Inequality and Stratification Commons^™

The Torch (February 2018), Crtp

Torch: The Civil Rights Team Project Newsletter

Civic and Community Engagement | Civil Rights and Discrimination | Education | Gender and Sexuality | Inequality and Stratification | Politics and Social Change | Public Policy | Race and Ethnicity

Recommended Citation

Baldwin, Brandon and Civil Rights Team Project, "Torch (August 2013)" (2013). Torch: The Civil Rights Team Project Newsletter. 58. http://digitalcommons.usm.maine.edu/torch/58

Donne, Emigrazione E Prostituzione In Europa: Non Si Tratta Di “Sex Work”, Anna Zobnina, Chiara Carpita

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

Theoretical Explanations Of Jyoshi Kousei Business ("Jk Business") In Japan, Mutsumi Ogaki

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

Jyoshi kousei (JK) means high school girls in Japanese and “JK business” is an umbrella term for commercial activities done by high school girls to provide male customers with sexual arousal. The “JK business” is considered to promote sexual exploitation or sexual assault of minors. Currently, only two prefectures out of 47 in Japan enforce ordinances that specifically regulate the “JK business.” This paper intends to explore possible theoretical explanations of the “JK business” to raise awareness on the issue. Gendered pathways theory and sexual script theory are selected as the primary source of the discussions. Policy implications and future …

Exploring The Roots Of Chronic Underdevelopment: The Colonial Encomienda And Resguardo And Their Legacy To Modern Colombia, Pedro Bossio

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Colombian society has been historically marked by socioeconomic inequality, restricted social mobility, and institutional weakness. In order to understand the reasons for the country´s continuous struggle to achieve inclusive economic progress and stability since its independence from Spain in 1819, it is necessary to understand its colonial history. Central to this were the two most important colonial economic institutions, the encomienda and the resguardo, both designed for the exploitation of unfree Indian labor. Even when these were slowly replaced by more modern haciendas worked by free farm workers, the economic and political life of the country continued to be …

Are You Supporting White Supremacy?, Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt

Faculty Publications

Dr. Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt, professor of English at Linfield College, provides an opinion piece in the form of a checklist of 15 “troubles” she has identified to help others in academe recognize (un)conscious contributions to white supremacy.

This essay originally appeared as part of Conditionally Accepted, a career advice blog for Inside Higher Ed providing news, information, personal stories, and resources for scholars who are, at best, conditionally accepted in academe. Conditionally Accepted is an anti-racist, pro-feminist, pro-queer, anti-transphobic, anti-fatphobic, anti-ableist, anti-ageist, anti-classist, and anti-xenophobic online community.

An Ambivalent Embrace: Service Needs And Gaps For Asian Immigrants In New Destinations, John J. Chin

Journal of Health Disparities Research and Practice

Asian immigrants to the U.S. are settling in "new destinations," but there has been little research on their health care and social service needs. Our analysis of Census data to identify cities with the fastest Asian immigrant population growth (1990-2000) yielded 33 smaller cities in 13 states. The cities ranged in population from 7,677 to 86,660; were spread across 13 states in the Northeast, South, and Midwest regions of the US; and varied widely demographically. Pilot surveys conducted in 2009 indicated that, although many residents had positive attitudes towards immigrants, many were also concerned about job competition and dilution of …

Incarceration Rates And Single Motherhood, Ethan Zurbrugg, Colt Hall

Student Scholarship - College of Business

Traditionally, the family unit consists of a mother, a father, and one or more children. There are many instances throughout the United States where this traditional family structure is not found. One of these situations, the single motherhood situation, occurs when a father figure is absent and the mother has to provide for her children on her own. Could the lack of a father figure in a child’s life cause them to be more likely to break the law and become incarcerated? Is there a causation between a state’s single motherhood rate and their incarceration rate, or are the two …

In All Fairness: Two Decades Of Cedaw And The State Of Gender Equality In Singapore, Ning Qian

Social Space

In an inclusive society, all women would have equal opportunities as men to participate socially, politically and economically. They would be valued and recognised as individuals in their own right and not primarily defi ned by their marital and reproductive status. Has this been achieved in Singapore? Contrary to common belief, the nation still has some ways to go in this regard, for signifi cant groups of women in Singapore continue to be marginalised and disadvantaged.

