The relationship between academic emphasis and academic achievement for African-American students in predominately white suburban schools

Olivo, Julio Ceaser, II The Ohio State University 2010 해외박사(DDOD)

African-American students in suburban schools are underperforming. Data reveals that African-American students who attend suburban schools do not perform as well as their Caucasian peers (Alson, 2003; Ferguson, Clark, & Stewart, 2002; Ogbu, 2002). The achievement gap between African-American and Caucasian students appears in not only scores, but also in other academic areas, such as attendance rates, graduation rates, special and gifted education placements, percentages of students in college preparatory or advanced placement classes, numbers of students in extracurricular activities, honor roll nominations, and grade-point-averages (Kober, 2001; Ogbu, 2002). The purpose of this study is to examine the difference in academic emphasis between high performing and low performing African-Americans in predominately white suburban schools by examining the relationship between academic emphasis and the achievement of African-American students. More specifically, examine the relationship between academic emphasis and the achievement of African-American children in predominately white suburban schools by observing the opinions of parents. The study is designed to indicate the importance of School, Family, Children, and Student Peer Academic Emphasis for African-American children in predominately white suburban schools based on parents' perceptions. Participants in this study were black parents of 221 African-American students attending predominately white suburban schools. Parents' opinions were collected during the third quarter of the academic school year 2007-08 using a self-constructed questionnaire. Results reflected that after controlling for significant demographic variables, School Academic Emphasis was not related to grade point average; however, Family, Children, and Student Peer Academic Emphasis, as well as, characteristics of academic emphasis remained to have significant relationships to student achievement.

Teaching African American youth: Learning from the lives of three African American social studies teachers

McBride, Chantee Earl University of Pittsburgh 2010 해외박사(DDOD)

This study examines the life histories of three African American social studies teachers, focusing on the evolution and changes in their identities, perspectives, and attitudes related to their profession and instructional practice. In addition, the study addresses the significance of the teachers' racialized experiences as African Americans and how these experiences influence their use of culturally relevant pedagogy and other culturally responsive instructional strategies to teach their African American students. In the context of this study of three African American social studies teachers, critical race theory is used to acknowledge the teachers' life experiences with racism and the ways in which the teachers combat and address racism and oppressive mainstream educational ideologies, by sharing their counter-stories of experience in educational scholarship and their daily classroom teaching. A life history methodological approach was used to collect and interpret meaning from the narrative life stories of the three African American social studies teachers. The themes that emerge from the teachers' life stories focus on the teachers' beliefs and practices of culturally relevant pedagogy; the teachers' beliefs and practices of African-centered pedagogy; and the teachers' emancipatory teaching regarding racism in society and education. The results of this study have implications for the practice and research of African American teachers' philosophies and pedagogies; practice and research of culturally relevant teaching in social studies; and social studies teacher education.

Strangers in a Familiar Land: The Medieval and African-American Literary Tradition

Vernon, Matthew Xavier Yale University 2011 해외박사(DDOD)

My study begins by outlining the historical significance of medieval studies in African-American colleges and scholarly writing in the decades after the Civil War. Scholars have studied this period with respect to the myth of racial purity that pervaded white racial discourse at the time. No work has been done on the African-American response to this movement. This chapter utilizes evidence from public expressions of African-American enfranchisement within American society---African-American scholarly journals and materials from institutions of higher education---to demonstrate that certain black scholars and writers saw themselves as the new custodians of the English literary tradition, a legacy that had its deepest roots in the Middle Ages. It will also show the ambivalence these early educators felt towards the medieval period, a time that signified for these African-Americans both the fount of their citizenship and the root of their incomplete integration within American society. The second and third chapters of this thesis argue that the fields of medieval studies and African-American literature can creatively be explored in tandem. I will consider the idea of origins, a theme that inflects much medieval and African-American literature, to demonstrate the number of shared concepts that percolate within the two fields. The second chapter examines the concept of fictive genealogy in an early Middle English history, Layamon's Brut, and the ten-play cycle by the contemporary playwright August Wilson. It argues that these works appeal to the trope of genealogy to overcome the gaps in historical memory caused by major cultural shifts: the Norman invasion and the Middle Passage. The narratives presented by Layamon and Wilson construct genealogical bridges that span the moments of rupture with which they contend. In the case of Wilson, this maneuver informs an attempt to express his African heritage through an alternative approach to memory. In a similar vein, Layamon straightens the wayward paths of the Brut's genealogical account to revive a sense of the people and language lost after the Normans assumed rule of Britain. The third chapter will continue to investigate the interpenetration of medieval and modern African-American literature by considering medieval presentations of Ethiopia. This country was distinct in the Middle Ages because of its strong but contradictory valances as both a symbol of blackness but also for cultural hybridity. The final chapter of this dissertation is concerned with African-American writers who have incorporated medieval texts in their work. Specifically, I consider the novelist Gloria Naylor's meditation on the vernacular in her versions of Dante's Inferno and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales: Linden Hills and Bailey's Cafe. I argue that her adaptations should be seen as companion novels, with one critiquing the other. For Naylor, Dante and Chaucer represent two approaches to vernacular literature: Dante's, which fashions itself as aspiring to nobility and consolidated under uniform rules of speech, and Chaucer's, which is multi-voiced and unruly. Dante's version of the vernacular stresses harmony, to the point of suppressing voices that compete to be heard. Chaucer's vernacular, as presented by Naylor, is a global vernacular, an ever-expanding corpus of texts and voices, whose members are in conversation across national boundaries and beyond the narrow logic of chronology.

