The purpose of this dissertation was to introduce and test a theory of 'rejection and deflection' (RAD). This theory proposes that majority group members (middle- and upper class Whites) can deflect accusations of being racist by rejecting a subset of their racial in-group (poor Whites); and, as a result of this rejection and deflection process, are more likely to discriminate against the racial out-group. Results from a sample of 166 middle and upper income White participants suggested that: (1) people who were not given the opportunity to reject poor Whites were more likely to recommend a Black job applicant for a high status position than were people not given the opportunity to reject poor Whites; (2) participants tended to distance themselves from poor Whites and attributed more negative qualities and less positive qualities to poor Whites than they did to middle class Whites; and, (3) modern racism (McConahay, 1986) positively predicted rejection of poor Whites. Implications for this research as it relates to the interaction of race and social class are discussed along with directions for future research on RAD theory / acase@tulane.edu

This research explores the relationships between work experience and self-esteem, delinquency, educational attainment, and future income among youths of Mexican descent. Social scientists have addressed the concern that teenage work experience might undermine the emotional well-being of adolescents as well as their investment in education. Despite what appears to be a propensity for early labor market participation among adolescents of Mexican-origin, investigators have focused little attention on the effects of employment vis-a-vis this segment of the population. But the question remains an important one in light of demographic projections for population growth among Hispanics, the majority of whom claim Mexican ancestry, as well as their relatively low rate of high school completion. Using multivariate regression techniques and data from two distinct national surveys, I find that for U.S.-born youths of Mexican descent early work experience lowers self-esteem, increases delinquency, stymies educational attainment, but increases income gains over the long-run. In contrast, among Mexican immigrant adolescents, employment increases self-esteem, reduces delinquency, and enhances high school completion as well as future earnings. That outcomes for the former group more closely resemble those for non-Hispanic White adolescents than Mexican immigrants, suggests that U.S.-born youths of Mexican descent may suffer adverse effects from assimilation processes that Mexican culture appears to nullify / acase@tulane.edu

Data from the Louisiana Tumor Registry for the years 1988-1992 were used to describe the relationship between the rates of five selected cancer sites (leukemia, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, breast cancer, prostate cancer and cervical cancer) and urbanization status while controlling for the effects of age, race, sex and socioeconomic status. Population density measurements for each of Louisiana's 64 parishes were used to define urbanization status. The census derived percent of the population below poverty level (SES) was used to define socioeconomic status. The SES variable is race-specific. For each race-sex combination, multiple regression analysis was performed in order to describe the relationship between each selected cancer site and the log of the population density while controlling for the effect of SES. The incidence of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma increased with increasing population density in white males. Breast cancer incidence increased with increasing population density in white and black females. Prostate cancer incidence increased with increasing population density in white males. The rates of leukemia and cervical cancer were not associated with population density. However, the rate of cervical cancer increased with increasing percent poverty in white females even after adjusting for population density. SES was associated with breast cancer in white females, but not after adjusting for population density. It is hypothesized that SES was not statistically significant in black females for breast or cervical cancer because the prevalence of poverty was above the threshold for which the rates of these cancers may be constant / acase@tulane.edu

This study examines the system of family care for orphaned children in sub-Saharan Africa with the example of Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Applying a retrospective research design - the case-control design - to the study of orphaned children, the research attempts to explain why some orphans leave their relatives and enter orphanages while the other larger group is taken in by members of the extended family Two groups of children are compared: orphans staying at the sites of orphanages and orphans from a similar background that continue to live with family members. All children in the sample have lost one or both of their parents and are between 8 and 20 years old. A total of 880 children have been interviewed. Children in orphanages and children in family care are compared with respect to three sets of risk factors: (a) demographic risk factors, (b) social risk factors, and (c) experiences of violence and discrimination in the family The data analysis suggests that among the indicators that were examined, experiences of violence and discrimination are most important in predicting the outcome variable. Some of the demographic characteristics also figured prominently as predictors. Surprisingly, the social characteristics appear to be less relevant in differentiating between cases and controls. Orphans at high risk to leave the family include (a) maternal orphans, (b) children that lost their parent(s) at a young age, (c) orphans from families with few adult relatives, (d) orphans without sibling support, (e) orphans without access to essential social services, in particular schooling, and (f) children that suffer violence, discrimination or other forms of abuse by a family adult. The cultural phenomenon of children accused of sorcery ('enfants dits sorciers') is especially disturbing. With more than 50% of the children in orphanages and 20% of the children in family care accused of sorcery by family members, the research confirms earlier impressions that the belief in sorcery is becoming a most significant factor in child abandonment in the Democratic Republic of Congo / acase@tulane.edu

