The question of why individuals value identities like race and gender is a contested one. Scholars in the Reflected Appraisals tradition argue that members of minority groups experience identity devaluation and minority stress (Hacker 1992; Harris 1993; Meyer 1995; Tatum 1997; Hoff-Sommers 2000; McIntyre 2002) and come to value their identities less in empirical terms than do members of equivalent majority groups (Harris 1993; Hacker 1995). The thesis here is that the values individuals place upon in-group identities are determined by the prestige and power of their in-groups (Cornell and Hartmann 2006: 60). This argument has been advanced often in both domestic and multi-national contexts (Spinner-Halev and Theiss-Morse 2003), but several rigorous empirical tests so far fail to support it (Charles 2003). My dissertation is a comprehensive test of the hypothesis that membership in a minority in-group predicts lowered valuation of in-group identity. I employ ordinal and List Experiment surveys to determine whether members of four minority groups value their identities less than members of the equivalent majority groups (racial, sexual, heterosexual, religious) in terms of (1) placing lower monetary values upon them and (2) being hypothetically more willing to change them. My hypothesis is that identity valuation will not be status dependent: minority status will not generally correlate to a significant degree with lowered identity valuation, as development of oppositional identities allows minorities to value themselves despite potential discrimination (Stern 1995; Simein 2005). This thesis was largely although not totally confirmed. With several exceptions during my List Experiment research, American racial minority status does not correlate with lowered valuation of racial identity, and female sex does not correlate with lowered valuation of gender identity. Religious minorities do not generally value their religious identities less than Protestant Christians, to a statistically significant degree. However, I did find consistent negative and usually significant correlations between LGBT status and lowered valuation of sexual orientation. List Experiment results also indicate that whites may be less honest about their levels of in-group identification than are minorities.

This study contains qualitative portraits based on the stories of three white university professors who are nominated by their students as white allies. Through the thick description of setting and context, white privilege is named as the researcher's experience and that of each of the participants. The researcher examines ways in which each participant strives to disrupt racism. Using a lens of critical theory applied through critical pedagogy and critical whiteness philosophies, the researcher highlights the following themes as they emerge: education, exposure, empathy, and engagement. This study contributes to the literature by providing examples of white professors challenging racism in a university setting.

In the aftermath of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa J.M.Coetzee writes of the "system" of guilt and shame, debt and retribution which operates throughout society. He and writers like Doris Lessing and Barbara Kingsolver tell stories which traverse and explore the paths tracked by society's quest for healing and restitution. (White) women too, Coetzee's protagonist (in Disgrace) muses, must have a place, a "niche" in this system. What is this "niche" and what role do the women in these texts play in the reparation of colonial wrong? How is their position dictated by discourses which acknowledge the agency of the (female) body in epistemologies of guilt and power? This mini-dissertation attempts to trace the figure of the white woman in three late 201h-/early 21 51-century postcolonial literary texts, in order to read the phrases of meaning that have been inscribed on her body. The novels read are J.M.Coetzee's Disgrace, Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible and Doris Lessing's The Grass is Singing. / English Studies / M. Eng. (Gender, Identity and Embodiment)

