The United States has a troubled history with race relations. African Americans have immeasurably experienced racism and racial oppression in various forms and in many sectors of the American society. One of the sectors that the racial inequalities of our past have affected is the employment sector. Many Americans experience the workplace on a daily basis and therefore experience the inequities that persist in such environments. This study explores African American experiences with race in the workplace and the way that race shapes today's workplace. Specifically, this study analyzes the experiences of African American professionals working at for-profit organizations and their perceptions of the way that race shapes their organization's culture. This study employs a constant comparative analysis of qualitative interviews using Critical Race Theory as a guide. The interviews explored the manner in which race, Diversity and Inclusion (DandI) programs, and communication affect organizational culture. The thesis further questions if and how organizations are working to create and sustain a more equitable workplace for all employees. The findings suggest that African American professionals perceive that their organizations are welcoming and inclusive of all minority groups. They also perceive the organizational culture to be friendly and family-oriented where open, positive, and encouraging communication exists. The professionals feel that their organizations are generally interested in diversity, however they feel the organization's engagement with diversity practices is not sufficient. The findings of this study could be used as a tool for organizations to reevaluate their diversity practices and to ensure that they are creating an equitable workplace. / Master of Arts / The inequalities caused by racism and the systematic oppression of African Americans in the United States are present in many areas of contemporary American life. African Americans are still faced with problems that stem from the country’s past with race and are affected by these problems in many ways. One area that African Americans must deal with race is the workplace. The inequalities that were created in the past have caused race to play a significant role in the way that African Americans experience the workplace. This study explored the experiences of African American professionals in the workplace and the way they perceive race to play a role in shaping their organization’s culture. The findings of the study explain that African American professionals perceive that race has a definite effect on their organization’s culture. The professionals believe that their organizations have a general interest for diversity, but they have not adequately addressed the lack of racial and ethnic diversity in the workplace. They reported that the organizations are inclusive and provide an environment where they can be productive and develop professionally. Today’s organizations have made a step in the right direction of diversity, but there is much work left to do.

There has been much debate over the nature of relations between the different ethnic and racial groups in the United States. Some argue that the United States is a genuinely multi-cultural nation where the opportunity for universal socio-political and economic advancement still exists. Others, however, paint America as a nation fundamentally split down a black'/'white' middle, despite the recent arrival of vast numbers of immigrants from Asia and Latin America and maintain that racially-determined discrimination has irrevocably undermined its pluralist ambitions. It is my belief that neither position offers an entirely accurate portrait of the nature of relations between different ethnic and racial groups, because neither offers a suitably complex and flexible model for boundary or identity construction. Using Bakhtin's theory of 'dialogics' I argue that detective fiction can provide this kind of model because the novel is "heteroglot" and as such reflects all the voices present in society, and the detective acts as a kind of cultural mediator who moves between and thus draws together the different racial and ethnic groups. I also explore the formal and thematic characteristics of detective fiction produced by writers of African-American, Chicano, Cuban and Jewish descent in order to establish how their experiences have been different. Yet, it is not my aim to seal off the various groups in pure ethnic enclaves; rather, to assess whether and where the areas of commonality exist. To this extent, I theorize 'race' and 'ethnicity' as overlapping yet diverging categories. I argue that the ethnic detective novel acknowledges this situation and offers a model for identity construction which both recognizes the extent of racial divisions but which is also flexible enough to acknowledge that significant group interplay does also take place.

After the dissolution of apartheid, racial classification has lost its official and legal validity in South Africa. However, race is still a prominent model for social organisation and racial identities continue to influence the lives of most, if not all, South Africans. The endurance of the social and material reality of blackness and whiteness has been closely examined by anthropologists and other researchers but what about those who do not necessarily conform to either one of these social categories? This thesis focuses on the Coloured population in South Africa, which during the time of apartheid, were officially classified as a separate racial grouping. Today, large parts of the Coloured population are distant descendants of ‘interracial relations’ between the Black, White and indigenous population. They are an extremely diverse group of people with root in many different parts of the world but their collective experience of social and spatial separation from the White and Black population has nevertheless generated a sense of community that continues to operate in post-apartheid South Africa.   Based on four months of fieldwork in South Africa, this thesis explores the concept of Coloured identity in an attempt to explain how this former racial category has been and still is, made into a socially relevant category in the informants’ lives. I also try to illustrate the very multifaceted and unstable notion of colouredness by examining the relationship between the informants’ racial identities and their class identities. This intersectional approach has allowed me to examine Coloured identity as a complex lived experience that reaches far beyond its initial function.