African-American women are disproportionately represented in the HIV/AIDS statistics in the south. This phenomenological research study explored and describes the sexual decision-making experiences of nine Louisiana African-American women ages 25--44. The research questions focused on the decision-making process with a new male sex partner. Participants retrospectively shared their lived experiences in the previous 12 months supported by Black Women's Standpoint Theory Semi-structured interviews were conducted with questions designed to uncover the complexity of the decision-making processes. Definitions of sexual intimacy, the role of spirituality, and the concept of connectedness were also explored along with the emotional and physiological feelings, meanings, and thoughts associated with their sexual decision-making experiences. Themes were identified through data triangulation as follows: the decision to have sexual intercourse, considerations involved in sexual decision-making, perceived risks for HIV/AIDS infection, and factors prompting safer-sex behaviors. Other considerations related to sense of self, the role of socialization, physical and emotional expectations, influence of alcohol, and condom use are discussed. The data supports inconsistent or no condom use during sexual intercourse with a man whose HIV status was unknown placing more than 50% of the women at high risk for HIV infection. HIV risks were higher among the women with minimal or no consistent spirituality and a diminished sense of connectedness to family and friends. Implications for HIV prevention, social work research, practice, and education are discussed / acase@tulane.edu

Autobiography is the writing of a self, viewed as distinct from others. Ethnography, on the other hand, is writing about the other, especially writing about those who are considered radically different, notably illiterate peoples. These two genres are often opposed, but in this dissertation, I show how they are combined in works by francophone women writers. Focusing on texts by Taos Amrouche, Leila Houari, Fatima Mernissi, Mai Thu Van, Helene Cixous, and Evelyne Wilwerth, I consider how women who belong to cultural groups that have, in general, been the object rather than the subject of representation contest these generic boundaries, and as a result, fixed categories of self and other. Their reconfiguration of identity has often culminated in the production of autoethnographies, a hybrid genre that amalgamates the concerns of autobiography and ethnography. Julia Watson has defined autoethnography as 'an ethnographic presentation of oneself by a subject usually considered the 'object' of the ethnographer's interview' (35). I will argue that francophone women writers employ autoethnography as a strategy to write themselves as subjects embedded in specific cultural contexts The ethnographic interview has traditionally been a research tool used to gain data about cultural differences. Yet the interview has the potential to be more than a methodological tool. The interview process involves interrogation, exchange, and performance in a face to face meeting between people. In the two-part structure of this dissertation, I explore the dynamics of the interview process in relation to autobiography and ethnography. In the first section, autobiography is examined as a process by which the self is interrogated and in a sense, interviewed through its concrete experience with otherness. In the second section, I evaluate the interview's role in ethnographic and autoethnographic representations, and consider how selfhood is paradoxically drawn out in the process of describing otherness. In other words, I examine otherness in the self and selfhood constructed within the other / acase@tulane.edu

'A Social, Economic, and Political Study of Blacks in the Louisiana Delta, 1865-1880,' is an investigation of the post-emancipation experiences of former slaves in four parishes in the Louisiana Delta. Carroll, Madison, Tensas, and Concordia are the four parishes studied. The author analyzes the struggle of the ex-slaves to acquire land, carve out niches for themselves and their families in the free market economy of a plantation district, build social, cultural, and political institutions, educate their children, and cope with the negative impact of the counter-revolution in post-Reconstruction Louisiana / acase@tulane.edu

