In the Dominican Republic, the memory of the Haitian conquest and annexation of the nation from 1822 until independence on February 27, 1844, along with the solidification of the anti-Haitian nationalist rhetoric of the 1920s and 30s, have fueled deep-seated animosity toward Haitians. Many Dominicans continue to hold strong anti-Haitian attitudes, and negative views of blackness pervade much of Dominican popular discourse, as well as ideas of beauty and social propriety. Lamentably, these negative attitudes toward Haitianness, which has become synonymous with blackness and vice versa, have spread far beyond informal conversations in private households, permeating the political realm as well. Anti-Haitian attitudes have long guided government action and unofficial policy in the spheres of immigration, citizenship, and labor. Though the Dominican Constitution, prior to a 2010 reform, explicitly granted citizenship to all persons born on Dominican soil, persons of Haitian descent were routinely denied the right to citizenship, as well as the right to any forms of government-issued identification. As a result, even those born in the Dominican Republic endure the looming threat of being deported to a nation that, in some cases, they have never known. Though the common occurrence of such grave injustice is well-known within the nation, most Dominicans are apathetic. The minority of Dominicans who oppose such immoral treatment are overpowered by the vociferous anti-Haitian majority who argue that those who fail to sympathize with their views are not only un-Dominican but anti-Dominican as well. With the majority of Dominicans holding such strong, vehemently-defended views on Haitian immigration, the minority opposition is often overlooked. In this study, I will analyze information obtained from field observation and interviews with Haitian sugar cane cutters and Dominican intellectuals, as well as citizenship and immigration legislation, to provide readers with a more comprehensive view of the political, economic, and socio-cultural impact of racism and anti-Haitianism. As part of my analysis, I will examine the motivations behind and causes of contradictory citizenship and immigration policy and discriminatory interpretations of the law as it applies to Haitian-descended persons. Through this thesis, I aim to construct a new, more complex analysis of anti-Haitianism and racism to generate a more thorough understanding of contradictory Dominican immigration and citizenship policy and its impact within the Haitian-Dominican community.

My research is a qualitative study about the Asian American experience. Studies have shown that Asian Americans obtain high levels of educational attainment and household income, but these figures are misleading. Asian Americans are getting a lower financial return on their education compared to their white counterparts. They suffer higher rates of suicide and depression than all other racial groups. Little quantitative and no qualitative research exists addressing these issues. My research explores Asian American life experiences with a focus on what role systemic racism plays in their lives and how this connects to the health disparities. This analysis utilizes thirty-six in-depth interviews to discuss the types and frequency of racist events. Respondents revealed a plethora of discriminatory incidents and shared various coping strategies that they use to deal with the stress of discrimination and to combat future racism. The analysis concludes that the great efforts that Asian Americans go to in order to protect themselves from white racism are costly. Respondents have to combat feelings of isolation, inadequacy, and inferiority. The analysis also utilizes interview data to discuss the ways in which respondents attempt to conform to the white racial frame in hopes to find relief from discrimination. By conforming, some adopt negative racial stereotypes about themselves and other people of color. Even after going to great lengths to conform, interviewees still struggled with feeling excluded by whites. Eventually, some respondents became hopeless that they would ever be accepted. This work also explores alternative methods some Asian Americans are using to combat systemic racism. Some respondents revealed an alternate mindset to those who have chosen to conform to the white racial frame. This group of respondents challenged white racist ideologies, and some even discussed methods in which they actively resist in hopes to improve the racial situation for all Asian Americans. This work is an attempt to fill the large gaps in research about the unique Asian American experience. There has been no other similar analysis in the past. My data reveal the complexities of the Asian American experience and the need for further research.

Racial profiling, in the context of the current study, concerns the association of racial and/or ethnic status with criminality and manifests in the traffic stop. The body of knowledge now available on racial profiling has documented well the incidence of numerical disparity of traffic stops between racial groups, with motorists of color subject to intrusion by the state at greater rates than White motorists (Withrow 2005). Criminologists then turned to ‘perception’-based research to examine what makes an individual ‘perceive’ he has been racially profiled. I argue that the second wave of research is dominated by a narrow survey approach, concentrates on the microlevel police-citizen encounter, and lacks a theoretical grounding, particularly in race theory. The ‘perception’ orientation, I argue, discursively diminishes the experiences of communities of color in their experiences with the state. The current study re-examines the two main components of the ‘perception’ based research -- personal and vicarious experience with the police – to extend our understanding of the meanings behind personal and vicarious encounters with law enforcement. The current qualitative study, based on more than two dozen in-depth interviews, informs our understanding of racial profiling on a number of levels. Citizenship emerges as a dominant narrative from my respondents, thus extending the effects of the racialized traffic stop effects beyond the particularistic police-minority relationship and into larger legal and political realms not anticipated in the current literature. I find that the ‘shadow citizenship’ identity imposed by the state through racializing and criminalizing processes like racial profiling is regularly rejected by people of color through various forms of resistance to racial oppression. A third important finding concerns the complication of ‘vicarious experiences.’ My respondents indicate that they do not summarily adopt views about the police but contextualize their own experiences within understandings of collective memory. Finally, because I engage racial profiling through the theoretical perspectives of Collins, DuBois, Feagin, and Foucault, among others, and frame my overall research approach using critical race theory, the salience of race in racial profiling processes is undeniably evident, contrary to the racial vacuum dominating the current literature.

This research paper aims to show how racism, power, social representations and identity are created and reproduced through the media. The research paper will analyse newspaper articles presented about Cronulla riot in The Sydney Morning Herald, The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph using Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis, CDA, as a theory and method. The research paper aims to demonstrate how inequality in the Australian society is reproduced by the media through the use stereotypes and certain social representations and how knowledge and awareness about this is relevant to social work of today.

