<p> Ethnic identity provides both affective and rational sense of belonging to a cultural group. In 1915, the Armenian race survived an attempted ethnic cleansing by the Ottoman Turks, which has an impact on the way Armenians conceptualize themselves ethnically today. Past research has failed to consider the role of affective empathy in ethnic identity. This study sought to explore the relationship between ethnic identity and empathy in second-generation Armenian-Americans. A convenience sample of fifty Armenian-American adults born in the United States participated in the study. Quantitative measures and qualitative, open-ended questions were utilized to gather data. Phinney&rsquo;s (1992) Multi Ethnic Identity Measure (MEIM) was utilized to assess ethnic identity, and Spreng&rsquo;s (2009) Toronto Empathy Questionnaire (TEQ) was utilized to measure empathy. Statistical analyses comparing the relationship between levels of ethnic identity and empathy did not yield significant results. Content analysis of qualitative data revealed themes of Armenian ethnic identity providing feelings of strength and pride, as well as it being a rational concept rather than affective. Additionally, themes revealed a desire to assimilate to the host country.</p><p>

<p> The S&aacute;mi people of northern Scandinavia, Finland, and Russia are a remarkable group who have redefined the nature of power through an era of cultural revival. Norway is home to about half the S&aacute;mi population; and although most S&aacute;mi have assimilated into the larger Norwegian society, there are people in the far north who live in traditional ways through herding reindeer and other generational livelihoods. Though S&aacute;mi face enormous hurdles including global climate change, the loss of pasture to public and private economic development of the Arctic, and continued pressure to assimilate with the dominant national culture, recent years have shed light on cultural geographical hotspots&mdash;or places that have been culturally resilient and have seen cultural revival. Drawing upon field interviews and observation, the research articulates the ways in which S&aacute;mi communities preserve, develop, and revive their culture through asserting S&aacute;mi sovereignty over language, land, and leadership. My assessment includes the ways in which: S&aacute;mi communities have used traditional and cultural education and reintroduction of S&aacute;mi languages to claim place; physical and natural places have assisted in cultural revival and place making; and changes in leadership and shifts in political power have shaped the modern landscape of S&aacute;mi communities.</p><p>

<p> This study examined the relationship between counselor ethnic-racial identity (CERI), counselor exposure to client trauma (CECT), counselor wellness (CW), and counselor burnout (CB). Ethical practice requires that counselors avoid impairment, in part, by increasing wellness. Therefore, understanding the factors that impact wellness and burnout is essential due to prevalence of trauma and the profession&rsquo;s growing diversity. Participants (N = 138) completed the Ethnic Identity Scale (EIS-B), Secondary Traumatic Stress Scale (STSS), Counselor Burnout Inventory (CBI), and Five Factor Wellness Inventory (FFWel-A2). A path analysis was utilized to examine the simultaneous relationship between the variables. Differences between majority (n = 62) and minority participants (n = 76) were explored using subsequent path analyses. Results and recommendations for future research are discussed. </p><p>

<p> Student population demographics in U.S. schools undertook considerable changes in the first decades of the 21^st Century. United States Census Bureau (2012) reports indicate that racial and ethnic populations traditionally referred to as minority populations are transitioning to be the majority of the student population in U.S. schools. However, during this same period, the population of teachers in U.S. schools has remained largely White (Boser, 2014; Deruy, 2013; Holland, 2014). Research has shown that one of the consequences of this demographic difference is the possibility of cultural misunderstandings in schools that can lead to achievement gaps between diverse students and their White peers (McKinley 2010). This achievement gap manifests itself in several areas. One such area is a disparity in the high school graduation rates of White and diverse student populations in Wisconsin and across the United States (Stetser &amp; Stillwell, 2014). </p><p> Culturally responsive teaching methods have developed out of multicultural ideologies in response to the achievement and graduation gaps in schools (Gay, 2000). The focus of this research is to explore the correlation between culturally responsive teaching practices, as measured by the Race and Schooling Instrument (Suhr and Shay, 2008), and the graduation rates of diverse student populations in a sample of nine (N = 9) Wisconsin high schools. The Race and Schooling Instrument is a 23 item (adapted to 24 items for this research) questionnaire that assesses culturally responsive teaching practices, mediated by the social construction of knowledge and an understanding of student and teacher identity development. </p><p> Research has shown that teachers do not develop a culturally responsive teacher identity on their own (Sleeter, 2008). Therefore, this researcher also gathered information on what, if any, culturally responsive training participating schools have implemented over the last calendar year. This information aids in both the anecdotal and direct findings of this research. </p><p> The results of this research do not indicate that culturally responsive teaching practices, as measured by the Race and Schooling Instrument, lead to an increased graduation rate for diverse students. Rather, the results indicate that graduating from high school is a complex interplay of many factors and that culturally responsive practices, not adequately measured by the Race and Schooling Instrument, are likely factors in all measures of student success. This paper concludes with recommendations for educators to increase their focus on culturally responsive training and to make explicit those culturally responsive practices already in use in schools.</p>

