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Visions And Seeds Of Change : Pathways To Defining And Seeking Liberation, Ramon Kentrell Lee May 2022

Visions And Seeds Of Change : Pathways To Defining And Seeking Liberation, Ramon Kentrell Lee

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

From July 2015 to May 2018, the sociopolitical terrain and atmosphere of Albany, New York underwent significant shifts as the levels and types of activism and liberation discourse increased. The shifts were related to national occurrences, such as the development of the Black Lives Matter movement, the state of police brutality and state-sanctioned violence, the campaign and election of Donald J. Trump as the 45th President of the United State, and the emergence of the Me Too movement. During this period of change, activists engaged in a series of political struggles for situated identification and empowerment, the emergence of a …


The Last Step To Whiteness : American Jews, Civil Rights, And Assimilation, 1954-1988, Eric Morgenson Jan 2020

The Last Step To Whiteness : American Jews, Civil Rights, And Assimilation, 1954-1988, Eric Morgenson

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This dissertation examines the relationship between American Jews and African Americans through the prism of evolving Jewish whiteness. In the post-World War II period, American Jews were an outsider group that were moving into the mainstream. American Jews interested in assimilating tied themselves to the cause of African American civil rights in the 1950s and 1960s. This was partially motivated by a desire to help an oppressed minority work towards equality in the United States. However, it was also motivated in part by a desire to aid in their own assimilation process. The idea of creating a colorblind American society …


Black Trojans : The Free Black Community's Grassroots Abolition Campaign In Troy, New York Before 1861, Jennifer J. Thompson Burns Jan 2019

Black Trojans : The Free Black Community's Grassroots Abolition Campaign In Troy, New York Before 1861, Jennifer J. Thompson Burns

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This dissertation explores the evolution and trajectory of the abolition movement led by black men and women in Troy, New York, before 1861. At the grassroots level, black Trojan men and women claimed public spaces and founded societies and associations that simultaneously supported local black upliftment and laid the foundation from which a larger abolitionist network, within New York State and across state and national borders, was constructed. Through the operations of an “Aboveground Railroad” system that complimented the Underground Railroad system through Troy but focused on the movement of free people, as well as communications in abolition and black …


Race In The Galactic Age : Sankofa, Afrofuturism, Whiteness And Whitley Strieber, Clifton Zeno Johnson Jan 2019

Race In The Galactic Age : Sankofa, Afrofuturism, Whiteness And Whitley Strieber, Clifton Zeno Johnson

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Octavia Butler asked if black skin was so disruptive a force that the mere presence of it alters a story? In a post-colonial era, skin color remains a polarizing topic. While humans are still redefining perceptions about race, people across planet earth are opening up to the possibility of the existence of intelligent extraterrestrial life. This paper explores how the acknowledgment of a galactic presence would transform perceptions of whiteness. The experiences of the best-selling author and proclaimed contactee, Whitley Strieber, are used as case studies to analyze if Amero-European ingrained bias toward melanin would influence the western world’s interactions …


Now, Tomorrow, Forever The Persistence Of School Segregation In America, Dustin Connors Jan 2018

Now, Tomorrow, Forever The Persistence Of School Segregation In America, Dustin Connors

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision has long been heralded as a landmark ruling and as evidence of America's progress toward a more accepting and equitable society. What is less widely known outside of academic circles is the extent to which that ruling failed to provide the equality its supporters were seeking. Today, America is still wrestling with a crisis most of us thought long solved: the racial segregation within our school districts. In my documentary film entitled Now, Tomorrow, Forever: The Persistence of School Segregation in America, I will set out to explore the state …


Crossing The Post-Racial Color Line : A 'Novel' Approach To Exploring Whiteness, Blackness, And Passing In 21st Century America, Alissa Ssendawula Jan 2018

Crossing The Post-Racial Color Line : A 'Novel' Approach To Exploring Whiteness, Blackness, And Passing In 21st Century America, Alissa Ssendawula

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Muzungu is a novel about a white woman who denies her whiteness by passing and even identifying as a black woman, even as she maintains a contentious relationship with her white mother. The plot is revealed through the point of view of the adult, “black” Rachel, but from the very beginning, much of what she gives the reader are memories from her white childhood, memories involving two key experiences in her youth, experiences that provide her with her first awareness of herself as a white girl. The first is her discovery of a lynching postcard in her great-grandmother’s cellar. Her …


Bridging The Stereotypical Gap From The Past To The Present : An Analysis Of African American Stereotypes Through The Boondocks, Tiffany Addo Jan 2017

