women of Color within the justice system. To fill this gap in the literature, this dissertation utilized conflict and intersectional perspectives to assess the differential treatment of women in the Oregon justice system. Using a convergent mixed methods design, this dissertation examined disparities in female imprisonment using state-level prison admissions and population data from 1983-2014 in conjunction with qualitative interview and focus group responses among …

Is It Still Impossible To Be Black And American?, Darrian Carroll

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This thesis engages Bill Clinton’s presidential rhetoric to investigate how liberal rhetorical practices can be used to extend and sustain the oppression of Black Americans. By adopting Du Bois’ concepts of the color-line and double-consciousness this thesis examines how Bill Clinton was able to recreate the color-line in the Mason Temple speech and benefit from and recreate a world devoid of consciousness in other selected speeches from his corpus. This project takes up three separate speeches by Bill Clinton as texts. The second chapter focuses on Bill Clinton’s “Remarks to the Rainbow Coalition” and “Remarks announcing the initiative” to make …

Police Interventions, Public Perceptions, And The Rdfc Interaction Model, Stacey L. Clouse

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Procedural justice and police legitimacy research suggests that perceptions of legitimacy are based on the credibility of police (Sunshine & Tyler, 2003). However, highly publicized incidents of police use of force serve to threaten that credibility. High profile incidents between police and citizens in Black communities have contributed to national protests and, as some data suggest, increased violence toward the police (FBI.gov, 2016). Extensive media coverage of these incidents has contributed to an increased sensitivity toward police- citizen interactions leading to incidents of civil unrest (Weitzer, 2002). The incidents of civil unrest suggest that we should more closely examine factors …

We Are A Fantasia: Violence, Belonging, And Potentiality In Transgender Latina Sexual Economies, Andrea Bolivar

Arts & Sciences Graduate Student Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation ethnographically centers the lives of sex working transgender Latinas in Chicagoland. Based on 14 months of research collected between June 2015 and August 2016, I introduce "fantasia" as a racialized queer analytic to illustrate the unique ways in which transgender Latinas are objectified, racialized, and dehumanized in sexual economies of labor and in U.S. nation more broadly. Fantasia conveys trans Latinas' sexual otherness on account of their race and gender. They are imagined as hypersexual because they are Latinas, and fetishized because they are transgender women. Fantasia also indexes their ephemeral presence--they are always at risk of disappearing …

Hip-Hop And Poetry: Listen To The Words, Jordan Dingle

Cultural Studies Capstone Papers

Hip-hop is a subculture that has become a major part of popular culture and heavily affects contemporary music, clothing, and media. The subculture initially started as a way for the historically oppressed to voice themselves and have a dialogue for social dilemmas that were relevant to them. Maintaining this voice of authenticity will become more difficult the larger and more commercialized Hip-hop becomes, thus it is important to identify mediums that are being used to express authenticity through discussion of social dilemmas in Hip-hop culture. This project identifies poetry as a medium that is used to display authenticity in Hip-hop …

Understanding Biracial Women's Identity Formation, Tinesha Zandamela

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This qualitative study study seeks to identify themes and patterns concerning biracial women’s experiences in the U.S. It is intended to help expand what researchers currently know about what it means to be biracial in the U.S. If society at large has not dictated a script for multiracial persons because they are not even fully recognized as a racial group throughout the US, what can the experiences of these biracial women tell us about the current sociological theories of identity construction? Utilizing six interviews with half-black women and three sociological theories, this paper seeks to answer that question. Ultimately, this …

Ice Cream, Richard Frank Peterson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Ice Cream is a series of 2D and 3D depictions of lawn ornaments, Charlie Brown, and novelty ice cream bars, which question how White America is indoctrinated through seemingly innocuous images and objects. The exhibition unveils the white supremacy fostered within the American way of life and articulates an environment where Americans act in racist ways when they believe they are acting morally. The research found within Ice Cream attempts to dismantle the foundation these justifications are built upon. This honesty, coupled with acknowledging that these historic traditions are rooted in racial constructs, will result in a double consciousness and …

The Exceptional Negro: Racism, White Privilege And The Lie Of Respectability Politics, Traci Ellis

Publications & Research

Overwhelmingly, black folks have close encounters on a regular basis with being marginalized, insulted, dismissed and discriminated against. It is the natural consequence of still being considered little more than a Negro in this country. Especially for the “Exceptional Negroes.” But, as we will see, the truth is that even with our exceptionalism, we are still just “Negroes” to white America and in case we forget that, they will swiftly remind us.

