This thesis explores how government and society are invariably against the racial sharing of spaces. It examines how impoverished Black communities are created, sustained and perpetuated. The thesis is concerned with two main theories about race repression, race castes and racialization of space, both of which posit race as the main factor shaping the existing power relations. The work first draws upon the era of de jure segregation to highlight features of castes and racialized space. The first chapter looks at how housing discrimination caused Harlem to develop into a ghetto space. In the post-de jure era, the second chapter examines how the economics of racialized space access continued to inform a national framework defined by race-neutrality. It examines how, against the wake of Civil Rights era and community rioting, politicians discursively campaigned by demonizing and criminalizing Black rioters and Black culture. The War on Drugs, which emerged against the backdrop of Rights activism, called for crime control in Black communities. By targeting Blacks already isolated in “ghetto” spaces, politicians ensure that they over-compensate White communities with the public benefits and economic resources that are taken away from Blacks spaces. In media as well as in politics, our nation continuously fails to contextualize the costs of the War on Drugs on Black communities. The final chapter examines a film to show how popular depictions of Black ghettos and misconceptions about the War on Drugs, continue to feed our ideological and actual understandings of racialized space and privileged access.

How do magazines that target the Black community represent Black/African American female beauty within a society that pushes a Eurocentric beauty ideal? Are these publications affected by the dominant ideal, do they resist the ideal with their own Afrocentric beauty standards, or do they find some type of compromise between the two? In this thesis, I propose that these publications present a compromise between Eurocentric and Afrocentric ideals but to the detriment of Black/African American women. To investigate my research questions, I conducted a content analysis of the advertisements in three periods of time, 1968, 1988, and 2008, in three lifestyle /news magazines that target the Black community: Jet, Essence, and Ebony. I looked at the beauty ideals represented in all three magazines by focusing on the hair type, skin color, and body shape and size of the Black/African American women portrayed. In addition I examined the historical context that supported the creation of these publications and these specific gendered and raced representations.Through a compromise between society’s dominant Eurocentric beauty ideal and an alternative Afrocentric ideal, these magazines participated in a trade-off, in which features and aesthetics of both communities were represented by Black women in advertisements. While the typical interpretation of this analysis might focus solely on the positive attributes of these representations, I argue that these representations are harmful to Black female readers because they circumscribe what constitutes Black female beauty while at the same time reinforcing negative ideas about physical attributes that are deemed “too Black” by the dominant ideals of a Eurocentric society.

In this paper, the author looks at the impact of the policy of federal recognition on a Los Angeles basin Native community: the Gabrielino Tongva. The first section, the literature review focuses on the difficulties of defining “indigenousness” in the academic and political realms, as well as looking at Native scholars’ conceptualization of this unique and multifaceted identity. After a consideration of the theoretical framework of the study, the crossroads between anthropology and public policy analysis, the author presents the tools she used in her study, namely: participant observation, key-informant interviews, and the analysis of published documents and personal files. The section ends with a review of ethical concerns pertaining to doing research with indigenous people. The historical section comprises an analysis of archives and published works about the Tongva and the federal recognition process. Starting by a brief report of major policies that have impacted Native American rights in the U.S. and the evolution of government relations with indigenous communities, the author looks at the legacy of the Tongva people in L.A. today, paying special attention to past efforts at obtaining federal recognition and political divides within the tribe. The analysis is structured according to the different levels of recognition that the author perceived through her research. “Capital R”, or federal recognition is explored through its impact on the individual and the group, and followed by an account of current efforts towards community recognition – “lower-case r.” The paper ends on recommendations for future policies and a personal reflection about the research and its results.

The primary purpose of this study was to assess faculty perceptions of campus diversity at Western Kentucky University. A Diversity Survey was developed and administered to faculty at Western Kentucky University. Responses from the 378 fulltime faculty members who completed the survey were used in this study. Composites including campus diversity climate, satisfaction with diversity effects, race, gender, and religion were formed from the survey items for use in the analyses. Results indicated that minority and women faculty perceive campus diversity less favorably than do majority and men faculty.

This study examines the effect of stratification on graduation at Western Kentucky University, a master’s level regional Division I Football Bowl Subdivision university in the South. The study begins by examining the historical basis of stratification in sport and higher education, and hypothesizes that becoming an intercollegiate athlete can eliminate the effect of being African American on graduation, which is generally negative and can be seen in lower graduation rates for African Americans compared to other populations. Using a data set that included 18,966 students, logistic regression was used to assess: 1) the effect of race on sport profile and 2) the effect of race and athletic status on graduation, controlling for sex, high school GPA, pre-collegiate standardized test scores, and department of academic major. Results indicate that African American students have 771 percent greater odds of participating in high profile sports compared to low profile sports, which supports the literature that sport is stratified in such a way that African Americans are more likely to bear a disproportionate load in revenue-producing sports. Even so, when interacting sport profile, athlete, and race, the penalty on graduation for being African American is eliminated, and African American athletes have the same odds of graduating as white non-athletes.

