Based on data concerning Korean Americans affected by mental health problems, it is apparent that current methods of providing mental health services are not adequate. The purpose of this study was to examine the perceptions of various mental disorders and barriers keeping Korean Americans from utilizing mental health services.

Examines whether religious beliefs or practices have a positive or negative influence on the perceived level of stress and coping ability of African American family care providers. Through interviews with three African American females who are caregivers for spouses diagnosed with adult onset brain disorder it was revealed that all caregivers felt their spirituality and/or religious practices shaped how they approached providing care. Religious practices and spirituality affected how they felt about providing care for their spouses and how they dealt with difficult challenges.

Examines goal orientation, ethnicity, gender, and achievement variables of 149 elementary school children (grades 3-5) at a Southern California elementary school. Research was conducted using a 2 x 2 goal orientation matrix that included mastery-approach, mastery-avoid, performance approach, and performance-avoid constructs. California Standards Test (CST) were used to determine achievement. Results supported the hypothesis that there would be no differences based on ethnicity, gender, or grade level. Statistically significant differences were found in the mastery-avoid goal because of class subject. Also, mastery-avoid was found to have a negative correlation to high test scores as measured by CST.

The purpose of this study was to compare the differences in the utilization of coping mechanisms of minority and White adolescents. By measuring the coping skills in adolescents, it sought to identify which strategies are most frequently used within the construct of race.

As of May 2016, the U.S. State Department officially declared a priority date for all green cards for applicants from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras that capped the number of visas granted to individuals from these three countries to just 10,000 per year. This inherently created a two to three-year backlog for Special Immigrant Juvenile Status applicants from these countries as well, meaning that SIJS petitioners will remain undocumented for periods of up to six years until their petition is adjudicated by USCIS and their priority date arrives. I research whether the increasingly difficult path to obtaining permanent residency through a Special Immigrant Juvenile Status petition is a result of a change in federal administrations––– between former President Obama’s covert mechanisms of marginalization and deportation of Central Americans to the overtly anti-immigrant rhetoric stemming from Trump––– or if SIJS backlogs are an inevitable phenomenon resulting from U.S. imperialism in Central America throughout the 20th century. I ground my research on pre-existing literature that explains the legal processes of obtaining permanent residency through a SIJS petition and include scholars’ criticisms of the interpretation of the policy by state and federal courts. To exemplify the complications that youth face while petitioning for SIJ status, I also incorporate the perceptions and experiences of several attorneys who have represented SIJS applicants and my own interpretations of how judges treat SIJS applicants courtrooms throughout Los Angeles County.

The town of Amherst, Massachusetts is home to the flagship campus of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst College, and Hampshire College, institutions that have greatly influenced the town’s prolific history of political activism as well as the high educational attainment and economic status of the majority of its residents. Often hailed as a liberal utopia, research on the political mobilization occurring in this town provides insight into the process and limitations of ally politics: when most of the residents of Amherst are White, how do they engage in racial justice activism? When most of the residents are wealthy and/or highly educated, how do they engage in challenges to capitalism’s structural inequalities? In this thesis, I approach these questions by examining the political mobilization process of myself and others in three organizations: Coming Together, Re-Evaluation Counseling (RC), and the student organization, UMass Alliance for Community Transformation (UACT). I explore how Coming Together focused on antiracism in a process of focused personal reflection about racial identity and personal antiracism practices, and how that process silenced the people of color in the organization, was vii detrimental to my own mental health, and demobilized many potential-activists. In an effort to understand this organization better, I explore the practices of personal reflection and the vision of social change in RC, an organization which greatly influenced Coming Together. I argue that the more holistic and rigorous personal reflection in RC was more empowering, although taxing of energy. Finally, I contrast these experiences with the political mobilization I experienced in the UACT introductory course, Grassroots Community Organizing (GCO). I argue that the ongoing facilitation in critical personal reflection, relationship- and community-building, and practice in activism work in GCO was politically mobilizing and simultaneously produced a community culture of anti oppression. Ultimately, this thesis argues that effective activism against racism requires activism against capitalism, and vice-versa, and that highly intentional anti-oppression community-building can denaturalize, and mobilize participants against, the capitalist ideologies of alienation and competition. In order to do this comparative work, I rely heavily on the methods of participation observation and, rooted in Black feminist anthropology, autoethnography.

Southern Appalachian attitudes about the religion of Islam and Muslim adherents are influenced largely by mass media's representations. With more than 80% of Appalachia’s population following Protestant Christianity, exposure to Islam in daily life is limited. Media outlets offer the greatest exposure to information about the religion and its adherents. This thesis examined the region's media representation of Islam and Muslims to determine what images are most often portrayed. Research following a twoyear span of reporting in Southern Appalachia studied substance, word frequency, imagery, and editing used in articles that focused on Islam and Muslims. Through the use of content analysis examining rural and metropolitan news circulated in the area, the study found significant use of negative words and phrases in reporting about Islam and Muslims. Newsroom editing of articles also had a considerable damaging effect on how reports represented Islam and Muslims.

Charles Tyng has been heralded as an American hero after the posthumous publication of his memoir, Before the Wind: The Memoir of an American Sea Captain, 1808-1833, in 1999. Recent research involving British Treasury report books from the nineteenth century suggest otherwise – that Tyng actively promoted and was engaged in the illicit trade of African captives. A Boston Brahmin, Tyng applied the lessons of his time at sea with Perkins & Company, the opium trading firm, to his occupation as an agent of notorious slave trading firms in Havana. This paper uses as evidence records of the captures of several vessels that implicate Tyng directly in equipping ships for the slave trade to correct the historical record and exposing a supposed hero as a predatory capitalist ignoring ethics for financial gain.

Professional interactions that are both functional and mutually beneficial are rare. The purpose of this study is to explore an application of a Third Culture Building (TCB) approach, a mutually constructed interpersonal process between two individuals, for Black American professionals (with advanced knowledge acquired from institutions of higher learning), to generate a new space in Predominantly White Institutions (PWis). These institutions include settings where the racial composition is becoming consistently more diverse (through past desegregation efforts). Although the U.S. has moved beyond integration and the monumental Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, racism and intercultural barriers that prevent functional cross-cultural communication still exist in these settings. This research is directed toward answering the question: How might Black American professionals generate a Third Culture space in PWis through cross-cultural social exchange? The research builds on my previous study where the TCB approach was found to be conducive for the intercultural barriers faced by Black Americans in PWis. The research emphasizes the perspective of Black Americans and de-emphasizes the perspective of White Americans, given the body of literature that points to their adaptation and intercultural interactions in the U.S. and in international contexts. A sample of six Black American professionals (ages 30 to 72; 4 men and 4 women) from my baseline study was invited to take part in this study. Respondents were chosen based on their backgrounds and similarity of race, to learn about their perspectives of the intercultural interactions in PWis. Participants live in the Midwest region of the U.S. Using interpretive, critical theory, and other qualitative approaches, the discussions from a focus group and interviews were transcribed and combined with the interviewer's notes. The participants' responses were organized around TCB frameworks and the interview questions, and then reduced to codes. Two evaluators reviewed the interview data, codes, and themes.

No description available.