What Is My Role In Changing The System? A New Model Of Responsibility For Structural Injustice, Robin Zheng

Women's and Gender Studies Program: Faculty Publications

What responsibility do individuals bear for structural injustice? Iris Marion Young has offered the most fully developed account to date, the Social Connections Model. She argues that we all bear responsibility because we each causally contribute to structural processes that produce injustice. My aim in this article is to motivate and defend an alternative account that improves on Young’s model by addressing five fundamental challenges faced by any such theory. The core idea of what I call the Role-Ideal Model is that we are each responsible for structural injustice through and in virtue of our social roles, i.e. our roles …

Social Conflict On The Seas: Links Between Overfishing-Induced Marine Fish Stock Declines And Forced Labor Slavery, Jessica L. Sparks

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Despite media attention detailing labor abuses in fisheries, social-ecological systems research has largely failed to consider whether fish stock declines could be contributing to increases in forced labor slavery. Empirical fisheries data suggests, though not a ubiquitous response to declining stocks, many vessels will fish longer, farther from shore, and deeper in waters to maintain yields. This effort intensification increases production costs, and Brashares et al. (2014), consistent with slavery theory, posited cheap and/or unpaid labor as an approach to offset increasing costs and continue harvesting fish species at a rate otherwise cost-prohibitive.

Using fuzzy cognitive mapping - a participatory, …

Let’S Escape Into The Music: A Cross-Generational Oral History Of Orlando Lgbtq+ Spaces, Hannah Powell

Honors Program Theses

Since Orlando’s first gay bar, The Palace Club, opened in 1969, LGBTQ+ spaces have played an essential role in the Orlando queer community. They have acted as loci of gathering, solidarity, identity-formation, recreation, and even healing. There is an absence of literature on the LGBTQ+ community in Orlando and, more generally, in Central Florida as a whole. The legacy of LGBTQ+ spaces in Orlando is worthy of study due both to the city’s rich queer history and Orlando’s singular experience of the deadliest act of hate-motivated violence against the LGBTQ+ community in the history of the United States. Through documenting …

Examining Jordanians' Attitudes Towards Five Types Of Developmental Disabilities, Najah Zaaeed, Mohammad Mohammad, Peter Gleason, Khaled A. Bahjri, Naomi Modeste

Public Health, Food Studies, and Nutrition

Background: The diagnosis and reported rates of persons with developmental disabilities (PWDDs) in Jordan is steadily increasing. Although initiatives have been implemented to improve the lives of PWDDs, attitudes towards PWDDs hinder successful inclusion in the Jordanian society.

Objectives: To examine the relationship between Jordanians socio-economic status and attitudes towards persons with developmental disabilities: autism, blindness, cerebral palsy, Down syndrome and muscular dystrophy.

Methods: Jordanians (N=259), ages 18-65 were recruited for this convergent parallel, mixed-methods study. Participants completed the modified 40-item Community Living Attitude Scale-developmental disability (CLAS-DD) and the modified Intellectual Disability Literacy Scale consisting of five vignettes, representing each …

Inequalities In Us Child Protection: The Case Of Sex Trafficked Youth, Lisa Werkmeister Rozas, Jason Ostrander, Megan Feely

School of Social Work Faculty Publications

This article demonstrates how structural social work theory and critical consciousness development can be used to help facilitate a transition from a deficit model approach to an inequities perspective in a child welfare system that was working to improve the identification of and services for domestic minor sex trafficked youth (DMST). The response of Connecticut’s child welfare system to the issue of DMST is provided as an example of how a child welfare systems could apply an inequities perspective to a population involved in and at risk for exploitation. Structural social work theory helps illustrate how neo-liberalist social structures in …

Housing And Community Development, Yana Kucheva

Open Educational Resources

No abstract provided.

Transforming The Classroom At Traditionally White Institutions To Make Black Lives Matter, Frank Truitt, Chayla Haynes, Saran Stewart

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

In recent years, many college campuses across the United States witnessed a significant increase in campus activism regarding the range of experiences and conditions facing racially minoritized communities in higher education. As critical and inclusive pedagogues and scholars, we embrace the belief that a focus on making Black Lives Matter in the classrooms of traditionally White institutions (TWIs) provides educators with the best chance to improve the educational outcomes of all students. In this essay, we examine seven principles of critical and inclusive pedagogies that have the potential to make Black Lives Matter in TWI classrooms and identify several implications …

Predictive Analytics In The Criminal Justice System: Media Depictions And Framing, Kar Mun Cheng

Honors Program Theses

Artificial intelligence and algorithms are increasingly becoming commonplace in crime-fighting efforts. For instance, predictive policing uses software to predetermine criminals and areas where crime is most likely to happen. Risk assessment software are employed in sentence determination and other courtroom decisions, and they are also being applied towards prison overpopulation by assessing which inmates can be released. Public opinion on the use of predictive software is divided: many police and state officials support it, crediting it with lowering crime rates and improving public safety. Others, however, have questioned its effectiveness, citing civil liberties concerns as well as the possibility of …

Poverty And Inequality, Yana Kucheva

Open Educational Resources

No abstract provided.

