This study examined the relative effects of socioeconomic class position and racial discrimination on young male black workers' occupational prestige and earnings attainment in the 1970's and 1980's. The data used in the present study were taken from the National Longitudinal Study of the High School Class of 1972. The sample contained young black (N = 831) and white (N = 5882) workers who graduated from high school in 1972. Racial differences in occupational prestige and earnings attainment in 1973, 1976, 1979 and 1986 were decomposed into two portions, one reflecting the effect of class and the other reflecting the effect of race, by the method of regression standardization. The results indicated that racial disparities both in occupational prestige and in annual earnings had constantly widened over the years examined in the study, and that factors associated with race played a more important role than factors associated with class in creating the widening racial disparity in occupational prestige and in earnings. The results, however, did not totally invalidate William J. Wilson's argument that economic class position is more important than race in determining a black person's economic life changes. When economic class position is conceived as the position attained by the respondent, rather than the position he inherits from his family of orientation, the results indicated that class is more important than race in creating the racial disparity in earnings and occupational prestige. It is suggested that clearer definition/conceptualization of class as well as race (racial discrimination) is crucial in fostering a productive debate on "the declining significance of race."

This study will examine the concept of mentoring as a strategy for improving the academic success and the quality of life of black female and male undergraduates on predominantly white institutions in American society. More specifically, this study proposes the following: (a) That mentorship programs can provide a clearly defined, identifiable and monitored support mechanism through which faculty and staff members may have an impact, directly, on the growth potential of black undergraduates. (b) That through mentoring programs educational leaders on predominantly white college campuses can successfully meet the short-range goals of satisfying and improving the critical academic, social and personal needs of black undergraduates. (c) That mentorship programs will also meet a long-range need of our society by supplying the educational and professional markets with qualified and competent black undergraduates and professionals that will benefit American society. This study will be substantiated by findings from a survey of a selected group of minority mentorship programs on predominantly white college campuses and a survey of black female and male undergraduates' academic and personal needs on a predominantly white college campus. It is from this collection of data that six major recommendations for developing a comprehensive model for a Black Mentorship Program will be presented that embody the best of the prevailing theories, practices, principles and services for promoting the academic and professional success of black undergraduates.

This study of a school improvement project in a predominantly African-American junior high school examines the efficacy of a course on social dynamics, "Dynamics of Relationships." The study explores the historical and cultural factors (notably fictive kinship) which structure African-American life in the dominant White society. Given the traumatic physical and emotional changes that occur during adolescence, African-American adolescents are besieged with special challenges and problems identified with ethnic kinship. How these factors affect African-American adolescent school success is investigated. Data were gathered through ethnographic research procedure over a three-year period. Triangulation or multi-methods of participant observations, questionnaires and student interviews were utilized. The data from each method were analyzed and the student interviews afforded the participants opportunities to make recommendations for improvement and modifications needed for the social dynamics course, "Dynamics of Relationships." Immediate results from pre- and post-tests after the course was completed indicated no significant change in behavior or knowledge. The students were promoted to various high schools--African-American neighborhood schools, culturally diverse schools with special programs, and schools in neighboring jurisdictions. However, after a three-year period, the students' reports supported the hypothesis that the course on social dynamics positively influenced their social development and increased their self-esteem and self-concept. The students in the culturally diverse schools reported no greater concerns about their fictive kinship than their peers in African-American neighborhood schools and both groups expressed feelings of high esteem. The students in substantially different high schools (social and academic) provided an understanding that they had not been adversely affected in their self evaluation. The study discusses the implications of the scores which reveal gender variance: the females gained more knowledge during the course than did the male participants. Recommendations for further research are presented in which other researchers can initiate a case study that will address some of the analysis of this study.

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African American detective fiction has not been consistently examined as a complete body of work nor has it been analyzed for its cultural differences and its important contribution to African American studies. The earliest authors and dates of black detective writing have been ignored or mis-stated by critical theorists. The Blues Detective surveys African American detective fiction from its inception at the beginning of the twentieth century up through the postmodern period of the 1970s. The writers studied in this work include Pauline Hopkins, J. E. Bruce, Rudolph Fisher, Chester Himes, Ishmael Reed and Clarence Major. After a preliminary discussion of detective fiction in general, the author examines the ways in which black detective fiction differs from the traditional Euro-American genre. African American detective writers utilized detective fiction for their own ends, transforming both classical and hardboiled detective genres through the use of the four tropes of black detective fiction: altered detective personas, double-conscious detection, black vernaculars and hoodoo. The use of these four tropes by black detective writers was initiated at the very beginning of black detective writing. The author shows how these four tropes were handled by each successive black detective writer in their works. In the process African American detective writers created a tradition of black detective writing that transformed both the style and content of Euro-American detective fiction, expressing important social and political aspects of African American consciousness and culture in their creative use of a popular culture form. The author finds that black detective writing is an important aspect of black literary expression and that its influence has continued into the contemporary period.

In the wake of a disturbing decades-long trend in both print and visual media—the appropriation of Black history and culture—another trend is observed in works of African American fiction: the reclamation of the appropriated imagery, in both neo-slave narratives and works of Afrofuturism. The image focused on specifically in this paper is that of the ship, which I argue serves at least two identifiable functions in Black fiction: first, to address the historical treatment of Africans and their American descendants, and secondly, to demonstrate Black progress and potential. Through an exploration of three works of African American fiction, works that take their Black protagonists beyond the ship's dreadful hold, the reader can see the important themes being channeled: Charles Johnson's Middle Passage sets a course on how to arrive at true freedom, enacting a process of Black liberation that begins with learning how to survive "in the wake," a concept derived Christina Sharpe's work In the Wake: On Blackness and Being. Rivers Solomon's An Unkindness of Ghosts demonstrates not only the effects of "the hold," but how the hold itself has evolved from its origins on the slave ship; as new holds are constructed and demanded by society, rebellion is often necessary to dismantle them. Lastly, Octavia Butler's Dawn exposes the threat of neocolonialism, as well as the methodology under which subjection and enslavement is often justified. In each text, the protagonists exercise their empowerment to demonstrate that Black individuals possess the ability to change not only our nation, not only our world, but our entire universe. By tracking the evolution of ship in African American literature, a transformation is witnessed as the ship shifts from being an image of despair to an image of progress.

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