The African American consumer represents a valuable market segment in the United States. This target market possesses both substantial purchasing power and future growth potential. Yet, baseball marketers have failed to secure the African American target market as a viable consumer base. As such, marketers should understand what factors encourage African Americans to consume sport, and what factors deter African Americans from consuming baseball. Thus, the purpose of my study was to advance the literature by investigating the factors influencing African American baseball consumption. African American participants were surveyed in order to ascertain the motivational aspects they perceived to be present (or absent) in both a favorite sport and baseball. Results suggest that African American participants believed baseball failed to contain the following motivational factors: skill, drama, aesthetic value, group entertainment, family value, escape, and cultural affiliation. Still, of the factors measured, results suggest that the factors, ‘skill’ and ‘drama’ were the two most influential factors motivating participants to consume sport. The current study utilized a set of focus group interviews to identify what factors, if any, deterred baseball consumption amongst African Americans. Results suggest two broad categories best represent the reasoning for a lack of baseball consumption: perception of baseball and socio-cultural dynamics. Within these two categories, six general dimensions were found that best characterized the reasons for not consuming baseball: A perceived lack of excitement in baseball, a perceived lack of skill in baseball, a distaste towards baseball’s structure, a lack of access for young African Americans, African American player representation, and African American players in pop-culture. The current study examined African American attitudes towards baseball consumption by investigating the role of perceived fit and its association with the theory of reasoned action. The study utilized an experimental design to investigate if racial identification and identifiable motivational factors would influence perceived fit. Results from the study indicate that advertisement setting (i.e., advertisements containing identifiable motivational factors) was not influential upon perceived fit; yet, endorser race did moderate the relationship between advertisement setting and perceived fit. Subsequently, perceived fit was found to be influential upon attitudes and subjective norms. Furthermore, these factors – attitudes and subjective norms – were significantly related to intentions to consume baseball.

There have been many commercial, cultural, and literary endeavors which have examined connections between African Americans and the Irish. Irish musicians as diverse as De Dannan, U2, and Van Morrison have all voiced their debt to the African-American traditions of gospel, rhythm and blues, and jazz. Popular mediums, such as newspaper cartoons and columns, as well as a recent spate of Irish films (The Commitments, The Crying Game , and In the Name of the Father) have characterized the experience of the Irish as colonized subjects, wholly parallel with the experience of disenfranchised African Americans. In a literary context, most examples link the Harlem Renaissance with the Celtic Revival, relying upon instances when James Weldon Johnson, Alain Locke and others connected the two. Often, however, such comparisons have been made at the expense of racial and cultural differences. / Relying upon Frederick Douglass's affiliation with the Irish, my dissertation works to uphold racial and cultural differences between African Americans and the Irish in order to assert that it is precisely because of their distinctions that both communities have been useful to each other in the articuation of powerful discourses of liberation. I employ a methodology that simultaneously engages the terms of culture, race, gender, and history, and, in so doing, I engage a more precise mode of analysis that acknowledges the importance of interracial and intercultural exchanges, yet does not insist that differing entities be collapsed into one another in order to achieve understanding of their inter-relationship. I contend that the association between African Americans and the Irish is valuable because they have fashioned a formidable language of liberation out of difference. Furthermore, I contribute a new dimension to African-American literary studies which have suggested that the dialectic between the literary and the political springs from a self-contained Black tradition. In my contention that the Irish cannot be discounted when chronicling an African-American ideology of freedom, I lay to rest claims of African-American exceptionalism as well as notions that literature works out of self-contained entities that are separated by stringent national borders.

The dissertation argues that Catholicism's theology and sacramentalism constituted the foundation of a ministry that from Reconstruction through the 1930s extended the religion's reach in the U.S. beyond its historical loci of numerical strength and influence to African American communities in the South. The dissertation draws on decrees of the Council of Trent, papal encyclicals, pastoral letters, theological treatises, and Catholic interpretation of Judeo-Christian scripture to demonstrate that the Church's beliefs manifestly shaped its African American ministry. The dissertation illuminates a missiology that employed uniquely Catholic sacral elements in a framework designed to assist the faithful in living a virtuous life and attaining salvation. Within the temporal sphere, education functioned as the centerpiece of the Church's missionary effort, and the dissertation demonstrates the capacity of Catholic educational initiatives to advance African Americans socially and spiritually. The study assesses the efficacy of different educational methodologies and concludes that the Church prescribed industrial education for both white and African American students and, wherever and to the extent possible, simultaneously provided instruction in classical, non-vocational subjects. The dissertation establishes the centrality of priests and religious sisters to the work of evangelization in its various forms. Focusing on three American orders of sisters, and four orders of priests with European roots, the study concludes that the efforts of these women and men had a salutary effect on the lives of African Americans in the South. While both priests and sisters served as spiritual guides and counselors, priests functioned mainly as ministers of the Church's sacred rights while the sisters crafted and managed the work of education. Although the Church Universal received its direction from the Vatican, the dissertation argues that American bishops, faced with the realities of the Jim Crow South, demonstrated a lesser commitment to the African American apostolate than the Holy See decreed. The work of priests and sisters at the local level, on the other hand, more clearly reflected the course that Rome expected the American Church to follow.

Racial inequalities in the education system are an issue that has yet to be adequately addressed. Given how discriminatory experiences adversely impact African American students, it is important to understand how their educational attitudes are impacted and ways that students can be protected from these harmful experiences. The study aims to answer six research questions: 1) How does racial discrimination predict African American college students’ value placed in education? 2) How does racial discrimination predict African American college students’ expectations for success? 3) How do preparation for bias messages predict the value they place in education? 4) How do preparation for bias messages predict African American college students’ expectations for success? 5) Do preparation for bias messages buffer the effect of racial discrimination on value placed in education? 6) Do preparation for bias messages buffer the effect of racial discrimination on expectations for success?