"Remember" the Sabbath: African-American Sunday schools, education, activism and community building in the South, 1890--1954

Haggler, Patricia New York University 2009 해외박사(DDOD)

This dissertation examines the two largest black denominations in the South, the National Baptist Convention and the African Methodist Episcopal Church, as case studies in the role of African-American Sunday schools in the South and the effect that these schools had on the education and racial identity of black Americans between Jim Crow and the dawn of the Civil Rights movement. This study utilizes the research of theologians, historians of education, literacy, entrepreneurship, social scientists and historians to unearth a pedagogical methodology that took place outside of the academic classroom and which assisted in race advancement and the equality of first-class citizenship rights for African Americans. I define this method as "a black activist theology of education"---an education that transmitted knowledge and training for the educational, social, political, and economic transformation of African-American people as informed by Christian faith and interpretation of scripture. The African-American Sunday school was an independent black organization that produced an educational ideology which was comparatively different from other contemporary educational models created for black Americans by northern white philanthropists and southern white progressives. The education of African-American Sunday schools was different in that it sought to liberate and free the oppressed as opposed to maintaining the oppressive tactics of white racist demagogues. African-American Sunday schools were agents of change that challenged the southern social status quo while at the same time made progress towards the acceptance of black Americans in the South and pressed for their achievement of first class-citizenship in America. Sunday schools inculcated race pride, unity, self-help, survival, resilience, agency and control in an effort to encourage blacks to aspire to their highest potential during the Jim Crow era. This dissertation also analyzes the faith and belief of black Americans who worshipped and studied in black churches in the South as an ideological tri-partite (African, American, and Christian) method of self-identification for an oppressed group of American citizens and their efforts in social activism and community building from the height of Jim Crow in 1890 to the theoretical dismantling of southern segregation following Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.

Fighting for economic stability in a time of uncertainty: African American economic development in Philadelphia 1940--1970

Gammage, Justin T Temple University 2011 해외박사(DDOD)

The central problem that this research seeks to engage is the non-implementation of an Afrocentric movement for African American economic advancement. A wealth of research has explored external and internal factors that cause inequalities in wealth among African Americans and their White counterparts, but there has yet to be an adequate program that addresses African American poverty. The lack of an Afrocentric program has contributed to the formation of African American communities plagued by economic challenges. Social factors such as structural racism, poor educational institutions, generational transfer of poverty, urban removal etc. has had devastating effects on African Americans' opportunities of accumulating wealth. While wealth alone will not solve all issues that face African Americans, addressing economics realities from a social, political, and historical perspective will assist with the current movement for African American economic empowerment and contribute to the economic dimension of the struggle for African liberation. In focusing on economics, this research seeks to contribute to African liberation by providing a detailed Afrocentric historiographical perspective, an empirical analysis of current economic realities, and a model for economic liberation.