Indigenous-Led Resistance To Environmental Destruction: Methods Of Anishinaabe Land Defense Against Enbridge's Line 3, Charlotte Degener Hughes

Pitzer Senior Theses

Enbridge has proposed the Line 3 “Replacement” Project, a new pipeline project taking a new route strait through Anishinaabe treaty territory in what is known as northern Minnesota. In the middle of the regulation process, the future remains unclear of how the State of Minnesota will move forward with the permitting process, but Anishinaabe communities, a range of non-profit organizations, and local landowners remain firmly against the line. Rooted in varied frameworks of Native sovereignty, the land, and Indigenous feminism, Anishinaabe communities lead the resistance against a product of ongoing settler colonialism, racial capitalism, and environmental racism. This thesis contextualizes …

Rental Market Discrimination Against Same-Sex Couples: Evidence From An Email Correspondence Audit, David Schwegman

Center for Policy Research

I present the results of a randomized pair-email correspondence audit of 6,490 property owners in 94 U.S. cities to provide a nationally-representative estimate of the level of discrimination that same-sex couples experience when inquiring about rental housing. I find that same-sex male couples, especially non-White same-sex male couples, are less likely to receive a response to inquiries about rental units. I also find that same-sex male Black couples are subject to more subtle forms of discrimination than heterosexual Black couples. I also examine if state and local anti-discrimination laws covary with rates of housing discrimination against same-sex couples. While my …

Paid Parental Leave In The United States: Reconciling Competing Demands, Sydney Joseph

CMC Senior Theses

The United States is the only developed nation that fails to provide its citizens with paid parental leave. The lack of parental benefit provision operates to the detriment of individuals and society as a whole by contributing to inequity across gender, race, socioeconomic status, and sexual orientation. As the demographics of the American workforce have changed, public policy has not kept pace. Paid parental leave is associated a number of health, economic, and social benefits. However, the greatest barrier to legislating paid parental leave is the philosophical underpinnings of American politics, specifically the strong current of liberal individualism and absence …

The Long Environmental Justice Movement, Jedediah Purdy

Faculty Scholarship

The standpoint of environmental justice has become integral to environmental law in the last thirty years. Environmental justice criticizes mainstream environmental law and advocacy institutions on three main fronts: for paying too little attention to the distributive effects of environmental policy; for emphasizing elite and professional advocacy over participation in decision making by affected communities; and for adhering to a woods-and-waters view of which problems count as “environmental” that disregards the importance of neighborhoods, workplaces, and cities. This Article highlights the existence of a “long environmental justice movement” that, like the long movements for racial equality and labor organizing, put …

It Takes A Village-Schooling Out Of Place: School Experiences Of Black African Youth In Waterloo Region, Olufunke Oba 5726040

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This dissertation examined experiences of alienation among Black African youth in Waterloo region schools. This study is timely and relevant considering the rapid influx of Black Africans into the region in response to government initiatives to redirect immigrants to smaller communities. The research addressed the dearth of scholarship on experiences of Black Africans outside the major metropolitan areas by employing Afrocentric and critical race theories to explore relationships between race and youth experiences of alienation. The dissertation study utilized elder facilitated youth dialogue forum (adaptation of focus group) and in-depth storytelling (which honours African orality) to access the meanings seventeen …

California As A “Blue-Print’ For Progressive Immigration Reform?: Uncovering Racial Liberalism To Expose Reconfigured Anti-Migrant Hegemony, Edith Jaicel Ortega

Scripps Senior Theses

Using the frames of analysis and language of political whiteness and anti-migrant hegemony, this paper examines the narrative of liberal immigration reformers transforming California’s political landscape within the period of 1994 to 2017. Taken as case studies the following articles of legislation are analyzed: Proposition 187 in 1994, the California Dream Act in 2010, the Trust Act in 2014, up to the present Senate Bill 54 in 2017. The paper finds that while California has experienced a recognizable shift in racial liberalism in rhetoric and legislation, its overall policy continues to work within the framework of anti-migrant hegemony that functions …