This study explores, describes, explains, and analyzes the experiences of African-American women with breast cancer. The study gives 'voice to African-American' women through the use of oral narratives. Starting from an 'informant as expert' position, nine African-American women with breast cancer tell their stories about their illness episode from the time of their diagnosis to the post treatment period. African-American women in this study have diverse responses to a breast cancer diagnosis, and they seek help for such a diagnosis through informal and formal networks. Religious and spiritual activities in the lives of these women were central to their treatment experience. Critical commonalities, such as help-seeking and caregiving, are described, and the unique experiences related to breast cancer are discussed. The breast cancer experience is thus analyzed using womanist and developmental positions which help to create a larger narrative about African-American women and illness. Implications for social work practice in the areas of policy, education, research, and direct practice are also discussed / acase@tulane.edu

Ethnographic fieldwork was conducted among the Vietnamese refugees of New Orleans from 1983 to 1986. That fieldwork focused on Vietnamese values and community life. The fieldwork was designed to question certain prevailing, rather monolithic understandings of culture and values and to provide an alternative model for the study of culture and values Vietnamese culture, and any culture for that matter, can be fruitfully understood and studied as a 'library' of conflicting values 'texts.' Values are 'texts' for desirable behavior, feeling, thinking, and relating within a culture or community; values are expressions of what a culture thinks it means to be human and what the goal of human life is. Values texts can and do conflict because a culture, far from being a monolithic entity, is historical and in process; a culture is a conversation of texts, a dialogue, as to what it means to be human, not the conclusion of a syllogism The fieldwork revealed that the Vietnamese cultural library contains three significant sets of texts: Confucian, Catholic, and American. The Confucian texts are essentially concerned with proper relationships in the family and community. The Catholic texts are essentially concerned with the proper relationship to the supernatural. And the American texts are more concerned with individual freedom and self-determination. Conflict among sets of texts does exist but, more importantly, conflict exists within each set of texts as well. Vietnamese culture may be understood as a series of conflicts among values associated with the cultural domains of religion, kinship, ethics, aesthetics, gender, and economics / acase@tulane.edu

The Jazz Age witnessed a convergence of social and aesthetic changes that informed the political, social and literary relationships between African-Americans and Jews. Coming into close contact with each other for the first time, African-Americans and Jews struggled to comprehend and represent the other group as their own perceptions and representations of themselves and the other group began to inform representations of 'the other' in popular culture I see the Jazz Age as a transitional period where artists, particularly Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston and Fannie Hurst, struggle with their own sense of identity politics as the attempt to 'create' and represent themselves and 'the other' to a wide audience. It is my assertion that the 'New Negro' ethos and continued Jewish assimilation allowed these writers to enter a 'third space' of representation that, unlike W. E. B. DuBois' notion of the 'color-line,' does not 'fix' either the artist of 'the other's' identity, but rather allows for multiple movements that challenged these representations. The patronage system that allowed Hughes and Hurston to survive financially while writing in their early years, also restricted their artistic goals, as did conflicting notions of what constituted 'legitimate' African-American art. In their differing representations of Jews both as a social symbol and a religious group, Hughes and Hurston attempted to work out their own identity politics and, in Hurst's case, engage in a project of 'hybridizing' Judeo-Christian and African/Caribbean originary myths For novelist Fannie Hurst, ambivalent about her own identity as an assimilated Jew, representations of immigrant Jews and African-Americans allowed her to 'write' herself away from being identified too closely with stereotypes of Jews in order to be seen as more 'American.' In exploring these writer's representations and interpretations of 'the other,' I hope to interrogate notions of national and cultural identity and posit the Jazz Age as a time when possible representations of 'the other' informed each group's creation of itself / acase@tulane.edu