<p> This study examines and analyzes displacement, under the guise of redevelopment, in urban Mexican communities in Los Angeles-- Ch&aacute;vez Ravine (1944-1959) and Boyle Heights (2000-2015). This investigation also chronicles and interprets the urban renewal process as a systematic attack on the Mexican working- class and disenfranchisement of their communities. This analysis presents qualitative evidence to show the individual impacts associated with involuntary displacement. Furthermore these cases of displacement blocked the economic mobility of displaced residents of Ch&aacute;vez Ravine and Boyle Heights and the impact extends beyond those directly displaced. Beyond gentrification, a review of these cases, within approximately seven decades of displacement patterns, reveal the broader politics of contesting Mexican social and economic status in Los Angeles. Redevelopment maintains an economic and social order that intergenerationally disadvantages Mexican populations.</p>

<p> In countries around the world, refugees have started to create economic identity through entrepreneurial activities. In doing so, they boost new business formation, innovation, and job creation. Acknowledging this potential, the Austrian Federal Government passed a comprehensive program in 2015 to support start-up businesses. This program targets Austrian and foreign-born entrepreneurs alike. Recent estimates are that between 3,000 and 14,700 refugees could begin businesses in Austria. Beyond the examination of the success factors and barriers of refugee entrepreneurs, this case study sought to explore how the start-up programs capture the needs of refugee entrepreneurs. </p><p> The target population consisted of 12 recognized refugees who were about to start, or have started, a business within the past 5 years in Austria. Using online surveys and narrative interviews, the aim of this study was to yield insight into the successes and barriers refugee entrepreneurs encountered in becoming business owners in Austria. Further, a survey with five service providers of start-up programs aimed to support documentation of the offered services and how their activities mitigate the barriers to meet entrepreneur&rsquo;s needs to become successful. </p><p> Findings show that the biggest barriers for refugee entrepreneurs lie within the institutional environment (e.g., tax and social security regulations), lack of human capital (e.g., lack of German language skills), and access to resources (e.g., access to financial capital). The presence or absence of German language skills is a particularly significant factor. Combined with business administration skills, it offered a great advantage. Other success factors included knowing one&rsquo;s start-up reasons and having favorable market conditions.</p><p> From the clients&rsquo; viewpoint, start-up service providers appear to offer appropriate services for refugee entrepreneurs. Nonetheless, data suggest that agencies could improve delivery of service on the program level and in regard to coordination among and beyond service providers. Some reasons why refugee entrepreneurs&rsquo; needs are not fully met include lack of cultural contextualization of knowledge or demands that exceed supply. Based on expressed barriers and needs, this study provides recommendations for how start-up service providers could improve their services on both the program and the systems level.</p><p>

Drawing upon the emerging literature that examines differences in values about marriage, this study examined how broader cultural values of western societies, based in individualism, and eastern societies, based in collectivism, shape values about marriage. In comparing the marital value system of European Americans with that of Lebanese or Lebanese-Americans, a theory of cultural identity was utilized. While Americans were expected to value the self-reflective aspect of marriage, which nuclearizes marriage around the husband-wife relationship, the Lebanese were expected to value the familial aspect of marriage, which views the union as a relational entity, the value of which is closely connected to that of the family system. Using a Q sort technique—a method of rank ordering a set of statements about values of interest—two factors were extrapolated, indicating two distinct sets of values regarding marriage. The first cluster of individuals (Factor I) consisted of two thirds of the Americans sample and a quarter of the Lebanese sample. The second cluster (Factor II) consisted of a majority of the Lebanese and a single American participant. As hypothesized, the values highlighted in the first factor, or 'western'-driven factor, focused on romance; the endorsement of physical and psychological intimacy; and the belief that marriage is a private enterprise that only takes account of the marital values of the couple (i.e., 'couple' individualism). Also as hypothesized, the beliefs highlighted by the second factor, or Lebanese factor, focused on values such as psychological intimacy more than physical closeness as well as the importance of family, in particular their own parents, to marriage. Also important to this group was the endorsement of romanticism, particularly the idea of soul mate as marital partner. Demographic characteristics of the Lebanese sample indicated that education was a determining feature for distinguishing factor loadings. Specifically, we found that the Lebanese who loaded on the 'western'-driven factor were significantly more educated than their compatriots who loaded on the 'Lebanese' factor. With regards to gender, both a Q sort and ANOVA analysis found no differences within nationality or between nationalities, disconfirming previous research that American women are more communal (i.e., more 'eastern') than American men; and that women immigrants adopt the host cultures' values more readily than their male counterparts when such country provides more opportunity. Finally, we recommended that the development of a marital quality scale for Arabs in general should include items that reflect the values found in this study to be important to the majority of the Lebanese in addition to the traditionally 'western' items that were found to also be of value to this population.