The Educational Opportunity Structure And Stratification Of College Counseling At Southern California Public High Schools, Adriana Ceron

Pitzer Senior Theses

This study documents how organizational strategies underlying college counseling departments modify counselors’ ability to perform their academic and college advising duties. To examine this, fifteen semi-structured, in-depth interviews with public high school counselors in Southern California were conducted. A district’s commitment to college access and opportunity, as well as parents’ expectations for maintaining a college-going culture, shaped the nature of college counseling and organizational habitus in a school. Counselors reported that access to different forms of institutional support and resources diminish or exacerbate the structural constraints known to surface in public schools. This influenced when and how counselors advised students, …

Increasing Inclusion: The Pursuit Of Racial Diversity In Three Historically White Universities In Kentucky, Michigan, And Ontario From 2000 To 2012, David J. Luke

Theses and Dissertations--Sociology

The University of Kentucky (UK) and University of Michigan (UM) present very different patterns in terms of black student enrollments and completions from 2000 to 2012 because of a structural explanation, a qualitative explanation, and a statistical explanation. Unfortunately, the patterns at the University of Western Ontario (UWO) are partial due to a lack of data.

First, the structural explanation is that UK, as a university in the state of Kentucky, was under a mandate from the U.S. Department of Education to desegregate because they were in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. The Kentucky Council on …

The Criminalization Of Poverty: The Impact Of Cash Bail System On Black Women In New Orleans, Salome Kushindana

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Research on bail practices has shown that most of the people are in jail because of their inability to pay bail set by the court. A 2016 study by the Vera Institute of Justice concluded that the use of the cash bail system disproportionately impacts poor black people in Orleans Parish Prison, the entity that serves as the principal driver of the mass incarceration. With a focus on poor black people in Orleans Parish Prison, the experiences of the impact of the cash bail system on poor black women are still missing.

Using semi-structured interviews and qualitative method of data …

Symptomatic Leadership In Business Instruction: How To Finally Teach Diversity And Inclusion For Lasting Change, Linda L. Ridley

Publications and Research

Are business faculty complicit in mythologizing business concepts by ignoring historical precedence?

The refusal to examine in totality the history of discrimination and racism allows us to perpetuate a mythology of white supremacy that is enhanced through impotent diversity programs repeated throughout corporate America. This paper examines the importance of demythologizing the business curriculum through symptomatic thinking, which allows faculty and students to untangle the quagmire of diversity and inclusion in corporate America. Students are thereby equipped with tools for behavior transformation in the workplace that uses a symptomatic, rather than symbolic approach, to decision making and problem solving.

[2018 Honorable Mention] Euro-American Sex Tourism In The Caribbean, Bianca Figueroa

Ethnic Studies Research Paper Award

The focus of this paper is sex tourism in the Caribbean, more specifically on Euro-American white women traveling for sexual relationships with Caribbean men. I will be analyzing these relationships through an intersectional approach by race, gender, and socioeconomic perspectives. The key point of my paper is to gain insight into the complicated sex for money 'relationships' and how they exist in places such as the Caribbean.

Adolescent Girls' Voices On Enhancing Their Own Productivity In Pakistan, Iram Kamran, Tahira Parveen, Maqsood Sadiq, Rehan M. Niazi

Poverty, Gender, and Youth

This study was conducted in the Punjab province of Pakistan to examine the lives, aspirations, and perspectives of the largely invisible and marginalized group of older adolescent girls (ages 15–19 years) who are “not in education, employment for pay or profit, nor in marriage” (“NEEM”). The study seeks to identify the reasons for the exclusion of the NEEM girls from education and participation in paid work; explore opportunities and avenues for changing these girls’ existing opportunity structures; and probe the gender norms and behaviors underlying their marginalization to obtain insights into what it would take to change their situation.

Residential Solar In Washington State, Sam Pfeifer

All Master's Theses

Electricity generated through residential solar provides a low carbon source of electricity. However, diffusion of residential solar remains low across the United States. Growing this diffusion takes an understanding of localized uptake trends, which can focus policy and business efforts to help increase residential solar market penetration. This is the first research to investigate residential solar uptake in Washington State and to examine environmental education as a potential driver of residential solar uptake. Through a snapshot analysis which considers environmental, economic, education, and cultural variables the present research fills this gap. Triangulated results include mapping of variables, ordinary-least squares multiple …