The appointment and conditions of employment for African-American law faculty: Perspectives from inside America's legal academy

Carson, Loftus C., II University of Pennsylvania 2012 해외박사(DDOD)

African-Americans are underrepresented on the faculties of American law schools. Currently, it is estimated that while they make up 12.6% of the U.S. population, only approximately 4% of the tenured faculty members at historically white law schools are African American. Moreover, there is evidence that once appointed to a tenure-track law faculty position, the conditions of employment for African Americans are often problematic. This reality may be indicated by the higher attrition rate and lower tenure rate for them than for white law faculty. Even attainment of tenure by African-American law professors does not guarantee job satisfaction and feelings of equitable treatment. The pioneering Bell-Delgado study of minority law faculty found that a clear majority of the participants described their law school climates as racist (10.4%) or subtly racist (44.3%). Only 12.2% of the participants described their work environments as nonracist. Perhaps not surprisingly, only a minority of the Bell-Delgado participants indicated they were satisfied with their jobs. This study seeks to understand whether tenured African-American law faculty of today perceive problems, challenges, and/or circumstances which, if not unique, are more common for and are more likely to impede African-Americans and other members of minority groups who aspire to careers in the legal academy. Specifically, this study examines perspectives of tenured African-American law faculty with regard to faculty appointment and conditions of employment for members of their group at law schools that have historically had largely, if not exclusively, white faculty and student bodies. This study also examines the perceptions of tenured African-American law faculty members regarding the role that race/racism may play with respect to law faculty appointment for members of their group and conditions of employment thereafter. This study examines, as well, African-American law faculty perspectives regarding potential strategies for addressing problems, challenges, and circumstances, if any, which, if not unique, are more common for them in the legal professoriate. In that connection, the study elicited participants' views on the viability of organizational change, litigation, and strong affirmative action plans for addressing potential impediments to African-American inclusion in American law school faculties.

German Americans, African Americans, and the construction of racial identity in nineteenth-century St. Louis, 1848-1872

Anderson, Kristen Layne The University of Iowa 2009 해외박사(DDOD)

This study examines the evolution of German American racial attitudes during the nineteenth-century through an investigation of the relationships between German immigrants and African Americans in St. Louis, Missouri. It focuses on how these attitudes changed over time and the role the Civil War and Emancipation played in those changes. The German Americans of St. Louis shifted their position on slavery and the place of African Americans in American society in relation to the needs of their on community. Upon their arrival they quickly adopted American racial ideology and generally accepted the institution of slavery during the 1840s and early 1850s. Once slavery appeared to be a threat to the German population, during the struggles over the settlement of Kansas, Germans began to openly question the wisdom of allowing slavery to spread. Some even supported emancipation, thereby distinguishing themselves from many whites in Missouri. This need to attack slavery to protect their own political and economic interests increasingly led them to question the racial basis of the institution of slavery as well. While they did not for the most part deny the existence of racial difference, antislavery Germans increasingly sympathized with the plight of the enslaved, portraying African Americans as human beings who shared the universal human desire to be free. During the Civil War many St. Louis Germans saw African Americans as potential allies against the Confederacy. After the war, however, native-born whites condemned Germans for their radicalism and Germans, like other white Americans, began to consider more fully what place the African American population would occupy in the post-emancipation world. In part out of fear over the return of pre-war nativism and the ascendance of the Republican Party, they once again closed ranks with other whites against the full citizenship claims of African Americans. Although the most radical Germans continued to argue that African Americans had earned full political rights through their war service, the majority of the German population again deployed the language of American racism to justify denying ex-slaves full citizenship rights and by implication defend their own rights as bonafide citizens in their adopted country.

Between a new Germany and a new America: Unions between African-American soldiers and German women 1945--1960

Lee, Daniel Timothy University of California, Berkeley 2009 해외박사(DDOD)

Racial progress in the United States occurred not only because of social protest, but was also due to the increasing influence of the federal government during a time of war. Interracial marriage became legalized in part, because African-American soldiers and German women married in post-war Germany, where laws against such unions had been abolished, at a time when twenty-two states banned interracial marriage in the United States. Black soldiers and German women fraternized at an intersection of both American and German History which not only allowed such social relationships, but encouraged them. The relative racial progressiveness of bureaucrats in the War Department and later the Department of Defense meant that the American military acted as an unwilling agent in the legalization of mixed-race marriages. This occurred not only because the military's relative racial progressiveness made military service an attractive career option for young African-American soldiers, but its need to move its members around during the Cold War put it at odds with local racial laws. The first two chapters of this dissertation follow the development of German laws regarding those of African descent before World War II. In particular, it covers debates on interracial marriage and citizenship concerning the native inhabitants of Germany's African colonies, and the children of German women and French African soldiers following World War I. The third chapter and fourth chapters deal with policies that affected the African-American experience in the military prior to and during the occupation of Germany. Central to these chapters are the roles played by bureaucrats in the War Department who sought and won racially progressive policies for the military. The fifth and sixth chapters examine how these policy changes affected African-American soldiers and German women both in Germany and the United States. The emphasis is social history, or making the policies personal.