Bridging The Stereotypical Gap From The Past To The Present : An Analysis Of African American Stereotypes Through The Boondocks, Tiffany Addo

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The purpose of this thesis is to discuss and identify African American stereotypes that contain both negative and positive connotations. These stereotypes have origins that date back to the Pre-Slavery Era. Regardless of the lapse in time, the stereotypes have only adapted and found a place in the world we live in today. I use these stereotypes and analyze them through a show called The Boondocks. Within the show, Aaron McGruder (the writer and producer of the first three seasons) makes it a point to present his audience with a satirical representation of all these known stereotypes through the main …


Seeing Color In Black And White : New York Defines Its Color Line In Ridgway V. Cockburn In 1937, Nicholas A. Soares Jan 2016

Seeing Color In Black And White : New York Defines Its Color Line In Ridgway V. Cockburn In 1937, Nicholas A. Soares

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This thesis examines the role Ridgway v. Cockburn played in exposing the “Negro race” as a subjective experience rather than a definitive label. Blacks in the 20th century were seen as undesirable. The NAACP fought for blacks’s rights to property and justice in the courts. Racially restrictive covenants became a popular method used by whites to keep blacks out of their neighborhoods. Arthur Garfield Hays, a white lawyer, defended the Cockburns as they moved into Edgemont Hills, a white elite neighborhood.


Archaeological Analysis Of The Construction Of Identity In An African American Activist Community, Corey Mcquinn Jan 2013

Archaeological Analysis Of The Construction Of Identity In An African American Activist Community, Corey Mcquinn

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The legacy of slavery in Albany created a racialized landscape and economy that marginalized African Americans in the years leading up to manumission in 1827 and beyond. A small enclave of African American families on Livingston Avenue provided a study group for how marginalized individuals create, maintain, and abandon urban communities. In addition, individuals in the group demonstrated well-documented involvement in the local Vigilance Committee, providing an opportunity to examine activism as a factor in the construction of racial and cultural identity. The study of identity construction on multiple scales has been pursued by anthropologists, but rarely in archaeology beyond …


The Effect Of Acculturation And Ethnic Identity On Perceived Racism In African American And Black West Indian Populations, Jerome Farrell Jan 2011

The Effect Of Acculturation And Ethnic Identity On Perceived Racism In African American And Black West Indian Populations, Jerome Farrell

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Black Americans comprise 14% of the total population in the U.S. (U.S. Census, 2010), and describes a diverse group of people with many different unique challenges and struggles based upon their specific cultural or ethnic group. Black Americans not only include African Americans but people of African descent from the Caribbean or the African Continent. The difference in country of origin and the subsequent culture of these different groups have led to a rich cultural diversity among Black Americans. This study examined the different cultural experiences of Black Americans.


White Institutional Presence : The Impact Of Whiteness On Campus Climate & The Relational Context Of White Institutional Presence, Diane Lynn Gusa Jan 2009

White Institutional Presence : The Impact Of Whiteness On Campus Climate & The Relational Context Of White Institutional Presence, Diane Lynn Gusa

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This dissertation purports to offer a new lens on the retention puzzle of African-Americans in Predominately White Institutions. The purpose of this paper is to notice the properties of a PWI and analyzes the relational context these properties create for its African-American undergraduates. This dissertation is formatted into two sections. The first section frames, examines, and theorizes the "racism effect" in higher education - the "ways in which race and racism explicitly and implicitly impact on the educational structures, processes, and discourses that affect people of color" (LatCrit Primer, 2000, p. xx). I maintain that African-Americans' experiences of marginalization and …


Translating The Transatlantic : West African Literary Approaches To African American Identity, Kelly Opal Secovnie Jan 2009

Translating The Transatlantic : West African Literary Approaches To African American Identity, Kelly Opal Secovnie

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

My dissertation, Translating the Transatlantic: West African Literary Approaches to African American Identity, takes a literary-historical approach to the question of Anglophone West African conceptions of African American identity, an often overlooked topic. It represents an important intervention in the fields of African diaspora and African literary studies, both of which continue to suffer from a US-centric view of Africa, and supplements work done in postcolonial theory and cultural studies to include West African conceptions of cultural translation. My project also examines numerous plays by Ghanaian and Nigerian playwrights to understand the ways that African American characters and culture are …


"Keep Going" : African Americans On The Road In The Era Of Jim Crow, Gretchen Sullivan Sorin Jan 2009

"Keep Going" : African Americans On The Road In The Era Of Jim Crow, Gretchen Sullivan Sorin

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

"Keep Going": African Americans on the Road in the Era of Jim Crow