Though racial classifications may serve as a mechanism for identifying and correcting disparities among various groups, using such classifications in a clinical setting to detect and treat patient needs can be problematic. This report explores how medical professionals and researchers use race in health care for purposes of data collection, risk assessment, and diagnosis and treatment options. Using mixed race individuals as an example, it then discusses some of the problems associated with using race to group individuals, assess risk, and inform patient care. Finally, it discusses how certain components of personalized medicine, such as genetic testing, Electronic Health Records, and Rapid Learning Systems could help address some of the concerns that arise from the application of race in a health care setting. / text

Much of the research and writing about the neighborhood books of Ezra Jack Keats has centered on depictions of his character ‘Peter’ as a non-racial ‘every child,’ or on the role of play in his stories. This thesis analyzed Keats’s neighborhood books and his research for them within the context of race and class discourses of the 1960s and 1970s. This work used a racial literacy framework and drew on ideas about power inscribed in space and hierarchical representations in children’s picture books. This research found Keats’s neighborhood books and research materials function as a racial project by constructing a cultural memorial to the atmosphere of the great transformation (Omi & Winant, 1994) and to a systematically produced racialized and classed space (Hankins, et al, 2012). Findings indicate that future research is needed to consider spacial depictions of race and class in picture books, and that there is a need for place-based historical inquiry among elementary students. / text

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This thesis explores black West Indian activism in London between 1931-1948. It does so through a focus on those black West Indian activists who involved themselves in the work of four campaigning political organisations, namely, the League of Coloured Peoples (LCP), the International African Friends of Abyssinia (IAF A), the International African Service Bureau (IASB), and the Pan-African Federation (PAF). The thesis argues that the presence of, colonial subjects in 1930s and 1940s London contributed to a process of creoIisation, whereby complex internal and external colonial pressures worked to transform the imperial metropolis. The thesis therefore uses the study of black West Indian activists in Britain in order to trace the geographical networks, 'contact zones,' spaces and places through which this process ofcreolisation took place in 1930s and 1940s London. In order to do so, it focuses primarily on certain distinct modes of political practice in which the LCP, IAF A, IASB and PAF engaged. In particular, chapters focus on how these organisations sought to contest the racialisation of space in London and the wider empire through a range of attempts to open establishments which countered the prevailing colour bar; utilised public gatherings as sociable spaces in which diverse political work could be undertaken; and produced and circulated periodicals that provided a platform on which to debate the contours of the African diaspora and the fundamental features of modern racism and racially-based identities. The thesis also explores the relationship between these different modes of political practice through a study of the response of black West Indian activists in Britain to the Caribbean labour and social unrest of the 1930s. Overall, the thesis aims to contribute to the understanding of how the politics of race and empire were constituted in 1930s and 1940s London .

Black Americans experience poverty at disproportionately high rates that are concerning both because of the perils of poverty as well as the belief that one’s race should not affect one’s opportunities in life. This paper extends the Capability Approach and argues that basic needs play an important economic role in providing people with a minimum level of opportunity that allows them to avoid poverty. Using MSA-level data on basic needs access and poverty rates, this paper finds that increasing rates of homeownership, high school graduation, and car access as well as decreasing rates of disability are all significantly associated with lower poverty rates for Black Americans. However, the empirical results also show that higher rates of high school graduation and car access for White populations are associated with higher rates of Black poverty, likely due to spillover effects in the labor market that crowd out Black workers.