While a great deal of sociological and psychological research has been done on black-white interracial couples and the challenges they have faced in past eras, the communication between the partners remains largely under-explored and under-theorized. The purpose of this dissertation is two-fold. First, this dissertation seeks to understand what challenges interracial couples face today. Second, this dissertation also explores the communication surrounding these challenges, communication both within the couple and communication between the couple and their social networks. To explore these challenges and the resulting communication, 14 black-white interracial couples were interviewed in depth. Results showed that interracial couples often still face messages of disapproval from their families. Black families and white families sometimes disapproved for similar reasons; however, black families and white families had several concerns that were markedly different from each other and were tied to the history of race relations in the US. Further, results showed that partners in interracial relationship underwent identity transformations as they learned to navigate an intimate relationship with a “racial other.” Whites reported learning the most. Because of their privileged position in society, whites life situations had never had necessitated that they learn about the black co-culture. The black partners also reported seeing the white community differently by understanding the nuances of racism at a deeper level because of their “outsider within” position in white families. Finally, results suggested that couples grapple with balancing the dialectic between embracing race in the relationship and rejecting race in the relationship. Couples reject race, arguing that other differences are more important to their relationship. Couples embrace race when they talk about issues of identity such as their individual identities, their identity as a couple, and—when they had children-- their identity as a family. Further analysis demonstrate two different strategies couples use to manage the embracing race-rejecting race dialectic.

The study of race/ethnicity and leisure has been an area of great interest to researchers since at least the 1970s. Numerous studies have shown that differences exist in the ways people from different racial/ethnic groups participate in outdoor recreation. Most of these studies have found that racial and ethnic minorities (i.e. non-White groups) participate in many outdoor recreation activities at proportionally lower levels than do Whites. While these studies present numerous hypotheses to help explain this phenomenon, no study has been conclusive. In this dissertation, I present a theoretical framework and three empirical studies to investigate the nuances of this issue. The first study examines the theory of systemic racism (Feagin, 2006) and its utility to deepen our understanding of the factors that play into African Americans relationship with nature and outdoor recreation. The second study analyzes narrative and historical autobiographical accounts of African Americans from the three major racial eras in United States history in order to examine African Americans’ relationship with nature over time. The third study examines the racially related constraints of African Americans who are involved in serious leisure pursuits of activities generally considered outdoor recreation, as well as African Americans who are involved in nature related careers. The constraints I found with this group are reservations of family and friends regarding being in “the woods,” collective memory and fear, being the “only one, ” discrimination and “reverse curiosity,” assumption of novice status, and balancing identity between being Black, and “acting White.” In the fourth study I analyze this same study group, but explore their experiences of being involved in serious leisure and look at the negotiation schema that this group employed to sustain participation. These negotiation schema are childhood formative experiences, realizing deep connections to nature, transcendental experiences in nature, leaning on knowledge of nature, comfort with White people/places/groups, and positive experiences with White people in nature. The four studies in this collection represent a rethinking and deepening of our knowledge of African American participation in the outdoors.

This research addresses the determinants of mass participation by developing a model of how the racial environment influences mass participation in the United States. Prior literature on this research question presents two competing expectations. The power-threat hypothesis predicts that a larger size of different racial groups in local areas increases citizen participation because of more intensive interracial con- flicts, while the relational goods hypothesis predicts that a larger size of different racial groups decreases participation because of less frequent interaction with other in-group members. Both hypotheses, however, are derived from rather weak theoretical expectations, and neither is consistently supported in empirical analyses. This research offers a solution to this puzzle by arguing that economic and political characteristics of local areas determine how the racial composition influences mass participation. Local economic and political competition is expected to structure the nature of interracial and intraracial relations and therefore influence the utility calculation associated with political participation. I hypothesize that the power-threat effect on citizen participation is observed only when the degree of economic or political competition is high, while the relational goods effect is observed only when the degree of economic or political competition is low. Empirical analysis using Verba, Schlozman, and Brady’s Citizen Participation Study offers supportive evidence for my hypotheses. This research offers the first theoretically-motivated, rigorous analysis and evidence of the impact of immediate racial environment on individuals’ participation.