Are Jurors’ Judgments About Confessions Affected By Juvenile Defendant Race?, Lisa Dobrowolsky

Criminal Justice

This research is focused on understanding jurors’ beliefs about how much weight juvenile defendants’ confessions should be given, especially when the confessions were coerced. This is an important topic because adolescents are vulnerable and at risk for producing false confessions. Because of their age and other developmental factors, they can sometimes be coerced by police during interrogation to admit to crimes they did not commit. Once a confession is obtained, it can be very persuasive to jurors because it is hard for them to believe that someone would admit to a crime they did not commit. This can lead to …

Swimming In A Sea Of No's: Controlling And Managing The New York Public Pools, Mette L. Jensen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Swimming in a Sea of No's: Managing and Controlling the New York Public Pools traces the genealogy of the regulations, surveillance, and rules employed at New York public pools. The thesis discusses the intent and implications of the spatial strategies created to order and control the environment surrounding the swimming pools, and discusses how municipal public pools as specific, local landscapes manifest broader social and cultural processes. The main focus is on the transformation of the pools during the 1980s and 1990s, two decades after the fiscal crisis in 1975, when the pools had become defunded, dysfunctional spaces. By tracing …

The Structurally Adjusted School: School Restructuring And Youth Political Incorporation In Suburban America, Erin Michaels

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My dissertation argues that key 21st century education reforms intended to improve education for Latinx and Black students are actually new mechanisms of educational inequality. I examine this trend in the suburbs where Latinx and Black populations are growing due to new immigration and gentrification. I show how state-mandated education reforms use conditional financing and coercive restructuring policies to undermine the school’s local control by tying major reforms to vital school aid and threatening it with closure. I relate this model to the Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) the IMF and World Bank use globally in order to coerce countries to …

Pawns Of Policy And Problematized Perception: The Sustainability Of Inequality Through The Space Of African-American Childhood, Jen-I S. Costosa

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

African American children are simultaneously entrapped by the construct of race and while excluded from the construct of childhood. Race has bifurcated the timeline(s) and bastion of childhood in which one has clear milestones and expectations and the other is nonlinear, fickle, and subject to a suspicious gaze. Recent research describes this phenomenon as “dehumanization”, “age overestimation”, and “adultification.” However, the aforementioned classifications of African American children’s’ experience presents the assumption in which this particular group would first have to be viewed both as human and also as a child, which is arguable. Policy, both children centric and otherwise, along …

The Effect Of Teacher Race On Student Perceptions In Low-Income Schools, Benton M. Brown

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the wake of the Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision, thousands of teachers of color lost their jobs as black students were integrated into mostly white schools. The number of black teachers in schools across the United States has never recovered resulting in a teaching workforce that is less diverse than the student population that they teach. Many studies have examined the possible impact of this discrepancy including the possibility that this has contributed to the black-white achievement gap that exists in the United States. Other studies have examined the non-academic impacts of a less diverse workforce including …

Dead Canaries In The Coal Mines: The Symbolic Assailant Revisited, Jeannine Bell

Georgia State University Law Review

The well-publicized deaths of several African-Americans—Tamir Rice, Philando Castile, and Alton Sterling among others—at the hands of police stem from tragic interactions predicated upon well-understood practices analyzed by police scholars since the 1950s. The symbolic assailant, a construct created by police scholar Jerome Skolnick in the mid-1960s to identify persons whose behavior and characteristics the police view as threatening, is especially relevant to contemporary policing. This Article explores the societal roots of the creation of a Black symbolic assailant in contemporary American policing.

The construction of African-American men as symbolic assailants is one of the most important factors characterizing police …

Collective Experience: Race And Perceptions Of Christian Suffering Amongst College Students, Abbey Green

Honors College

This research sought to examine the relationship between race and perspectives of Christian suffering amongst college students. A total of 1073 respondents participated in a mixed methods survey. Results indicate that race amongst college students is not as influential on perspectives of Christian suffering as predicted. There was, however, a significant relationship (F=11.09) between race and college students’ level of agreement with God’s role of protection in suffering. Black students were most likely to agree that God protects Christians from suffering (x = 2.97), while White students were the least likely (x = 2.47). This data did not support the …

Does Race Matter? School Decision Making Among White, Latino, And Polynesian Families, Maria Daniela Barriga

Theses and Dissertations

Low-income parents value excellent schools, yet often enroll their children in low-performing schools. The literature is inconclusive when examining how low-income families go through school choice decisions. It is important to understand the school decision-making process among different racial groups because choosing a good school improves later academic outcomes. Choosing a good elementary school is especially important because this is a critical period in a child's development and can affect performance in subsequent educational institutions. I am interested in understanding how race/ethnicity shapes how low-income parents make decisions about schools. Using interview data from an extensive qualitative study, I examine …

Attitudes And General Knowledge Of Affirmative Action In Higher Education Admissions At One Historically Black University In Tennessee, James E. Peters

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine attitudes and general knowledge of Affirmative Action in higher education admissions at one HBCU in Tennessee. The researcher used a modified version of the Echols’s Affirmative Action Inventory (EAAI) to assess attitudes and general knowledge of all administrators, faculty, staff, and students at this institution. At the conclusion of the collection period, 269 surveys were deemed usable. Of these, 31 surveys were completed by administrators, faculty completed 62 surveys, 55 surveys were completed by staff, and 121 surveys were completed by students. The dependent variables for the study were individual survey questions …