<p> To examine the influence sexual identity has on the relationship between victimization and aggression in queer Black Men, thirty-eight participants (31 queer Black men, 7 straight Black men) completed a survey designed to assess experiences of victimization and current aggressive attitudes and behavior. This study hypothesized the following: (1) Queer Black men experience higher levels of victimization, (2) sexual orientation affects the strength of the relationship between victimization and aggression, and (3) there is a positive correlation between victimization and aggression. Findings indicated that queer Black men did not report higher rates of victimization and that sexual orientation did not moderate the strength of these two variables. Despite these findings, results indicated a positive relationship between victimization and aggression in both groups, with queer Black men exhibiting a stronger correlation. These significant findings further reinforce theoretical models and set groundwork for future research to address challenges that confront this understudied population.</p><p>

<p> Due to societal factors of institutional racism and implicit biases, the plight of Black males across the United States has been well documented (Fitzgerald, 2015; Howard; 2010; Noguera, 2008; Steele &amp; Aronson, 1995). These factors are often represented in the educational system and result in inequities in various achievement outcomes. According to the National Center for Education Statistics (Kena et al., 2016), there are huge gaps between Black males and their counterparts across academic outcomes for reading and mathematics. Typically, Black males experience: (a) lower graduation rates, (b) higher suspension rates, and (c) over identification in special education. Consequently, these and other factors play a role and impact the livelihoods of Black males (Howard, 2010; Noguera, 2008). Guided by the framework of critical race theory (Bell, 1995; Delgado &amp; Stefancic, 2012; Ladson-Billings, 1998), as well as the work of scholars who identified issues of: (a) stereotype threat, (b) identity development, (c) culturally relevant pedagogy, and (d) the narrative experiences of Black males in education (Fordham &amp; Ogbu, 1986; Gay, 2002; Steele, 2010; Tatum, 1997), this dissertation study focused on inquiry in these areas. Using a phenomenological approach, data collected from in-depth interviews was used to explore the perceptions of nine Black males in high schools in Colorado regarding their educational experiences. Five themes emerged from the study: 1) relationships matter, 2) access and opportunity, 3) hidden-curriculum, 4) racial ambiguity, and 5) parental involvement. Findings further indicated that tenets of critical race theory were present in students&rsquo; experiences, particularly the &lsquo;centrality of race and racism&rsquo; and &lsquo;challenge to dominant ideology.&rsquo; Findings showed that a culturally relevant pedagogy was essential in supporting the academic success of Black male students. Recommendations, implications, and future research centered upon institutions of education and their responsibility to implement culturally relevant practices. Results from this study provide school administrators and educators with a perspective from the voices of one of the major subgroup of students they want to support. </p><p>

In 2013, the Chicago Public Schools shuttered 53 schools, citing budget limitations, building underutilization, and concerns about academic performance. Approximately 12,000 students were re-assigned to new schools; of those affected, 94% are low-income and 88% are African- American, leading many to level allegations of racism—a charge which district officials vehemently contest. In this study, I ask: what can disputes about the role of race in the Chicago school closings teach us about broader societal tensions regarding racism and urban school policy? I explore these questions by constructing a portrait of the South Side community of Bronzeville, an important site of African-American culture and history from the Great Migration to the present. Across four chapters, I draw from varying methods and perspectives to build an understanding of school closures and their impact on the community. I use historical sociology to explore the history of racialized sociopolitical change in Bronzeville, and the relationship of public school policy to the rise and fall of public housing in the community. Using critical discourse analysis of hearings and meetings surrounding school closure, I compare community members’ and district officials’ opinions of race and racism and their role in the policy decision. I then present the narrative case of Dyett High School, which was slated for closure and later set to re-open after a hunger strike and vehement community protest. Finally, I present a theory of institutional mourning, a framework for understanding the emotional aftermath of school closure, developed from interviews with community members, parents, teachers, and students. This study offers insight to Chicago stakeholders facing the post-closure landscape and will provoke a new set of questions for district leaders and community members across the country to consider as they evaluate the effectiveness of school closings as a policy. Further, the study models a framework for critically examining the popular conceptualization and social consequences of racism itself in order to enable more productive conversation about the role race plays in school closures and in debates about district policies more broadly.

<p> Resource dependence has been evidenced among private HBCUs that obtain as much as 90% of operating revenue from tuition and fees. Without alternative funding strategies in place, small declines in enrollment can lead to a major budget crisis. The basic premise of this exploratory inquiry was that fundraising represents an opportunity that has been successfully utilized by many large, predominantly White institutions, but ineffectively by most private HBCUs. Focusing on five private HBCUs in the southeastern United States, this exploratory study investigated the challenges development and fundraising leaders from these institutions have experienced and strategies they have implemented to mitigate these challenges. Three themes emerged from the interviews with the five fundraising leaders: (a) lack of access to wealth, (b) understaffing with inadequate stewardship, and (c) church resource dependence. What was evident from the findings was the usefulness of fundraising dollars in helping the institutions meet critical needs, such as keeping student tuition affordable, providing students with scholarships to fill in gaps between the financial aid they receive and the cost of tuition and fees, and conducting much-needed campus maintenance and repairs. However, though the institutions made strides toward measured fundraising successes, the results revealed that these private tuition-dependent HBCUs were still challenged with securing funds above and beyond the basic fiscal needs of the day-to-day operation of the institutions. In short, the identified fundraising successes paled in comparison to the fundraising successes of many large, predominately White institutions and equated to little more than crisis fundraising typical among HBCUs.</p><p>

<p> The prevalence of trauma for Black American youth is disproportionate to other cultural groups. Child and adolescent exposure to interpersonal trauma has been found to increase the risk for both immediate and long-term mental health impairment. Research of childhood trauma has made clear the adverse effects of childhood trauma, and its&rsquo; lifelong impact in domains of psychological, interpersonal, and cognitive functioning. Trauma-Focused CBT (TF-CBT) is an evidence-based treatment that has repeatedly proven to be efficacious in the treatment of childhood trauma. By offering culturally mindful recommendations for treatment, this dissertation lends a potentially useful supplement to providers utilizing TF-CBT with Black American adolescents.</p><p>

Abstract not available.

