This study examines the politics of redress in South Africa's private sector and the implication of race based affirmative action for a society in the throes of national reconciliation. Renewed racial classifications to eliminate the legacy of past racism seem to contradict the official state ideology of colour-blind nonracialism. Resentment among some whites on whose skills and loyalty a growing economy also relies, makes affirmative action a most divisive issue. Unlike most other countries in which minorities are targeted, in South Africa a previously disenfranchised majority is the beneficiary of preferential labour policies. Quite distinct from North American quotas for minorities, South African unions aim at transforming the workplace of the undertrained majority, which contrasts with business visions characterised by black advancement in management and ethnic diversity on company boards. However, even this initial window-dressing exercise for political expediency encounters resistance among a colonial establishment that still equates promotion of the previously disadvantaged with lowering standards. The changing discourse about affirmative action is probed through written surveys among two hundred business executives, focus groups, more in-depth personal interviews, and participant observation at selected companies in South Africa between 1992-97. An increased readiness to broaden the recruitment pool emerged among white male executives and would seem to have been triggered by the changed political power relations. This "anticipatory compliance" to potential legislation is justified with different motivations but is still driven by economic considerations rather than moral concerns about past neglect. Keeping up with the "black image" of competitors in securing government contracts or penetrating a township market with higher purchasing power spurs even traditionally conservative firms to vie for black managers. They are poached and head-hunted with generous inducements, at the expense of training the broader spectrum of black workers at a lower level. The unique current South African debate about redress is compared with its historical precedents of Afrikaner job reservation and "civilized labour policies", as well as the international experience with preferential hiring in the US, Canada, India and Malaysia. The recent backlash against affirmative action in the US, together with the assertion of counter-productive effects on beneficiaries, is evaluated against the South African case. The literature is divided as to what extent recipients of affirmative action experience self-doubt and low self-esteem. The label "affirmative action beneficiary" is said to stigmatize minorities not considered as having achieved status on merit. However, the vast majority of recipients of affirmative action probed in this research did not consider themselves passive recipients of company largesse, but instead perceived themselves as having rightly earned their place in the accelerated business training program. Far from victimising themselves by claiming compensatory preferential treatment, the respondents in this sample of black management students proudly insist on their past individual achievements as entitlement to their career. This finding contradicts the conventional wisdom among critics, that appointees on merit differ from affirmative action appointees in their approach to work. While a new rapidly growing black elite who least needs affirmative action, nonetheless benefits most from racial preference policies in senior management, the majority of impoverished and unemployed are not affected by these policies at all. To avoid the danger of racialised competition, a policy of non-racial, class-based affirmative action is suggested as the most feasible way to facilitate reconciliation.

