Yes / Title in attached file differs from final published title.

This thesis explores the intersections between practices of epistemic production and distribution and material violence. Following the work of Sylvia Wynter, a framework of "genre" is engaged to provide an account of intersectional social identities, disproportionately distributed hegemonic violence (including both state and non-state actants), and the traditions and technologies of anti-colonial theoretical modeling, material praxis, and political work engendered by the rich, interdisciplinary body of Black Feminist thought. To address the continued practices of social, political, and material violence which sustain the Wynterian onto-epistemological "Overrepresentation of Man," an emergent archipelagic politics of heterogenous coalition-building presents a viable path of becoming for liberatory political projects. / Master of Arts / Racialized violence and state violence against racial minorities enjoys a long history within the United States and remains a topic of both popular controversy and political urgency. In more recent years, owing in part to several high-profile cases which have managed to garner significant media attention, a cultural conversation has emerged around topics such as representation, cultural biases, police brutality and militarization, and the Black Lives Matter movement (among others) has managed to inject popular American discourses on race with a more pointed critical edge. While cases of Black men’s unjust deaths have galvanized much of this revitalized political discourse, Patrisse Khan-Cullors reminds us that Black Lives Matter is not “just about boys and the police,” but rather addresses a problem which is part of a deeper systematic intersection of race, sex/gender, class and so on. Sylvia Wynter’s concept of “genre” provides a framework through which to explore these and other intersections, account for racialized violence, and to think toward the political work required to move toward a more liberatory and just frame of social existence.

This study builds on previous research that demonstrated that disabled men and racial/ethnic minority men are more likely than non-disabled white men to work in female-dominated occupations, while at the same time not reaping the same privileges in those occupations as non-disabled white men do. Using an intersectional approach and a large, nationally representative dataset, this study explores how race, gender, and disability intersect to sort workers into occupations. It also examines how advantage and disadvantage cluster with regards to income inequality within and across occupation types. My research finds that disability has an impact on how people are sorted into occupations; however, that impact varies with race as well as by gender. In addition, disability leads to income disadvantages for disabled white men, but has no additional impact on the earnings of white women and racial/ethnic minority men and women. Race has a larger impact on the earnings of racial/ethnic minority men than on racial /ethnic minority women; the latter are already disadvantaged based on their gender. Class, measured by education and professional occupation, had the strongest impact on workplace outcomes both occupation and income for Hispanic men. / Ph. D.

Thesis advisor: Lauri Johnson / Research has indicated that hiring and retaining educators of color can positively impact students of color, as educators of color have the capacity to be social justice change agents (Villegas & Davis, 2007), serve as strong role models for students of color (Ingersoll & May, 2011), promote culturally responsive curriculum (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995), and positively impact student achievement (Ahmad & Boser, 2014; Dee, 2004). However, there is a significant gap in the existing research on how educators of color perceive the impact of their racial/ethnic identity on their work in the classroom. This qualitative case study sought to answer how educators of color perceive the impact of their racial and/or ethnic identity on their relationships with students, their instructional practices, and the reduction of cultural bias in their school. It was part of a larger group case study that sought to capture the perceptions of educators of color related to racial disproportionality and its impact on the educator pipeline and schools. Data was collected through semi-structured face-to-face interviews and the administration of the Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure protocol with educators of color in the Cityside Public School District. Data was examined through the lens of Critical Race Theory (CRT), specifically the tenets of permanence of racism, critique of liberalism, and counter storytelling. Findings support that the majority of the participants interviewed have a strong sense of belonging to their racial and/or ethnic group. Moreover, educators of color perceive that they serve as positive role models, provide students of color with culturally responsive pedagogy, and offer counter narratives that combat stereotyping. / Thesis (EdD) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education.

Thesis advisor: Zine Magubane / Interviews with 20 members of Black female-White male intimate couples were conducted and, utilizing a grounded theory approach, revealed multiple situations where members of these couples had to self-disclose to others that they were romantically involved with a person of a different race. Using one of the largest study samples to date of Black female-White male couples, I demonstrate how race and gender affect these unplanned and strategic self-disclosure events that members of these couples engage in, and how members of these couples make sense of these public inquires that are the remnants of our country's racially-charged history. I argue that the ways in which privilege is uniquely distributed within these relationships -- where White men simultaneously possess racial and gender privilege and Black women possess neither -- makes these couples structurally and fundamentally different than other interracial couples, and, ultimately, exemplifies that race and gender matter in the experiences of these couples and how society-at-large views them. Therefore, it is pivotal that experiences of interracial couples are not generalized and that each race and gender pairing receives its own individualized study. / Thesis (MA) — Boston College, 2013. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Sociology.