There is conflict in memory over the quality and character of legally segregated schools for blacks. On one hand, there is a profoundly negative national memory of these schools as "inherently inferior" compared to their white counterparts. On the other hand, there are overwhelmingly positive counter-memories of these schools as "good" among many former students, teachers, and community members. This dissertation explores one aspect of this conflict in memory by examining the collective remembering and perspectives of former teachers. The research is driven by two enduring questions: (1) How can we explain the existence of a national memory of legally segregated schools for blacks as "inferior" and the collective remembering among former teachers of these same schools as "good?" (2) Given the well-documented inequalities linked to the geopolitics of race and racism in the Jim Crow South, from the perspective of former teachers, what was the quality and character of teaching in the all-black school before federally-mandated desegregation in the South? The data consists of 44 oral history interviews with former teachers in three counties in the North Carolina coastal plains, local and state archival materials, and secondary historical sources. The dissertation is divided into three parts. In the first part, I advance a theory of collective remembering based upon hidden transcripts. I found that participants in my study remember from hidden transcripts—latent reports of the social world created and lived in all-black schools and communities. In the second part, I show how the voices of collective remembering among participants reveal hidden social relations and practices that were constructed away from the guise of white educational authorities. I found that participants fashioned situated pedagogies for the acquisition of educational capital that black youth could exchange for jobs, civil rights, and social power. In the third part, I conclude that the national memory of "inherently inferior" all-black public schools does not tell the whole story about legally segregated education. Ultimately, I found that the oral narratives of Jim Crow's teachers reveal a critique of power and a fight for respectability that shaped teachers' work in the Age of Jim Crow. ^

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

This study explores the nature of Jewish identity and identification in contemporary American society. It is anchored theoretically in an analysis of alternative models of the nature of ethnic relations. Traditional models, including the theory of the melting pot, cultural pluralism, and the dominant perspective, assimilation, are discussed in Chapter I and found to be inadequate for the depiction and explanation of the Jewish experience. An alternative model, called ethnogenesis, is developed, which emphasizes changes in group life and the creation of new definitions of what it means to be an ethnic group member as well as the partial maintenance of traditional group characteristics and behavior patterns. Chapter II explores the American Jewish experience in some detail, paying particular attention to the religious and ethnic duality of this group's attitudes and behavior. To test the applicability of the ethnogenesis model, a research strategy was devised which utilized a new survey as well as an existing, larger-scale survey of Jewish attitudes and behavior. The former survey sampled the beliefs and practices of Jews raised and confirmed in a Reform Jewish congregation in Erie, Pennsylvania. Members of the sample were adults aged thirty-one to forty-one; as many of those who were confirmed (at age fifteen) in this congregation from 1952 to 1962 were contacted and surveyed by means of a mailed questionnaire. A reform congregation was chosen in order to maximize the likelihood of assimilation and thus provide a severe test of the ethnogenesis model. To supplement data from this small sample, data from the 1970-71 National Jewish Population Survey, sponsored by the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds, were also employed, and findings from the Erie survey were compared with findings from a comparable age group in the National survey. Chapters IV and V, the data analysis chapters, examine in detail the shape of contemporary Jewish ethnicity. Chapter V focuses on Jewish identity, which refers to the subjective or attitudinal dimension of being Jewish--the meaning of being Jewish to the individual Jew. Chapter V focuses on identification, which refers to the behavioral dimension--what people do in their lives to announce to themselves and to others the fact of their Jewishness. Both chapters examine these issues from the standpoint of both the religious and the ethnic component of Jewishness. Chapter VI attempts to bring together the detailed analyses of the preceding chapters and to examine the case for the ethnogenesis model. It concludes that ethnogenesis is a superior way of depicting and explaining patterns of contemporary Jewish life, and is probably a superior general model for the study of ethnic relations. Data from the Erie and national surveys indicate that new cultural patterns have emerged in this society that define Jewish identity and identification, and that, accordingly, an accurate portrayal of Jewish life cannot be made simply by examining the extent to which traditional group patterns of belief and behavior have persisted. While the shape of Jewish life has clearly changed, with many traditional beliefs and practices abandoned, Jews continue to identify as Jews, their Jewishness continues to have subjective importance to them, and they continue to act in ways that identify them to others as members of a distinct group. Despite the ease and potential for assimilation, Jews persist as a group, losing some ground to attribution and lower birth rates, but nevertheless preserving linked patterns of belief and action.