The novel Bifocal, a fictional young adult novel that examines the racist backlash that occurs at a high school after a male Muslim student is arrested on terrorism charges, was published in 2007 and has received wide critical acclaim for its portrayal of issues of racism. Working from an anti-racist framework, this research interviews two teachers who have used the novel in their classrooms, and considers the value and limitations of the book as an anti-racist teaching tool. Through discussions about specific themes in the novel and its overall presentation of racism, I argue that, while Bifocal presents some useful interventions, it also reflects a simplistic and individualistic perspective on racism and how racism can be addressed. I also examine the ways that Bifocal – and young adult literature in general – can be read in order to encourage more critical discussions about systems of racism and privilege.

This project explores the connections between the worlds we hope for and the worlds we help create. Over the course of several months, I conducted three sets of narrative interviews with three anti-oppression education facilitators, and a self-study with myself. Using narrative inquiry through a specifically anti-colonial lens as my method of analysis, I worked in partnership with my interview participants to draw meaning out of our interviews. Growing from these discussions, this thesis explores the work that discourses of hope do in our practices as facilitators of education for change. How do the things that we learn to hope for inform the way we teach, and the possibilities that are allowed in, or locked out, of our classrooms? In problematizing certain functions of certain discourses of hope, this study also explores the possibilities of anti-colonial hopings as a process of generating decolonizing dreams through education for change.

This project explores the connections between the worlds we hope for and the worlds we help create. Over the course of several months, I conducted three sets of narrative interviews with three anti-oppression education facilitators, and a self-study with myself. Using narrative inquiry through a specifically anti-colonial lens as my method of analysis, I worked in partnership with my interview participants to draw meaning out of our interviews. Growing from these discussions, this thesis explores the work that discourses of hope do in our practices as facilitators of education for change. How do the things that we learn to hope for inform the way we teach, and the possibilities that are allowed in, or locked out, of our classrooms? In problematizing certain functions of certain discourses of hope, this study also explores the possibilities of anti-colonial hopings as a process of generating decolonizing dreams through education for change.

Television often portrays African Americans in unfavorable positions in comparison to Caucasians. Typically these unfavorable depictions reinforce negative stereotypes associated with African Americans. Research indicates that television portrayals can influence people’s attitudes toward one another. A question left unanswered by current research: are mass-mediated images as influential at reversing or counteracting stereotypes as they are at reinforcing them? An experiment with undergraduate students was conducted to investigate the relationship between the positive portrayal of African Americans and subsequent racial attitudes. Participants viewed a video clip with either an African American or Caucasian chairman for the Georgia Division of Public Health. The clip included a still photograph of the chairman and was accompanied by a pre-recorded voice addressing treatments for lung cancer patients. At the beginning of each class, professors showed students the video after which the class lecture proceeded as scheduled. Just before the class ended a researcher entered the class and told students he/she was doing a survey on racial attitudes. Students were then given a questionnaire regarding racial attitudes toward African Americans. Between the time of the video viewing and the completion of the survey, students were not informed that one was related to the other. Subjects also completed an evaluation of the speaker in the video and of the health message.

The novel Bifocal, a fictional young adult novel that examines the racist backlash that occurs at a high school after a male Muslim student is arrested on terrorism charges, was published in 2007 and has received wide critical acclaim for its portrayal of issues of racism. Working from an anti-racist framework, this research interviews two teachers who have used the novel in their classrooms, and considers the value and limitations of the book as an anti-racist teaching tool. Through discussions about specific themes in the novel and its overall presentation of racism, I argue that, while Bifocal presents some useful interventions, it also reflects a simplistic and individualistic perspective on racism and how racism can be addressed. I also examine the ways that Bifocal – and young adult literature in general – can be read in order to encourage more critical discussions about systems of racism and privilege.

This thesis provides an integrated overview on the historical and contemporary literature dedicated to the study of within-country income inequality in Latin America. The central hypothesis of this report is that there are underlying factors that drive the persistent levels of high within-country inequality experienced by Latin American countries. We study two countries, Brazil and Bolivia, through the process of reform and growth, and note the effects on the labor markets. Using all available statistics and the wealth of knowledge compiled since the early 1980s, this study identifies those trends, and the factors that cause them to reappear in numerous cases across South America. Focusing on periods of recession and post-stabilization growth in countries with rising or consistently unequal distributions of wealth, this report identifies viable trends in unemployment, linking them to external events and the social climate of Latin America. Employing case-study methodology (see Chapters 6 and 7) this thesis builds a framework with which to study national and regional inequality, then applies it to two cases: Brazil and Bolivia. This thesis’ main findings are that the political and economic reforms and restructurings during the crisis in the 1980s, and the post-1980 era of stabilization and growth, generally perpetuated or worsened the levels of income inequality for countries in Latin America. Further analysis concludes that unsustainable external debt, boom-and-bust cycles, more deeper-seated cultural factors cannot be overlooked. Low government spending on social and educational development is the unfortunate consequence of copious external debt and public interest payments in Latin America; instead of promoting long-term growth, Latin American regimes are instead forced to focus on high interest rates and protecting wildly volatile currencies. Ethnic composition, entrenched class-structure, and cultural norms each play significant roles in income disparity, the extent of which varies by case. The limitations of this research are firstly, that regression analysis is inconclusive; no strong correlation between growth and inequality can be observed, even within the highly unequal region of Latin America.. Further, tax data, which provides the basis for measurements of income inequality, varies from country to country, making cross-country statistical meta-analysis difficult. Lastly, data was not collectible until the early 1980s, and has missing observations, further complicating the task of statistical analysis. Thus, this study bases its findings on empirical evidence, data, and basic economic theory, in explaining the factors and causes of inequality.