Esta dissertação analisa as interpretações dos estudantes do curso de direito da Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul – UFRGS - sobre políticas de ação afirmativa, mais especificamente, cotas raciais implementadas na Instituição. No primeiro momento, examinam-se a conceituação e trajetória histórica das Ações Afirmativas em contextos globais e locais, chamando a atenção para como a mídia brasileira tem retratado a adoção deste tipo de política nas universidades. A seguir é traçado um panorama histórico dos cursos jurídicos no Brasil, dando ênfase para a constituição da Faculdade Livre de Direito de Porto Alegre, mais tarde incorporada à UFRGS. É apresentada a entrevista com Alceu Collares, primeiro governador negro do Rio Grande do Sul, que se graduou na Instituição na década de 1950. Na fundamentação teórica utilizam-se como arcabouço os conceitos de identidade, ideologia, raça e branquidade. Este resgate histórico conceitual baseou-se em vários autores entre eles Hall, 2012; Thompson, 2005; Guimarães, 2008; Skidmore, 2012; Apple, 2001; Bento, 2002; Giroux, 1999. Na parte empírica, são apresentados os resultados dos questionários aplicados. A partir das características dos universitários entrevistados, são analisadas as vivências de relações raciais em suas vidas cotidianas, na trajetória escolar, a posição dos pais e dos próprios estudantes com relação às políticas de cotas sociais e raciais na UFRGS. Por fim, discute-se a universidade como espaço de luta e seu papel na construção de uma sociedade mais igualitária no Brasil. / This study analyzes the interpretations of the undergraduate students of law of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul - UFRGS - about affirmative action policies, more specifically, racial quotas implemented within the institution. The first moment it examines the conceptualization and historical trajectory of Affirmative Action Policies in global and local contexts, drawing attention to how the Brazilian media has portrayed the adoption of these policies at universities. Following it is outlined a historical overview of law courses in Brazil, with emphasis on the establishment of the Free Law School of Porto Alegre, afterwards incorporated into the UFRGS. It is presented the interview with Alceu Collares, the first black governor of Rio Grande do Sul, who graduated at the institution in the 1950s. On theoretical foundation are used as a framework the concepts of identity, ideology, race and whiteness. This conceptual historical review was based on several authors including Hall, 2012; Thompson, 2005; Guimarães, 2008; Skidmore, 2012; Apple, 2001; Benedict, 2002; Giroux, 1999. On the empirical part, the results of the questionnaires are presented. Based on the characteristics of respondents university students, experiences of race relations are analyzes in their everyday lives, school history and the position of parents and students themselves regarding the policies of social and racial quotas at UFRGS. Finally, we discuss the university as a space of struggle and its role in the construction of a more egalitarian society in Brazil.

abstract: Scholars of rhetoric, critical intercultural communication, and gender studies have offered productive analyses of how discourses of terror and national security are rooted in racialized juxtapositions between "East" against "West, or "us" and "them." Less frequently examined are the ways that the contemporary marking of terrorist bodies as "savage" Others to whiteness and western modernity are rooted in settler colonial histories and expansions of US and Anglo-European democracy. Informed by the rhetorical study of publics and public memory, critical race/whiteness studies, and transnational and Indigenous feminisms, this dissertation examines how memoryscapes of civilization and its Others circulate to shape geopolitical belongings in three cases: (1) public memory places in the US Southwest; (2) pro-Israel rhetorics enacted by the US organization Christians United for Israel; and (3) the embodied and mediated protests of European feminist organization FEMEN. In bringing these seemingly unrelated cases together as elements of a larger assemblage, I draw attention to their symbolic and material connectivities, examining the racialized, gendered, national, and imperial logics that move between these sites to shore up the frontiers of whiteness. Specifically, I argue for conceptualizing whiteness as a global assemblage that territorializes through settler colonial memoryscapes that construct "modern" national and global citizen-subjects as those deemed worthy of rights, protection, land, and life against the threatening bodies of Otherness seen to exist outside of the shared times and places of normative democratic citizenship. In doing so, I also examine, more broadly, how assemblage theory extends current approaches to studying rhetoric, public memory, and intercultural communication in global, trans/national, and (post)colonial contexts. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Communication 2016