This thesis examines the educational adaptation of children of black immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean. The influence of common shared values on the educational attainment of a segment of the new second generation---Black children of immigrants---is explored. The data are drawn from the 2002 Ethnic Diversity Survey. The findings illustrate that the educational experience of black children of immigrants is heterogeneous. Depending on both socioeconomic and ethnic attachment factors, different educational outcomes for black children of immigrants were observed.

Somali refugees arriving in Canada in the early 1990s experienced various levels of exclusion as blacks, as Muslims, and as refugees, including immigration and settlement policies that continued to structure race and gender inequality in Canada. In addition to the disadvantage of new legislation that limited their settlement as recognised Convention refugees (and legitimate residents) and placed them in a marginal position in the Canadian society, Somali women were racially targeted as members of a culture perceived as "incompatible with the Canadian". However, Somali women did not passively accept their "fate" in Canada. At the individual level, women have engaged in creative adaptive strategies to deal with the social and economic exclusion they faced daily. Collectively, they employed various methods of activism to help the Somali refugees make sense of their fragmented lives in a new cultural, linguistic, and structural environment and to deal with the physical, social and economic displacements the community suffered from its collective refugee experiences. These women have engaged in multiple struggles to work for the " danta guud" (common good). Drawing mainly upon oral interviews with Somali women, this dissertation traces women's agency and subjectivity since early 20th century Somalia and argues that women's personal and professional history have shaped their engagement in activities beyond their personal and daily survival. Unlike those with no formal education, educated women came with transferable skills that have helped them cope with some of the difficult experiences of dislocation and uprootedness. Hence, the formal educational and professional skills combined with the spirit of agency, resourcefulness and survival inculcated by the Somali culture enabled the participants to take leadership roles in community affairs. Unfortunately, however, because women activists have themselves been dealing with being socially and economically excluded, their efforts were often limited to "making the margins liveable".

During the first half of the twentieth century, Mordecai Wyatt Johnson was one of the most notable leaders and orators in the African American community. He was best known as the first Black president of Howard University, a post he held from 1926 to 1960. But throughout this public life, he was also a forceful defender of Black civil rights, a vocal critic of colonialism in Africa and Asia, and an opponent of American militarism during the Cold War. This dissertation examines the intersections between Johnson's roles as an educator at a federally-funded Black institution and his political stances on behalf of civil rights, economic justice, and self-determination. In particular, it seeks to determine the extent to which the competing demands from Johnson's various constituencies—White federal officials, Howard University students, faculty and alumni, the larger African American community, and other Black leaders—affected the expression of his political ideas during his tenure as Howard president. Given Johnson's long public career as a Baptist preacher, civil rights activist, orator, and educator, this dissertation will examine a number of important themes, including the role of the Black church in early civil rights movements; the effect of anti-Communism on African American protest; academic freedom in historically-Black colleges and universities; African American perspectives on United States foreign policy; and the impact of White funding on Black institutions of higher education. In this manner, the career of Mordecai Johnson is used to illustrate a number of important themes in the development of Black political movements from the 1910s through the 1960s.

This study focuses on Blackness and shows how changes in its meaning reflect arguments about the short story as a fictional form. I argue that Blackness, as a socially constructed identity marker and the corresponding discourse designed to reify Whiteness, led to the evolution of an aesthetic consciousness that found critical and creative expression during the Black Power and Black Consciousness movements of the 1960s and 70s. In a process I call the "Politics of Creation," where Blackness and the short story move towards self-definition, we discover that Blackness and the short story reshape the socially constructed groupings designed to "fix" categories of people and genres. In chapter one reviewing the relevant literature concerning the origins of racial prejudice proves instructive for understanding the role of narrative in constructing discursive categories: i.e. Blackness and Whiteness. Chapter two addresses the historical context and introduces this study's attitudinal "common ground." In chapter three, we see how the collective identity of a community, marginalized by the "majority" status society (in this respect, the "imagined community" of Blackness), coalesces in response to white domination and becomes part of the larger culture of resistance known as the African diaspora. Examining Black participation in the discourse shows how "essentialism" racialized the ideological discourse. Chapter four reviews the critical literature on the short story and shows how its diminishment as a "minor" form of fiction, is analogous to the process by which Blackness was "othered." In chapter five, the short story and Blackness meet in a discussion of the aesthetic issues that fostered the explosion of African and Black Short Story anthologies and the growth of a critical discourse to offset the prejudicial attitudes expressed under the guise of "universalism." Using representative short stories by Henry Dumas, Toni Cade Bambara, Njabulo Ndebele, and Sindiwe Magona, chapter six addresses storytelling as "expressive" common ground, while revealing the "conflicts of unity" to Black solidarity. Chapter seven closes with a discussion of the commonalities I find in their writing styles. African American, African/a, Literary, Cultural, and Genre Studies will benefit from this study's insights into Black American and South African's reconsiderations of Blackness.