Research on racism in Australia by white psychologists is often fraught with tensions surrounding a) accounting for privilege, b) the depiction of particular racial minorities, and c) how individual acts of racism are understood. Nowhere is this more evident than in research that focuses on the relationship between Indigenous and white Australians. Such research, as this thesis will demonstrate, has at times failed to provide an account of the ongoing acts of racism that shape the discipline of psychology, and which thus inform how white psychologists in Australia write about Indigenous people. As a counter to this, I outline in this thesis an alternate approach to understanding racism in Australia, one that focuses on the ways in which racism is foundational to white subjectivities in Australia, and one that understands white violence against Indigenous people as an ongoing act. In order to explicate these points, and to examine what they mean in relation to white claims to belonging in Australia, I employ psychoanalytic concepts within a framework of critical psychology in order to develop an account of racism which, whilst drawing on the insights afforded by social constructionist approaches to racism and subjectivity, usefully extends such approaches in order to understand their import for examining racism in Australia. More specifically, I demonstrate how racism in Australia displays what Hook (2005) refers to as a 'psychic life of colonial power', one that implicates all people in histories of racism, and one that highlights the collective psychical nature of racism, rather than understanding it as an individual act. In the analyses that follow from this framework I demonstrate how white privilege and its corollary - the disavowal of Indigenous sovereignty - are warranted by white Australians. To do this, I engage in a textual analysis of empirical data, focusing on both the everyday talk of white Australians as gathered via focus groups and a speech by Prime Minister Howard. In particular, I highlight how claims by white Australians to 'doing good' for Indigenous people (what I refer to as 'benevolence') may in fact be seen to evidence one particular moment where the originary violence of colonisation is yet again played out in the name of the white nation. More specifically, and following Ahmed (2004), I suggest that claims to 'anti-racism' may be seen as 'non-performatives' - they do not require white Australians to actually challenge our unearned privilege, nor to examine how we are located within racialised networks of power. In contrast to this, I sketch out an approach to examining racism, both within the discipline of psychology and beyond, that is accountable for ongoing histories of colonial violence, which acknowledges the role that the discipline often continues to play in the legitimation of race, and which is willing to address the relationship that white Australians are already in with Indigenous Australians. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--School of Psychology, 2005.

This thesis explores race and gender differences in perceptions and behaviors regarding weight and obesity, along with the relative influence of individual and structural factors on the personal weight status of black and white adults. In addition, this study examines the extent to which black and white adults differ in their perceptions of discrimination attributed to their personal weight. Based on an analysis of data from a national poll conducted by ABC News and TIME magazine, results indicate that weight status perceptions of overweight black females were consistent, while incongruity was found in perceived and actual weight status among obese black women. On the other hand, a greater proportion of obese white women under-assessed their weight status compared to obese black women. However, regardless of race, men were more likely to under-assess their weight than women. There were no differences by race and gender in reports of having felt discriminated against because of personal weight status. Findings also revealed that black females and males face greater constraints than their white counterparts related to controlling weight and fighting obesity, including such factors as a lack of information on how to establish good eating habits, the need to monitor food content, and being able to afford the cost of purchasing healthy food. A discussion of these findings in relation to previous research is provided along with recommendations for further study.

This thesis compares the political development of racial categories employed by the United States, Canada and Great Britain on their national censuses, particularly focusing on the enumeration of mixed-race individuals in the late 20th century. Though literature on race and the U.S. census often stresses the causal influence of social mobilization, this analysis reveals that the common explanations for the development of racial classifications such as interest group mobilization, demography and civil rights legislation are not viable in comparative context. To explore and explain how the racial state sees, this thesis conceptualizes race as a system of power relations and develops a framework of the schematic state, which operates concurrently as both an actor responsible for putting the underlying organizational pattern of race into place, solidifying a particular set of racial meanings, and implementing a scheme for the racial configuration of society, and an arena in which policy alternatives are contested and where the state itself participates among other actors. This characterization demonstrates that the schematizing impetus of the census is not an exemplar of a dichotomous relationship between an all-powerful state and powerless racial subjects; instead, the power and meaning of race exist well beyond the control of the fragmented and sometimes contradictory schematic state, from the transnational realm to the level of the group or individual. Contrary to the majority of the literature on race, this thesis demonstrates that state institutions do not act for purely domestic reasons; rather, institutions mediate between national nuances and transnational ideas about race that exist in excess of national boundaries. Thus, while the decision to count mixed-race can be explained by a crystallization of transnational ideational trends that are mediated by national politics, the domestic arena of policy making – or the policy network itself – emerges as a key factor that determines the method of multiracial enumeration. However, these domestic political and policy outcomes are not contained by borders. Once a policy is in place, it has the potential to reinforce domestic policy and contribute to the global discourse of race itself – and in its travels among these levels of abstraction, race transforms.

This thesis compares the political development of racial categories employed by the United States, Canada and Great Britain on their national censuses, particularly focusing on the enumeration of mixed-race individuals in the late 20th century. Though literature on race and the U.S. census often stresses the causal influence of social mobilization, this analysis reveals that the common explanations for the development of racial classifications such as interest group mobilization, demography and civil rights legislation are not viable in comparative context. To explore and explain how the racial state sees, this thesis conceptualizes race as a system of power relations and develops a framework of the schematic state, which operates concurrently as both an actor responsible for putting the underlying organizational pattern of race into place, solidifying a particular set of racial meanings, and implementing a scheme for the racial configuration of society, and an arena in which policy alternatives are contested and where the state itself participates among other actors. This characterization demonstrates that the schematizing impetus of the census is not an exemplar of a dichotomous relationship between an all-powerful state and powerless racial subjects; instead, the power and meaning of race exist well beyond the control of the fragmented and sometimes contradictory schematic state, from the transnational realm to the level of the group or individual. Contrary to the majority of the literature on race, this thesis demonstrates that state institutions do not act for purely domestic reasons; rather, institutions mediate between national nuances and transnational ideas about race that exist in excess of national boundaries. Thus, while the decision to count mixed-race can be explained by a crystallization of transnational ideational trends that are mediated by national politics, the domestic arena of policy making – or the policy network itself – emerges as a key factor that determines the method of multiracial enumeration. However, these domestic political and policy outcomes are not contained by borders. Once a policy is in place, it has the potential to reinforce domestic policy and contribute to the global discourse of race itself – and in its travels among these levels of abstraction, race transforms.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 326-333). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.