This research argues that the lack of African American women in science careers is the result of a nuanced and complicated process and can only be adequately addressed through consideration of multiple levels of discourse. Specifically, a better understanding of macro level discourses that are present in and circulated through schools and work to position African American girls in ways that are outside of science learning is necessary. This research used a critical ethnographic approach to explore the science experiences of African American middle school girls. Data were collected on the macro (school wide), meso (classroom and after school program), and micro (individual) level. Critical discourse analysis was used to explore what macro-level discourses were circulated at the school, how these discourses impacted the seventh grade science class and after school program, and how individual students negotiated these discourses. Results indicated that the privileged Discourses (identities) in the classroom actually worked to position students outside of science and that a focus on accountability, control, and order, with a lack of discourses of authentic engagement in science, led to students equating a science person with a good student.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / Sport has both uniting and dividing features, often manifesting contradictory outcomes in terms of conflict or co-operation. Sport is a social construct and its role and function depends largely on what society makes of it, and how it is consumed by society. If sport’s potential is to unfold, the dividing features should be guarded against and the desired positive effects must be furthered. The aim of this study is twofold; on the one hand, the study focuses on evaluating the post-apartheid South Africa’s experience, of reconciliation through Sport Intervention Programs (SIPs), and on the other hand, the study explores mechanisms through which sport can serve as a vehicle to integrate racialized South African youth identities with the aim of promoting, reconciliation and integration for change. The study identified 12 Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) that are facilitating grassroots sport initiatives that use sport as a platform to combat social issues in previously marginalised communities of the Western Cape Province, South Africa. Purposive sampling was used to identify12 focus group discussions, consisting of 10participants in each group, ranging from 14-20 years, totaling 100 youth as well as another group of 13 respondents for semi-structured interviews, ranging from 25-68 years old, which include sport managers, coaches/officials, role models, government and UN officials, who contributed to the SIPs and their organizations in different capacities. Both the discussion groups and face-to-face interviews were conducted on a voluntary basis. Thematic content analysis was carried-out to analyse the data. This study explored existing theories, literature, and good intervention practices, and has established the relative interlinkages between sport and peace-building, as pivotal to the ongoing scholarly debates in the field of Sport for Development and Peace (SDP). From the findings, reconciliation and integration through SIPs may require a unique method in the holistic approach for transformation and social change in post-1994. From the findings in this study, the SIPs’ effort and approaches highlighted a number of positive inroads. The majority of the discussion groups and face-to-face interviewees felt the desire to have a united and non-racial South Africa. Within the discussion group, the notion of the ‘Rainbow Nation’ emerged as a ‘counter discourse’, and, a reaction to the apartheid discourse ‘racial segregation’, both discourses found to have impacts on the youth identities. The youth participants also referred as ‘Born Frees’ are still deeply marked by their racialized past, but they also showed a drive to make a different present, and a new future. From the findings, the SIPs foci of learning by doing, such as team cohesion on the field, and peace education off the field were found instrumental in building relationship. Networking, non-violent conflict resolution, and collaboration for shared goals, which reduced, negative perceptions among the South African racialized youth, at personal and relational level. However, the structural and cultural dimensions require multiple changes at all societal levels. The interconnection of the hierarchies of change in relation to the program in-put, out-puts and outcomes, on how the attitudes and behaviours of the individual youth are expected to change by the SIPs, and how these personal changes are sought to change the structural, and cultural practices, within the programme design, monitoring and evaluation of the SIPs were found unclear, and under-developed. The reflexive learning within the current research process postulate that, first, conflict resolution, racial integration and reconciliation within the SIPs endeavors is characterized by a complex set of factors and dynamic forces on the ground such as race relations and social change. As such, a systems approach is necessary to approach this field in comprehensive manner. The present research study shows that a model is required that needs to integrate the various elements in a comprehensive fashion to promote reconciliation, conflict resolution, peace and development. Secondly, the SIPs may serve as a platform and provide contextual mechanism for conflict resolution, and this study discovered that the ‘theory of change approach’ is an effective tool to unpack the change process between the SIPs’ activities and its ultimate goal. Thirdly the genuine effort of SIPs and its NGOs in the lives of the future leaders is well articulated; however, they seem to confront a problem way bigger than their capacity, which involves power and massive resources. The fieldwork experience from the present study, commends the SIPs’ culture of networking, and collaboration can only be enhanced when it is framed by the ‘scaling-up’ strategy developed by Lederach et al. for wider social impact, and,sustainability. In light of the findings, while the above three imperatives considered as an original contribution to the existing knowledge in the field of Sport for Development and Peace (SDP), it also concluded by providing possible recommendations that may guide sport practitioners to effectively design, implement, monitor and evaluate programmes and the SIPs’ in post-apartheid South Africa, in Africa and beyond.

This project examines facets of racial identity as they emerge in a contemporary South African context, and considers how instances of local satire both subtly resist and support white normativity. It consists of two separate sections: firstly, a self-reflective essay that, employing current theories from the academic field of whiteness studies, assesses South African satire’s relation to and negotiation of race and identity politics; and secondly, The Weekly Crab, my own creative response to the genre of satire. Using contemporary theories of racial construction, the first section will delineate whiteness as a dominant but invisible identification, and as a social construction underpinned by an inherited and continually reproduced privilege. Satire, in turn, will be described as a mode of rhetorical and conceptual attack that is capable of cultivating an understanding of how whiteness functions as a cultural construct, as well as foster a sensitivity to how its cultural dynamics shape and inform racial politics in the South African context. The first section will identify the website Hayibo.com as a source of local satire whose satirising of current events is often complicit in the perpetuation of white normativity. I will point to moments in its work where white expectations, fears and social mores are left unexamined, and, indeed, become an unspoken part of their critiquing lens rather than the focus of it. An accompanying critical breakdown of my own satire in The Weekly Crab will show my work to be a countertext to Hayibo. As I will make clear, I am not saying that I successfully fill a gap in the landscape of South African satire. Instead, in comparing my work to the satire that Hayibo produces, and by providing, in the second section, a creative response to that particular approach to satire, I am trying to circumscribe a blind spot in South African literary journalism : that is, the paucity of satire that aggressively subverts the normativity of whiteness.