Transracial adoption occurs when a child of one race is adopted by parents of another race. Transracial adoption increased in the 1960s as racial integration policies developed. In the 1970s, however, transracial adoption became a controversial issue. The National Association of Black Social Workers posed several problems with this practice such as institutional racism, cultural genocide, and providing inadequate coping skills to combat racism.This study examines the racial identity of White parents who adopt transracially or inracially. It provides a racial identity profile to determine if White parents who adopt a Black or Biracial child encourage the transracially adopted child to experience Black culture. Currently, adoption agencies utilize some selection process for parents who adopt transracially. This study will further examine the White parents' racial identity and the level of commitment they have to exposing the transracially adopted child to Black culture in an effort to instill a positive Black racial identity in the adopted child. / Department of Counseling Psychology and Guidance Services

This thesis s a study of Lorraine Hansberry as a person, an intellectual, a black and a writer. Her two plays, A Raisin in the Sun and The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window, are analysed in relation to her background and the themes and movements that the writer of her time pondered. It was found that Lorraine Bansberry's plays like those of the writers of her time, through themes of social conflict, modern man's dilemma of false dreams and disillusionment came to the onclusion that in the long run man irrespective of titles is capable of everything humanly possible. Her play To Be Young Gifted and Black, was cited as a basic source for her background, ideas and conceptions.The thesis studies the relation of Lorraine Hansberry's intellectuality, blackness and artistic potential, to her work and consequently conclusions were drawn that these three sides combined to make of Lorraine Hansberry a committed intellectual and a powerful writer.

There is no abstract available for this thesis. / Department of Communication Studies

The purpose of this study was to depict and analyze the components of the process by which the Northwest Indiana Curriculum Evaluation Project was applied from a theoretical model of curriculum evaluation which had been developed by Drs. James McElhinney and Richard Kunkel of Ball State University. This task was accomplished through participant observation. In this capacity the participant observer initially recorded the events, insights, and anecdotes which occurred while at the same time, he served as the project director. These recorded observations were then used as a basis for designing a questionnaire which was administered to the team leaders of the project. This instrument, which used a semantic differential as a rating scale, attempted to solicit the team leaders' perceptions and reactions to many concepts about the project which had originally been identified through participant observation.The questionnaire and other data, which was accumulated, as well as the study itself, were organized and presented within the framework of five sequential phases. These were as follows: 1. Phase I - Training Workshops for Data Collectors 1. Phase II - Interviews and Observations3. Phase III - Administration of Questionnaires4. Phase IV - Organization of Data5. Phase V - Writing of Individual Building ReportsThe final section of the study attempted to determine how the team leaders felt about the project once their direct involvement had been completed. Attention was also accorded to what would and should be done with the final project results in the various participating school corporations.Based upon the data and findings of the study, it was concluded that the theoretical model of curriculum evaluation investigated was an effective vehicle with which to collect data and accurately describe the curricular offerings of a given school.In addition, it was determined that public school personnel can be trained to serve effectively as data collectors within the model in a relatively short period of time (In this case, a one and one-half day workshop proved sufficient). However, much of the success or failure of such an undertaking appeared to be determined by the personal and professional qualifications of the consultant who conducted the training workshops. It was also found that the potential for success of a curriculum evaluation project such as the Northwest Indiana Curriculum Evaluation Project would have been enhanced by increasing the man-day commitment of participating school corporations so as to accommodate unexpected time and personnel problems which occurred; by budgeting for more adequate secretarial services; and by providing more adequate storage and office space in which to house the permanent staff required for such a project.Beyond the initial approval which was given by the chief administrator of each participating school corporation, the attitude which the superintendent extended to the project significantly influenced the attitudes which his subordinates displayed as participating data collectors.Other conclusions obtained from the study were: communication plays a vital role in determining the success or failure of a curriculum evaluation project; certain professional public school personnel seem threatened by involvement in curriculum evaluation projects; cooperative curriculum evaluation projects possess a high potential as in-service programs; students tend to be more frank in their responses to the inquiries made by data-collectors than are teachers; professional educators recognize a need for curricular change based on systematically acquired evidence, and the advent of a curriculum evaluation project in and of itself is unlikely to foster significant curricular change.

While the urban crisis debate has expanded to examine a variety of American cities, the general exploration of how African Americans have responded to, and challenged, racial and urban inequality remains focused on grassroots political and community activism. This account of postwar New York City seeks to examine how structural discrimination created racial inequality, how African Americans suffered from a complex system of social consequences that further marginalized them, and how a politically conscious art form emerged from the destitution of the urban crisis. As illustrated through Robert Merton’s theory of Anomie, restricted opportunity for social and economic advancement created an environment vulnerable to crime. Not only were African American neighbourhoods susceptible to crime, but the conservative agenda tended to demonize African Americans as dangerous criminals, targeting them in the rise of mass incarceration. Resources were funneled into imprisoning more people, and African Americans were disproportionately represented in the American corrections system. As a result of this, African Americans were consistently excluded from certain jobs and denied basic civil rights. This thesis will also explore how African Americans responded to, and challenged, racial and urban inequality through the arts. The Black Arts Movement emerged from New York City in the mid-1960s. The movement was both confrontational and socially conscious. Artists sought to articulate the struggles of urban African Americans while empowering, educating, and protesting racial injustices. The Black Arts Movement was fundamentally political, and a predecessor to the Hip Hop culture which emerged from the South Bronx neighborhood of New York City.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2007. / The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file (viewed on April 1, 2008) Includes bibliographical references.