Esta dissertação analisa as interpretações dos estudantes do curso de direito da Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul – UFRGS - sobre políticas de ação afirmativa, mais especificamente, cotas raciais implementadas na Instituição. No primeiro momento, examinam-se a conceituação e trajetória histórica das Ações Afirmativas em contextos globais e locais, chamando a atenção para como a mídia brasileira tem retratado a adoção deste tipo de política nas universidades. A seguir é traçado um panorama histórico dos cursos jurídicos no Brasil, dando ênfase para a constituição da Faculdade Livre de Direito de Porto Alegre, mais tarde incorporada à UFRGS. É apresentada a entrevista com Alceu Collares, primeiro governador negro do Rio Grande do Sul, que se graduou na Instituição na década de 1950. Na fundamentação teórica utilizam-se como arcabouço os conceitos de identidade, ideologia, raça e branquidade. Este resgate histórico conceitual baseou-se em vários autores entre eles Hall, 2012; Thompson, 2005; Guimarães, 2008; Skidmore, 2012; Apple, 2001; Bento, 2002; Giroux, 1999. Na parte empírica, são apresentados os resultados dos questionários aplicados. A partir das características dos universitários entrevistados, são analisadas as vivências de relações raciais em suas vidas cotidianas, na trajetória escolar, a posição dos pais e dos próprios estudantes com relação às políticas de cotas sociais e raciais na UFRGS. Por fim, discute-se a universidade como espaço de luta e seu papel na construção de uma sociedade mais igualitária no Brasil. / This study analyzes the interpretations of the undergraduate students of law of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul - UFRGS - about affirmative action policies, more specifically, racial quotas implemented within the institution. The first moment it examines the conceptualization and historical trajectory of Affirmative Action Policies in global and local contexts, drawing attention to how the Brazilian media has portrayed the adoption of these policies at universities. Following it is outlined a historical overview of law courses in Brazil, with emphasis on the establishment of the Free Law School of Porto Alegre, afterwards incorporated into the UFRGS. It is presented the interview with Alceu Collares, the first black governor of Rio Grande do Sul, who graduated at the institution in the 1950s. On theoretical foundation are used as a framework the concepts of identity, ideology, race and whiteness. This conceptual historical review was based on several authors including Hall, 2012; Thompson, 2005; Guimarães, 2008; Skidmore, 2012; Apple, 2001; Benedict, 2002; Giroux, 1999. On the empirical part, the results of the questionnaires are presented. Based on the characteristics of respondents university students, experiences of race relations are analyzes in their everyday lives, school history and the position of parents and students themselves regarding the policies of social and racial quotas at UFRGS. Finally, we discuss the university as a space of struggle and its role in the construction of a more egalitarian society in Brazil.

abstract: Cecil Rhodes said, "I would annex the planets if I could." This attitude epitomized the views of the white people who colonized Zimbabwe starting in 1890, and thus society was built on the doctrines of discovery, expansion, and subjugation and marginalization of the Native people. For white Zimbabweans in then-Rhodesia the institutionalization of racism privileged their bodies above all others and thus they were collectively responsible for the oppression of black people through white complacency in allowing that system to exist and active involvement in its formation. For my family, who has a four-hundred year history in Southern Africa, coming to this realization - this critical consciousness of their positionality as oppressor - has been a difficult road. Through their struggle made evident is the potential for change for both individuals and nations fighting to overcome the effects of colonization / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Social Justice and Human Rights 2013

The object of this thesis is to explore the connections between race, gender and equestrianism. This aim stems from personal experiences of becoming a “horse girl” in a Swedish horsebackriding context, which indeed is lined with racialized and gendered norms. I am inclined to understand how equestrianism, i.e. horseback riding practices and communities, often comes to be considered as white and (un)obtainable for some and not others. Through interviews with nine equestrians located in the United States and observations in their stable environments, the thesis seek to investigate how gender and racial norms appear and materialize, and thus shape the interviewed participants lived experiences in horse human environments. Through a theoretical framework of Sara Ahmed’s elaboration on phenomenology, Karen Barad’s term intra-action and Donna Haraway’s figuration companion species, the thesis discusses the multi-layered and complex ways in which race and gender is produced in and produces equestrian spaces and practices. The analysis shows that equestrianism is habitually oriented around whiteness, shaping the proximity between some (and not other) human and horse bodies in the regional landscape where the participants reside. Horses are both organized in and organize the contours of the city, entangled in the politics of racial segregation and the materialization of classed environments and neighborhoods. Equestrian communities, especially those that practice the disciplines of dressage and show jumping, repeatedly welcome and extend certain human (and non-human) bodies while stopping and questioning others. Further, different equestrian spaces materializes in differentiating and multi-sensoric ways, making certain color schemes, tactile sensations of textures and scents appear as racialized and gendered, and in turn forms the premises of belonging. The thesis then displays the political and affective connections between human and non-human bodies, objects and rooms in the specific context of equestrianism, and argues that such aspects must be understood as co-produced rather than separate entities. The discussion thus complicates binary dichotomies such as nature and culture, human and non-human and matter and discourse, showing how such aspects instead are entangled in the production of equestrianism and racialized and gendered “difference”.