The presence and use of the Native American and African American oral trickster traditions in Zitkala-Sa's "Old Indian Legends" and "American Indian Stories" and Charles Chesnutt's "The Conjure Woman"

Byrd, Gayle Temple University 2014 해외박사(DDOD)

My dissertation examines early Native American and African American oral trickster tales and shows how the pioneering authors Zitkala-Sa (Lakota) and Charles W. Chesnutt (African American) drew on them to provide the basis for a written literature that critiqued the political and social oppression their peoples were experiencing. The dissertation comprises 5 chapters. Chapter 1 defines the meaning and role of the oral trickster figure in Native American and African American folklore. It also explains how my participation in the Native American and African American communities as a long-time storyteller and as a trained academic combine to allow me to discern the hidden messages contained in Native American and African American oral and written trickster literature. Chapter 2 pinpoints what is distinctive about the Native American oral tradition, provides examples of trickster tales, explains their meaning, purpose, and cultural grounding, and discusses the challenges of translating the oral tradition into print. The chapter also includes an analysis of Jane Schoolcraft's short story "Mishosha" (1827). Chapter 3 focuses on Zitkala-Sa's Old Indian Legends (1901) and American Indian Stories (1921). In the legends and stories, Zitkala-Sa is able to preserve much of the mystical, magical, supernatural, and mythical quality of the original oral trickster tradition. She also uses the oral trickster tradition to describe and critique her particular nineteenth-century situation, the larger historical, cultural, and political context of the Sioux Nation, and Native American oppression under the United States government. Chapter 4 examines the African American oral tradition, provides examples of African and African American trickster tales, and explains their meaning, purpose, and cultural grounding. The chapter ends with close readings of the trickster tale elements embedded in William Wells Brown's Clotel; or, The President's Daughter (1853), Harriett Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861), and Martin R. Delany's Blake, or the Huts of America (serialized 1859--1862). Chapter 5 shows how Charles Chesnutt's The Conjure Woman rests upon African-derived oral trickster myths, legends, and folklore preserved in enslavement culture. Throughout the Conjure tales, Chesnutt uses the supernatural as a metaphor for enslaved people's resistance, survival skills and methods, and for leveling the ground upon which Blacks and Whites struggled within the confines of the enslavement and post-Reconstruction South. Native American and African American oral and written trickster tales give voice to their authors' concerns about the social and political quality of life for themselves and for members of their communities. My dissertation allows these voices a forum from which to "speak.".

Intangible Harm: How African American Female Students at a Predominantly White Christian Institution Negotiate Their Image

Buck, Gail F Biola University ProQuest Dissertations & Theses 2022 해외박사(DDOD)

Although research has been conducted on African American female students and their identity at predominantly White institutions, little study has been conducted on African American female students at predominantly White Christian institutions (PWCI). PWCI is a phrase I coined in which the White race encompasses a strong presence in comparison to other racial or ethnic groups. The predominance stems from more than the number of White students but also includes cultural and social influences, curriculum,pedagogy, and overall campus environment on Christian higher education campuses. Furthermore, although research has been conducted on how African American women negotiate their image to fit a majority white culture, there has been little research exploring how African American female undergraduate students at a PWCI negotiate their image. A narrative approach was utilized to explore and understand the experiences of African American female students. The purpose of this narrative research study is to understand how African American/Black female undergraduate students at a PWCI negotiate their image. For the purposes of this study, PWCI refers to an institution in which Whites account for close to 50% of the student enrollment. In this case, the institution of study’s enrollment in 2018 was 46% White and 2% African American/Black (“Field” University, 2018-2019). I collected data by means of semi-structured interviews with eleven African American female students ranging from freshmen to seniors in an undergraduate program at a PWCI. Participants were recruited/invited to participate via email sent by the Chief Diversity Officer at the University. The findings may serve as a model or develop strategies for those who intentionally interact and are responsible for guiding and engaging with African American female students on a university campus where there is a dominant homogeneous environment. Furthermore, this study is significant and imperative to the retention of African American female students and a PWCI’s consideration in hiring faculty and staff with whom this group may identify.