This dissertation brings together the history of slavery and environmental history to explore the legacy of slavery on Texas’ Trinity River from the 1820s to the 1970s. Many southern rivers, including the Trinity, experienced few sustained efforts to transform or control them until well into the twentieth century, and these environments were just as likely to diffuse rather than consolidate any particular group’s power over people. Unlike elites in the older regions of the slave South, no one assumed that they controlled the environment in places such as Texas’s Trinity River. Drawing on nearly fifty different archives, my dissertation explains the surprising ways in which slavery, urbanization, and environmentalism were connected. Environmental racism changed the Trinity into a more flood prone and polluted place, but it also meant that its mostly black residents were rarely mentioned in official engineering reports or newspaper articles. This invisibility served as a temporary advantage during the racist violence of the post-emancipation decades and people squatted on land for which they did not hold titles. However, because so many people were not included in official records such as census reports, I have relied on qualitative sources to analyze this history. Freedpeople incurred plantation slavery’s environmental debts of erosion and disease, but they also seized the opportunity to avoid crop-liens and other forms of usury by living in an overlooked landscape. Upstream cities on the Trinity gave little consideration to the effects of using the river as a sewer, and they ignored the black families who called the river home. In the early twentieth century, a novel class of elites on the lower half of the river began to issue bonds to build levees that pushed out many longtime residents. As prisons replaced plantations and subsistence-oriented farmers could no longer endure the worsened floods, pollution, and enclosure of its common lands, the lower Trinity lost most of its remaining residents. Yet as debates raged along the entire river about remaking it into a canal and the proper use of state and federal resources, the memory of an unruly river contributed to the political outcomes despite slavery’s legacy of inequality.

Thesis advisor: Paula Mathieu / "If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought” (Orwell). America's English language is a major contributing factor that perpetuates and orients us toward racial inequality. If American culture is racist, it is only logical that the language our culture uses to communicate would also be racist. This thesis will investigate how language in the media shapes and exacerbates racial bias, contributing to the criminalization of the Black community. The American English language, which includes all forms of written and spoken communication, is how America has shaped its identity (Smalls et al., 152). Language is how we communicate and express ourselves; it is the indispensable transmitter, shaping and creating ideas, social customs, religions, and culture. While many factors contribute to the ongoing struggle of racial inequality in America, my thesis will focus on the history and language of America’s racial biases toward Black people, their impact on societal attitudes, and how the media is using such language to criminalize the Black community. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Departmental Honors. / Discipline: English.

The purpose of both Study 1 and Study 2 was to experimentally examine the ways in which non-Latinx, White, European American individuals just world beliefs and color-blind racism may predict scapegoating behaviors directed at Black, African American and Brown, Latino men in the workplace. Participants were recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk Prime. The main hypothesis for Study 1 was that just world beliefs would positively predict shame and guilt, shame and guilt would positively predict discipline, and that color-blind racism would mediate the relationship between shame and guilt and discipline. The overall scapegoating model was not supported, but individual pathways were significant. The main hypothesis for Study 2 was that just world-beliefs would positively predict threat of loss, threat of loss would positively predict discipline, and that color-blind racial ideology would mediate the positive relationship between threat of loss and discipline. The overall scapegoating model was not supported but the significance of individual pathways is discussed below. For Study 1 I found partial support for racial differences in discipline, but this was not found in Study 2. However, I did find that participants who were threatened with job loss in Study 2 assigned harsher discipline. In both Study 1 and Study two it was found that color-blind racism predicts harsher discipline. Future research and implications are discussed.

Thesis advisor: Betty Leask / Race plays a significant role in shaping the experiences of Black students who study abroad. Unlike their White peers, Black students are likely to encounter racism abroad, which a small body of research has documented. However, these studies say little about the short- and long- term effects of these experiences. This study is located in this gap in the research and examines how racism experienced while studying abroad can affect the wellbeing of Black students. In-depth interviews were conducted with 8 participants. Results revealed that the racism Black students encounter abroad can cause significant stress. When Black students lack adequate resources to cope with this stress, their wellbeing is threatened. Recommendations for study abroad offices and administrators for reducing and limiting the incidences and impact of racism experienced by Black students studying abroad are made. / Thesis (MA) — Boston College, 2020. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education.

This essay reads and analyses the novel The Lonely Londoners by Samuel Selvon through the lens of postcolonial theory. It examines the West Indian migrants who migrated to Britain in the 1950s, searching for a better life. They had been indoctrinated by the colonizers for decades of the prosperous life awaiting them in the Motherland. They arrived in Britain with high hopes and eager minds to find a possibility of abandoning the colonial oppression in exchange for alife in London. However, that did not become the reality for the migrants. The novel depicts the shattering of the sensation of self-worth and identity which they sacrificed in their attempts to adapt to and belong in English society. The migrants find themselves confused and ambivalentin this very harsh and cold British society. Further, this essay investigates the ways in whichmimicry and hybridity have been portrayed in the novel through analysing two of the main characters applying theories by Homi Bhabha, Frantz Fanon, Stuart Hall, and Edouard Glissant.

