This thesis attempts to read Rebecca Walker's memoir Black White and Jewish as an investigation into the problematic of the social construct of race. It begins with an elaboration on the society's phobia about racial amalgamation owing to its potentiality to alter color boundaries, which are maintained through the manipulation of power. Born in a society where racial purity is highly postulated, Walker encounters an identity crisis that renders her double alienated and marginalized. What follows, thereby, is an examination of the identity formation of Walker as a mixed black and white individual, as well as a discussion of how racial hybridity may challenge essentialist racialization. With its fluidity and ambiguity, Walker's mixed race identity turns out to contest and further destabilize the immutability, stability, and homogeneity of essentializing racial categories. By cherishing the boundary-crossing capability a multiracial possesses, Walker could liberate herself from the shackles of the trauma of racism.

This thesis aims to investigate the black church and black community in James Baldwin¡¦s first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain. Particularly, it probes how and why the religion, namely Christianity, casts a loaded shadow for African Americans. I argue that Baldwin, on the one hand, vigorously illustrates a bodily pious black community by bombarding us with heaps of biblical texts and church songs; on the other hand, he serenely indicts a spiritually hollow black church by narrating a blues-like comically sad tone. I discuss Baldwin¡¦s relentless wrestle with God in Chapter One. I suggest reading Go Tell It on the Mountain together with Baldwin¡¦s essay, The Fire Next Time, to flesh out the weighty issue of religion in the text. Since black community and black church generally symbolizes each other in the early history of Africa American lives, I make a detour to explore the emergence and development of the Black Church in Chapter Two. It is also an attempt to explain how the white God in the U.S.A. becomes black and how and why black community eventually accepts the then indifferent God to be their own. In Chapter Three, I look into the importance (and impotence) of the epitome of black community¡XHarlem¡Xin terms of its geographical location, position, and structure within the capitalist metropolis, New York. This chapter travels with John Grimes, the protagonist, to see the white man¡¦s world and to investigate the impossibility and oxymoron of ¡§black flâneur.¡¨ Then I discuss in Chapter Four the performing arts of the Black Church, as well as the secular music outside of the Black Church. Baldwin intelligently borrows God¡¦s spear and shield¡Xthe language in the Bible and the music played inside (and later outside) the Black Church¡Xas his writing tool to tell a gospel-like parable. At last, I would conclude that GTIM serves as a parable of the secular world for Baldwin has sung a blues gospel to the world.

Thesis (M.A.) - Simon Fraser University, 2006. / Theses (Dept. of Psychology) / Simon Fraser University. Also issued in digital format and available on the World Wide Web.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2002. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 476-504).

The purpose of this study on Mark Twain's The Innocents Abroad is toinvestigate the various personal and socio-historical reasons for Twain's disrespectful and intolerant depiction of the people of the Middle East in juxtaposition to his lighter treatment of Europeans of the Mediterranean, whom he also wrote about at length in the same travel narrative.The research involves examining the main text, but also considers the long history of Western attitudes towards the Middle East, Twain's prejudicial upbringing, his strong penchant for exaggeration, his sense of opportunism, and the books and contemporary social attitudes that may have influenced his thinking. Research reveals an intricate web of complexity behind Mark Twain's attitude in his writing. It also reveals that the many of his critics fall prey and become entangled inthe very same web of complicated and skewing factors that trapped Twain nearly one hundred and fifty years ago.

This critical case study investigated the experiences of ten White preservice social studies and language arts teachers as they learned about race and racism during the first semester of an urban-focused teacher preparation program. Through observation, interview, and artifact data, this inquiry analyzed how the preservice teachers engaged with the topic of race through the conceptual framework of critical Whiteness studies. This theoretical lens seeks to identify the normalized, oppressive practices of Whiteness with the goal of reorienting those practices in antiracist ways. The author identified two broad themes of transgressive White racial knowledge and conventional White racial knowledge to characterize the progressive and problematic aspects, respectively, of the preservice teachers’ engagement with race. The participants displayed transgressive White racial knowledge through the way they combatted deficit thinking toward urban students and through their knowledge of the mechanics of Whiteness and structural racism. They displayed conventional White racial knowledge through their stories of early experiences with racial difference, their use of subtle resistance discourses during race conversations, and their tendency to misappropriate critical racial discourses. As a whole, the racial knowledge of the ten White preservice teachers points to conflicted, ambivalent feelings at the core of their racial identities. Their desires to talk about race and to develop an antiracist teaching practice were mediated by competing desires to maintain their identities as “good Whites” and to protect their investments in Whiteness. The complex ways that these White preservice teachers engaged with critical racial discourses have significant implications for critical Whiteness studies, teacher education, and social studies education. Their willingness to explore race in a critical fashion should push teacher educators to resist homogenizing, deficit views of the antiracist potential of White teachers. However, their problematic engagement with race points to the importance of viewing White identity as conflicted. If antiracist pedagogies begin with this understanding of White racial identity, they can encourage profound shifts in the ontology, epistemology, and methodology of Whiteness. These shifts can help White teachers to develop racial literacy and to build an antiracist teaching practice. / text

This thesis analyses the ideology of the Radical right-wing Populist Party, Sweden Democrats. The aim of the study is to see if and how the ideology of the Sweden Democrats has changed through its years of activity, by comparing the party in three periods. The focus in the analysis is put on the party's view on the Swedish national identity and on multiculturalism. The reason for analyzing the party's view on these two concepts is due to the fact that they can be seen as corner stones in a racist ideology. An explanation of the concepts will be presented in the theory chapter, which is later used in the analysis of the party. The study shows that the ideology of the Sweden Democrats has changed very little throughout its years of activity in terms of their view on the national identity and the multicultural idea. This as a result has led to a similar amount of change in the arguments that can be seen as racist, by the party.

The aim of the study is to examine what upper secondary school students think that they themselves and their school can do to create a peaceful society. The study combine qualitative and quantitative methods based on questionnaires distributed among 328 students in three high schools in Sweden. The survey is a combination of multiple choice and open questions. For the analysis of quantitative responses the computer program SPSS was used producing frequency tables and response rate schemes. To analyze the questionnaire's qualitative part a narrative analysis method was used. The central theoretical framework of the study is research on peace, positive peace, peace education and racism. The conclusion of the study is that most students in the survey believe that the school plays an important role in establishing and supporting peaceful values, both with the students and in society at large. Students feel that school should take on more responsibility as a peacemaking force than it does today. They also expressed that the schools need to work more with anti-racism, harassment and bullying and that they think that the teachers ought to get more training in these subjects. According to the students, their most important role as individuals is to act in a way that promotes a peaceful society while also living by what they preach.  They underlined the importance that each individual must take upon themselves to play an active role in promoting a peaceful society and they also stressed the importance of working together to bring these changes.

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I show three new ways to use Google search query data. First, I use Google search data to measure racism in the United States and its effect on Obama in the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections. Second, I use Google search data to predict turnout in different parts of the United States prior to an election. Third, I use Google search data to measure child maltreatment and how maltreatment is affected by economic downturns. / Economics