Mental toughness has become a focus for researchers as coaches, athletes, and others extol its influence in performance success. In this study I examined mental toughness among collegiate athletes, focusing on its potential relationship to different demographic variables and to the athletes’ mood. Two hundred seventy-two student-athletes representing 12 different sports from a southwestern NCAA Division I university, participated by completing the Sports Mental Toughness Questionnaire (SMTQ), the Brief Assessment of Mood (BAM), and providing demographic information. Analyses of variance (ANOVA) assessed differences in mental toughness scores by sex, race, scholarship status, and starting status. Significant differences in mental toughness emerged between Black – White, male – female, and full – partial – zero scholarship athletes. Pearson correlations showed mental toughness was significantly related to lower levels of anxiety, sadness, anger, confusion, fatigue, and total mood disturbance, and higher levels of vigor.

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For Filipino migrant workers , the journey overseas in search of contractual employment marks a profound turning point in their lives. It registers the crossing of spatial and cultural borders that leads to the shifting of terrains from which they make sense of their selves and the world of ‘others.’ It signifies a rupture in time that alters their sense of history, giving shape to new vantage points from which they reflect on the past and project an imagination of future. This research explores the question of how Filipina domestic workers in Hong Kong make sense of their experiences as ‘migrant women’, and how they might articulate a consciousness of themselves as gendered subjects in history. The study begins with a documentation of the personal histories of five Filipina women, as told in their own words and as reconstructed into written text, and offers a reading of the narratives, tracing the ways in which they make sense of their experiences as women migrant workers, wives, mothers, daughters, and diasporic citizens of a nation state. Through this process of reading and narrativizing the life histories of Filipina domestic workers, this thesis hopes to contribute to an understanding of how their gendered subjectivities are formed, shaped and changed over time. The life histories, though diverse, give voice to a shared and collective experience – a familiar story of poverty, family crises, diaspora, encounter with cultural difference and subjection to difficult working conditions. Together they are the hidden threads that form the underside of the grand narratives of ‘nation’, development, modernization, and globalization. It is against this backdrop that family crises would push five women -- Mader Irma, Gina, Esther, Miriam, and Rosario -- to enter a particularly difficult type of employment which would render them as part of Hong Kong’s invisible ‘others.’ While their journey was primarily an act of love/duty to the family, the experience of migration would eventually reinvent the meaning of ‘wife’, ‘mother’‘daughter,’ ‘worker’ ‘subaltern intellectual’ and ‘activist.’ To foreground the narratives of life histories, two chapters in the first part of this thesis are devoted to a brief review of the historical contexts in Hong Kong and the Philippines that gave rise to the current migration phenomenon. The chapters also trace the ways by which the ‘Filipina domestic helper’ is positioned and interpellated in discourse, as ‘ban mui’, ‘new heroes’ and ‘spectral presences’ in the nation. Migrant domestic workers straddle two life/worlds, always the inside-outsider/outside-insider, and in this ambiguous in-between space they carve out new identities and struggle to exercise agency. This research contributes to an understanding of the affective/subjective dimensions of migration by presenting ways of ‘narrating’ and ‘reading’ women’s experiences. It also demonstrates the usefulness of intellectual resources offered by feminist and cultural studies in interrogating the conditions of Hong Kong’s ‘social others’ and identifying issues around which an agenda for transformational politics might be explored.

No description available.

Throughout history, women in comics have played subordinate or lesser roles compared to males and were stereotyped. Today, representations have improved in comic-based tv shows. This thesis is answering three research questions: How does one define a “strong female character” within the comic-based and comic-styled genres, specifically in the TV shows Jessica Jones, Agent Carter, and Wynonna Earp? How does race/gender intersectionality affect the ways in which the non-white characters express masculinity or femininity compared to the white characters? How do the videos made by fans of the three tv series define a “strong female character?” This study applies textual and participatory cultures analyses. It is interdisciplinary and uses theories from different areas. This research finds that Agent Carter, Jessica Jones, and Wynonna Earp simultaneously reinforce and challenge stereotypes such as emphasized femininity, hegemonic masculinity and the “Black Buck.” Future research might examine white stereotypes with the white heroines. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (MA)--Florida Atlantic University, 2021. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Race is a pressing issue that pervades discussions of public policy and societal matters in twenty-first century national cultures—even as those populations, paradoxically, turn toward increasing globalization. We need to understand now, more than ever, what race means to us and how and why it means in order for us to understand our deep investments in it. This study explores—through the genres of slave narrative, fiction, and memoir—the process of socio-semiogenesis by which people recognize and perform race; it also examines the customs that allow people not only to form themselves in groups but also to disrupt, remediate, and invert the implicit racial codes that govern human interaction within and among such groups. This study offers a Peircean, triadic approach to the dialectics of race—an approach that seeks to find a space in which dialogue and healing might occur even as it sheds light on those shades of biology and culture that both form and divide us. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (PhD)--Florida Atlantic University, 2021. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection