<p dir="ltr">Do local religious contexts impact people’s attitudes about race inequality in society? In this dissertation, I examine this question using data from the General Social Survey and multilevel modeling. I define religious context as the local population percentage that are in particular denominational groups (evangelical Protestants, mainline Protestants, Black Protestants, and Catholics); the percentage that are in groupings which cross-cut denominational affiliation (religious liberal, religious moderate, and religious conservative); and the percentage that are religiously unaffiliated. The racial attitudes I examine are what a person attributes to be the root cause of Black-White income inequality in the US—individualistic explanations (a lack of will or in-born differences between the races) or structural explanations (a lack of access to education or discrimination).</p><p dir="ltr">This dissertation sits at the intersection of three bodies of literature: (1) the impact of local religious context on sociological variables, (2) the impact of religion on social attitudes about race inequality at the individual level, and (3) the impact of contextual level factors (that are not religious in nature) on social attitudes about race inequality at the individual level. The theoretical foundation for this research is a theory of religious subcultural influence which outlines how the presence of more people from a religious tradition creates a local religious subculture which can impact the local public subculture which can impact the attitudes and behaviors of individuals in the area.</p><p dir="ltr">Results from the analyses presented in this project indicate that while personal religious affiliation at the individual level is influential on these attitudes, the influence of the religious context around a person is more mixed. For some explanations of racial inequality, namely a lack of will or a lack of education, the religious contexts surrounding a person have some moderate influences. Stepwise regression analyses reveal that some other contextual variables, such as the region of the country in which the respondent resides or the local concentration of immigrants, have stronger influences on these attitudes.</p><p dir="ltr">Further analysis examines if these effects of religious context extend to all people in a geographic area, not only the focal religious group’s own people. Findings from this analysis show that, for the most part, where there are religious context effects, the effect extends to all residents of an area. In a few cases, however, there are only self-reinforcing effects (where a group is only influential on themselves) or possible reactionary effects (where there is an effect on the non-members, but it is likely not due to transmission from the religious context group).</p><p dir="ltr">Other explorations in this dissertation look for threshold, ceiling, or floor effects in the effects of religious context. This analysis shows that most of the detected effects of religious contexts are linear, and the group does not need to be a certain size before it can be influential. In a few cases, the effect of the religious context reaches a floor or ceiling limit meaning the effect of the religious context eventually levels off and does not exert any more influence. Additional analyses also look at the role of the respondent’s racial identity, how ideological differences between Hispanic Catholics and non-Hispanic Catholics may be present, if the effects of religious context are stronger now than in previous decades, and if biblical literalism is responsible for some of the influences of religious context detected.</p><p dir="ltr">Taken together, all of the analyses in this dissertation illustrate that there are some important, albeit mild, influences of local religious context on a person’s racial attitudes. These findings also show that religious context intersects with region in noteworthy and complex ways.</p>

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This thesis traces the contours of the Black-White color line in modern America by illuminating how Whites' racialized political behavior varies across local geographic contexts. In a critical reinterpretation of the racial threat hypothesis, I argue that local geography conditions the relationship between Whites' racial orientations and their preferences on policies related to race - but not because Whites are passively threatened in proximity to a Black population. Rather, Whites are active, subjective perceivers of their surroundings who have an interest in maintaining their racial privilege. This conceptual shift not only challenges the assumed neutrality of Whites' vision; it also enables me to identify the range of contextual indicators that Whites might construe as threatening, and the range of White attitudes that are activated as a result. My empirical evidence comes from three case studies. The first two use geocoded survey data to analyze White opinion on welfare spending in 2000, and on affirmative action between 2006 and 2010. The third study draws on in-depth interviews conducted in 2016, exploring an issue related to school desegregation in Louisiana. Each study affirms the core findings of the thesis: Whites' policy preferences are polarized according to racial orientations in settings where race is salient; and a shared White perspective is evident even across polarized attitudes. My findings offer hope, showing that a sign of threat to some Whites may activate racially tolerant behavior in others; as well as reason to restrain our optimism, challenging the assumption that affluent Blacks, unlike the 'undeserving' Black poor, will not be perceived as threatening by Whites. Ultimately, only by recognizing the color line's responsiveness to local geography - and its resilience even as White attitudes liberalize and Black class positions improve - can we understand the line's persistence or the possibility of one day dismantling it.