Representation is an enduring area of research in Political Science. While there has been an extensive amount of research in the area of minority representation, there is substantially less work considering multiple identities. Using the concept of intersectionality, this dissertation explores the role of multiple identities in representation. I argue that intersectional representation, that is, representation based on multiple identities provides a thorough interpretation of real world phenomena. To test my arguments, I utilize quantitative methods to empirically assess the role of intersectional representation on public policy outcomes. The goal of this dissertation is three-fold. First, I incorporate the concept of intersectionality of race and gender into the public policy and public management literature. Second, I explore intersectionality and representation with gender from a perspective that has not been extensively addressed in the political science literature—namely, a concentration on males, instead of females. Third, I develop a theory of intersectional representation which links to public policy outcomes. In order to test my theory, I explore the role of Black male representation in the bureaucracy and in local political bodies on Black male student outcomes. I find that representation based on both race and gender is associated with both positive and negative public policy outcomes for Black male students. Specifically, in Chapter I, the results indicate that Black male teachers are associated with a decreased presence of Black male students in low tracked courses and upper level honors courses. The following chapter shows that intersectional political representation, that is, Black male school board representation, is also associated with positive outcomes for Black male students. The last empirical chapter indicates that intersectional stability is associated with an increase of Black male students in low track courses. In general, the findings indicate that intersectional representation is consequential for public policy outcomes, both in negative and positive ways. The dissertation challenges the way representation is conceptualized, as to capture the simultaneous effect of both race and gender on public policy outcomes of represented groups.

While schools in America are becoming more culturally diverse, the majority of first-year teachers continue to be white females. Although mentoring has proven to be an effective means of supporting first-year teachers, little research has been done that specifically addresses the first-year, white, female teacher's perceptions of her mentoring needs in teaching students of color. This qualitative research study examined the experiences of eight, first-year, white, female teachers teaching students of color in a large culturally diverse school district in Texas. Data were gathered over a period of 12 weeks. The participants' responses were collected through individual interviews, focused group interviews, and journal responses to five open-ended sentence stems. This research is an "attempt" to examine these participants' experiences because although multiple attempts were made to engage the participants in substantial discussion about their mentoring needs specifically related to being white teachers working with students of color, the participants would not participate at depth in conversations about race or culture. They did, though, discuss some of their mentoring needs, which were consistent with the already existing literature on first-year teachers and their mentoring needs. Three themes however, emerged. They were the context of mentoring, evident mentoring needs, and critical unrecognized mentoring needs. In the context of mentoring, the participants' mentoring experiences were examined. In the second theme, the participants' recognized mentoring needs were discussed. These included the participants' need for support in basic teaching skills and in managing their many emotions during this time. The third theme highlighted the critical and unrecognized needs of these first-year teachers to have an understanding of their own racial identity and how this affects their responsiveness to the cultures of their students. Recommendations were made for policy and practice so that pre-service teachers are fully prepared to think and behave in ways that will meet the needs of a diverse population of learners. These recommendations should be considered by all teachers. Here, I specifically made recommendations that would benefit the population that was the focus of this study, that of white first-year teachers who teach in culturally diverse classrooms.

Statistics consistently show that minorities are overrepresented at each level of the juvenile justice system. However, while Disproportionate Minority Contact (DMC) in the juvenile justice system is well documented, the cause is still unclear. Some have suggested that DMC is simply the result of disproportionate amounts of crime committed by minority youth, while others claim that racism, be it overt, subtle, individual or institutional, plays a significant role in DMC. Observation of juvenile court proceedings and interviews with juvenile court judges and lawyers, each coded for content analysis, were used to determine the effects of race in juvenile court decision making. In this research, I suggest that race plays a significant, yet subtle role as personal beliefs, political necessities and motives of both professional participants in the system and political and community civic leaders, result in racial stratification established within a racialized social framework.

Thesis (M.A.)--Abilene Christian University, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 96-106).

Texte remanié de: Doct. diss.--Faculty of humanities--Göteborg, 2000. / Bibliogr.p. 189-196.

Texte remanié de: Dissertation--Fakultät für Geschichtswissenschaft, Philosophie und Theologie--Universität Bielefeld, 2002. / Bibliogr. p. 376-399.

Reproduction de : Thèse d'exercice : Médecine vétérinaire : Toulouse 3 : 2008. / Titre provenant de l'écran titre. Bibliogr. p. 85-86.