Research submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree Master of Philosophy by coursework and Research in the facultiy of humanities / In the literature, the subject of racism has been approached by and large in a particular kind of way. In this paper, I aim to critically engage with standard racism discourse by doing two things. Firstly, I will be showing that the way racism is generally discussed is problematic both for the reasons that (a) its scope is limiting and (b) the way that the concept is used leaves out certain things that are important for what count or ought to count as racism. Secondly, I will be arguing that racism in its most basic form is the undervaluing, the devaluing, and not at all valuing someone else on account of their racial or racialized group. / MT 2020

Walt Disney Studios possesses a checkered past in how its films dealt with racism and representation. Some of the earliest films involved songs and characters that go against modern sensibilities. In recent years, the studio's films have attempted to go against their forebears' racist connotations. Racism, however, proved a constant problem for the company. This paper shall explore the various ways Disney feature films addressed (or did not address) themes of racism and discrimination in its films from 1990 to 2018. The first chapter discusses the business reasoning behind Disney's continued reluctance to address race issues adequately, chiefly fear of losing monetary revenue from alienated whites. The second chapter explores the different types of coding filmmakers employed to keep from directly address race, coding all characters as white in the process. This method lasted until the Princess and the Frog's release because the film's blatant use of Jim Crow imagery caused a considerable amount of backlash. The final chapter concerns how the corporation's current method of dodging race in its films. Dubbed the "Fantastical Reality," this method relies on leaning into the fantastic aspects of a setting (magic or otherness) to explain why race and racism do not appear in a film. This method came under heavy scrutiny with Zootopia and Black Panther's release, both of which make race a significant theme.

This qualitative research study explores how racial identity and racial trauma impacts a chaplain's clinical work. In the study, I interviewed eleven professional chaplains who have experienced racial situations either in their past or in their work or both and how those experiences have influenced their professional growth. After evaluating the responses of the interview, I was able to determine a number of findings that I believe would be helpful as chaplains continue to provide spiritual support in the culturally diverse hospice and hospital settings.

Magister Philosophiae - MPhil / The action research project documented in this thesis was informed by Jurgen Habermas' theory of knowledge-constitutive interests. In this theory Habermas postulates three anthropologically deep-seated interests that inform our search for knowledge. These interests are the technical, the practical and the emancipatory. In the action-research project, which was done in collaboration with a group of first year art students at Bellville College of Education, I attempted to uncover the values, assumptions and interests underlying our educational interaction in the hope of transforming it to be more empowering and emancipatory. The project went through three stages, each of which was informed by a different interest. The first stage could be described as having a technical interest because it was based on positivist assumptions of reductionism, duality and linearity. In this "- stage art was understood as being value-free, objectively describing and reflecting visual reality. It was believed that theory and skills could be applied to achieve a predetermined product. In the second stage of the project the positivist paradigm of perception was replaced by the assumption that our relationship to others and the world is mediated by language which needs to be interpreted in a socio-political and historical context. Art does not only have a descriptive role but it can express subjective understandings of the networks of meanings and social rules involved in experienced reality. Finally, the third stage evolved within a critical framework informed by an emancipatory interest. In the drawing project we looked critically at aspects of our society which frustrate and constrain individuals to sustain dependence, inequality and oppression. We tried to uncover existing power relations and the historical, social and material conditions underlying certain problems we were experiencing. We hoped to find ways in which we could contribute to the transformation of ourselves and our society. The process of making art was here seen as a form of communicative action which can be empowering, emancipatory and transformative.

<p>  </p> <p>EEG is a commonly used method in both research and medical practice that is reliant on electrode to scalp contact to record brain activity.  Anti-black racism is a problem that is prevalent within EEG because of both the differences in hair texture, density, and follicle shape as well as the cultural and historical significance of Black hair and touching Black hair for Black people. The potential impact of Black people being unable to successfully receive EEG substantial including: risk of misdiagnosis, lack of representation within neurophysiological research, and negative experiences to Black patients and participants. In the current study, we began to address the gap in the literature regarding Black hair and EEG by surveying current principal investigators (PIs) who are leading laboratories using EEG as a primary method. The primary objective was to gain an initial understanding of the way in which members of laboratories primarily using EEG in various parts of the country currently engage with Black participants, and to what extent they do so at all. We utilized quantitative and qualitative questions in order to assess a variety of components for each laboratory. We used a case study method approach to data analysis. Our findings suggest that there is value in examining concerns of underrepresentation of Black people in EEG. The laboratories in our study primarily did not have tailored outreach for Black participants. Many laboratories in our sample did not alter protocols for Black participants. Eight of our nine case studies reported additional challenges when working with Black participants in comparison to Non-Black participants; Each of those laboratories reported excluding the Black participant or not using the Black participant’s data after the fact. It is essential that we continue to examine the various components of conducting EEG with Black people to gain a better understanding, and therefor inform future best practices.</p>