Bullying is a persistent problem that negatively affects the academic performance, and the psychological, social, and emotional well-being of targeted students. Research indicates most bullying is prejudice-based. Bullying and prejudice reduction interventions used in school systems encourage empathy towards the target student to reduce these behaviors, and current national and international interventions recommend focusing on bullies, targets (or victims), and bystanders. Interventions are conducted by individuals (trainers) trained to implement such programs, a model known as train-the-trainer. Teachers and pre-education majors usually volunteer to become trainers. Effectiveness of interventions may depend on the trainees' knowledge, empathy, and adherence to the program. Research reports that the impact of the training on the trainer significantly impacts its implementation and effectiveness. Yet, the impact of the training on the trainer is rarely the focus of research. The Bullying Amongst Diverse Populations (BADP) training was conducted to study its impact on the trainees. The results show the BADP training had an overall positive impact on participants' knowledge of and skills to respond to situations involving bullying and prejudice, sense of efficacy, and likelihood to intervene. Pre- and post-test assessments demonstrate reductions on prejudicial attitudes and increments in participants' defender roles. Implications for future research are discussed and implications for university and K-12 administrators, counselor educators, school counselors, and program coordinators of teacher education programs are also reviewed.

Although psychologists and sociologists have studied the origin and nature of European American children’s racial biases for decades, relatively little is known about the role of European American families in shaping their young children’s understanding of and attitudes about race. The primary goal of the current study was to examine European American mothers’ approaches to race-related issues with their children, with particular interest in exploring the ways mothers may influence their young children’s racial attitudes. I explored these questions by completing a multi-method study of 84 European American mothers and their four- to five-year-old children. Mothers read two books with race-related themes out loud to their children and then completed surveys concerning their race-related attitudes and behaviors while their children worked with a researcher to complete measures of cognitive skills and racial attitudes. Results indicated that European American mothers provide few race-related messages to their preschool-aged children. Specifically, mothers’ self-reports of their racial socialization strategies and their behaviors during the book reading session indicated that they are reluctant to discuss race explicitly. Furthermore, neither mother’s self-reported racial socialization strategies nor their behavior in the lab predicted their children’s racial attitudes. Instead, children’s racial attitudes were related to their mothers’ friendships. Those children whose mothers had a higher percentage of non-European Americans friends showed lower levels of racial biases than those children whose mothers had a lower percentage of non-European American friends. This study suggests that children’s racial attitudes are unaffected by mothers’ vague messages about diversity; instead, it seems that mothers need to engage in intimate, cross-race relations and send explicit, frequent race-related messages if they hope to influence their children’s racial attitudes. / text

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The problem of this study involved the identification of white student teacher racial attitudes relative to blacks and whether these attitudes changed during the course of student teaching. The purpose of the study was to determine the nature of these racial attitudes, to determine if these attitudes were influenced by the experience of student teaching or the racial environment in which student teaching was accomplished, and, in light of the findings of the study, either to reinforce the manner in which racial attitudes are treated in traditional teacher preparation programs or suggest new directions in the curriculum that might lead to more realistic and desirable teacher attitudes. In light of the above findings, the following conclusions seem warranted: 1. The contact thesis of racial attitude change is confirmed. However, among experimental group subjects, the nature of the contact achieved was incongruous with what research has found to be most conducive to positive attitude change. 2. Racial attitudes are so deeply and emotionally embedded that attitude change, if it is to be accomplished, should be treated as a priority item, and any programmed attempt to alter racial prejudice should be comprehensive in design.

abstract: Using a sample of 309 Asian American college students, the present study examined the effects of color-blind racial ideology (i.e., unawareness of blatant racial issues, unawareness of racial privilege and unawareness of institutional racism) on the link between internalization of the model minority myth (i.e., unrestricted mobility and achievement orientation) and psychological distress (i.e., social climate stress, interracial stress, within group stress, racism stress and achievement stress). Results primarily suggest the denial of blatant racism and racial issues (and not denial of racial privilege and institutional racism) exacerbate the effect of internalizing the model minority myth related to unrestricted mobility, while it buffers the effect of internalizing the model minority myth related to achievement orientation on race-related social stress. Also, denial of racial privilege appears to buffer the effect of internalizing the model minority myth related to unrestricted mobility and within group stress. Clinical implications and future directions for research are discussed. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Counseling 2020

The problem of the present study is to determine if there is a measurable effect on the academic progress, self-concepts, and racial attitudes of newly integrated Negro students in grades four, five, and six after one year of integration.

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