A presente pesquisa se baseia na teoria crítica da branquidade, especificamente no que concerne aos elementos mais evidenciados da formação da identidade Branca, para realizar uma análise, por amostra, da tendência das demandas judiciais e julgamentos jurisprudenciais acerca da conduta de discriminação racial, prevista na legislação brasileira. Tendo em vista que as decisões dos tribunais a respeito desse tema se mostram bastantes controversas, os elementos da branquidade são trazidos a esse trabalho com a finalidade de contribuir com a tarefa dos operadores do direito de realizar a interpretação sobre dúvidas, dubiedades, lacunas e questionamentos sobre a eficácia da implementação da norma em reduzir as manifestações do racismo. / This research is based on the critical theory of whiteness, especially on elements that compose the white identity formation, for the purpose of analyzing the judicial decisions selected from the Brazilians tribunals, concerned to racial discrimination conducts. The elements of whiteness theory is consider as a contribution to the work of the professionals of law in giving an interpretation about the racial conflicts trials, considering the doubt, dubiousness, lacuna and analyses about the discrimination law efficacy in reduce the racism manifestations.

Esta dissertação analisa as interpretações dos estudantes do curso de direito da Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul – UFRGS - sobre políticas de ação afirmativa, mais especificamente, cotas raciais implementadas na Instituição. No primeiro momento, examinam-se a conceituação e trajetória histórica das Ações Afirmativas em contextos globais e locais, chamando a atenção para como a mídia brasileira tem retratado a adoção deste tipo de política nas universidades. A seguir é traçado um panorama histórico dos cursos jurídicos no Brasil, dando ênfase para a constituição da Faculdade Livre de Direito de Porto Alegre, mais tarde incorporada à UFRGS. É apresentada a entrevista com Alceu Collares, primeiro governador negro do Rio Grande do Sul, que se graduou na Instituição na década de 1950. Na fundamentação teórica utilizam-se como arcabouço os conceitos de identidade, ideologia, raça e branquidade. Este resgate histórico conceitual baseou-se em vários autores entre eles Hall, 2012; Thompson, 2005; Guimarães, 2008; Skidmore, 2012; Apple, 2001; Bento, 2002; Giroux, 1999. Na parte empírica, são apresentados os resultados dos questionários aplicados. A partir das características dos universitários entrevistados, são analisadas as vivências de relações raciais em suas vidas cotidianas, na trajetória escolar, a posição dos pais e dos próprios estudantes com relação às políticas de cotas sociais e raciais na UFRGS. Por fim, discute-se a universidade como espaço de luta e seu papel na construção de uma sociedade mais igualitária no Brasil. / This study analyzes the interpretations of the undergraduate students of law of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul - UFRGS - about affirmative action policies, more specifically, racial quotas implemented within the institution. The first moment it examines the conceptualization and historical trajectory of Affirmative Action Policies in global and local contexts, drawing attention to how the Brazilian media has portrayed the adoption of these policies at universities. Following it is outlined a historical overview of law courses in Brazil, with emphasis on the establishment of the Free Law School of Porto Alegre, afterwards incorporated into the UFRGS. It is presented the interview with Alceu Collares, the first black governor of Rio Grande do Sul, who graduated at the institution in the 1950s. On theoretical foundation are used as a framework the concepts of identity, ideology, race and whiteness. This conceptual historical review was based on several authors including Hall, 2012; Thompson, 2005; Guimarães, 2008; Skidmore, 2012; Apple, 2001; Benedict, 2002; Giroux, 1999. On the empirical part, the results of the questionnaires are presented. Based on the characteristics of respondents university students, experiences of race relations are analyzes in their everyday lives, school history and the position of parents and students themselves regarding the policies of social and racial quotas at UFRGS. Finally, we discuss the university as a space of struggle and its role in the construction of a more egalitarian society in Brazil.