To understand the reasons for the increase in recent years of the Bosnian population in Bowling Green, Kentucky and their adaptation problems as refugees in their host country, this study focused upon the Bosnian community in Bowling Green and addressed what the role of their challenges is in the shaping of refugees’ new life in their host country. Extensive literature review helped to emerge that for an understanding of the situation of the refugees, their interaction in the host country is more meaningful topic for research. This study employed qualitative research methods, drawing from existing empirical studies addressing resettlement in the context of the informants’ wartime experiences. Initially, the researcher approached patrons at Bosnian restaurants and worshipers at local mosques to find Bosnian people. Snowball sampling used to identify Bosnian refugees living in the Bowling Green community. Twenty-five in-depth interviews were conducted for needs assessment and issue identification. The interviews were transcribed and analyzed in an attempt to understand the difficulties of adaptation among Bosnian refugees living in Bowling Green. A qualitative case study approach was chosen because it was the most effective way to gain knowledge of refugees’ experiences and perceptions in the context of the societies in which they resettled. Findings revealed that interviewed group struggled with mostly language and employment challenges to integration. Social support was provided through organizations that included Americans aided integration and the families resettled before as they provided significant support is directing resettlement. Banki’s (2004) and Jacobsen’s (2001) indicators of refugee integration were used to in order to determine to the extent to which this sample of Bosnian refugees are integrated into their host county.

No description available.

Cross-national crime studies are often plagued with conceptualization issues. In specific, some countries may define certain acts of violence as crimes, whereas others may perceive these acts as justifiable or culturally prescribed. This difference in conceptualization is especially the case with the crime of genocide, which the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 1948 defines “as any of a number of acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.” Despite this legal definition, countries, organizations, institutions or individuals may label a crisis as genocide, civil war, or another type of conflict. Because the printed mainstream media reflects and shapes the public perception of international conflicts, this research employs content analysis and quantitative methodology in examining published accounts of the conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan over the last five years. Using articles from newspapers in the United States, Great Britain, China, and Qatar, I examined the extent to which the term genocide is used to illustrate this conflict within the mainstream media from these four different countries. The results of this study suggest that the geographic location of a news outlet does not necessarily play a role in the conceptualization of genocide. The most important factors in this process are the way in which the author of the article frames the conflict, whether the author chooses to use quotes from certain organizational leaders, and the context in which the term genocide is used when it is chosen in favor of the term ethnic cleansing or civil war. These findings imply that news sources play a large role in public perception of genocide.

The existence of racism in Canada is well documented (Johnson and Enomoto 2007; Henry and Tator 2006; Lopes and Thomas 2006), yet little is known about the employment experiences of those marginalized by race. In a study looking at African Canadians’ experiences of racism related stress, James, Este, Bernard, Benjamin, Lloyd and Turner (2010), found that racism in the employment sector was one of the most significant areas of stress faced by the study participants. Given these findings, this qualitative study sought to further explore the everyday employment experience of adults in Nova Scotia, who are marginalized by race. In addition, it sought to foster deeper understandings of the influence of employment equity policy on organizational change.

Recently, colleges and universities across the country have created executive level positions responsible for institutional diversity. The origins of this work within higher education lay in the civil rights movements and its consequences for desegregation of higher education. Early diversity officer positions usually resided within student affairs. However, as the responsibilities of these offices have changed, the reporting lines have also changed such that diversity officers are now commonly situated within academic affairs. This exploratory study examines these administrative positions responsible for diversity at southern white institutions. The research takes an in-depth look at how these positions have shifted over time and how people who hold these positions understand their work. This study presents an analysis of nine personal narratives of diversity officers at three predominantly white institutions in Kentucky from the early 1970s to the present. Counterstories, or stories that challenge majority accounts, are used to elicit the experiences of the black diversity officers. The analysis uses critical race theory to begin telling stories that have been muted. Pigeonholing and its relevance to the counterstories of the administrators are discussed to contextualize the administrators’ experiences at predominantly white institutions. The shift in responsibilities and reporting lines and changes in required credentials resulted in tensions, including intraracial tensions, among the diversity officers. Despite the tensions between generations of officers, these administrators shared a common interest in racial uplift. This was evident as they discussed what attracted them to positions responsible for diversity. In the past, scholars writing on black diversity officers suggested that the positions were the result of tokenism; however, administrators holding these positions view themselves and their roles as an opportunity to help others on their educational journeys.