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Browsing by Subject "Discrimination"

Now showing 1 - 12 of 12
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    Advancing LGBTQIA+ Inclusion in the Twin Cities Theater Arts Nonprofit Sector
    (2024-05) McLaughlin, Meghan “Mac”
    This research explores LGBTQIA+ inclusion in the Twin Cities theater arts nonprofit sector. It delves into how HR policies impact LGBTQIA+ workers and suggests recommendations for improvement. Through personal narratives and organizational insights, it highlights the challenges and commitments to inclusivity. Ultimately, the study, through phenomenological research, includes interviews with LGBTQIA+ people in theater organizations and surveys of theater organizations regarding their HR policies and practices; aims to foster diversity and equity, building upon the historical legacy of social progress within the arts community.
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    Cultural socialization in transracial, transnational adoptive families: A seven-year follow-up
    (2015-08) Hu, Alison
    Cultural socialization, or education regarding ethnicity and race, was examined in transracial, transnational adoptive families. This longitudinal, multi-informant study represented a seven-year follow-up with adopted Korean American adolescents (ages 13-20) and their adoptive parents (N = 116). The study examined changes in parental cultural socialization over time, the longitudinal relationship of parental cultural socialization on peer cultural socialization, and the independent and collective relationships of parental and peer cultural socialization practices on adolescent ethnic identity and discrimination. Parents reported Time 1 and Time 2 parental cultural socialization; adoptees reported Time 2 parental cultural socialization, Time 2 peer cultural socialization, Time 2 ethnic identity, and Time 2 discrimination. Cultural socialization was examined via ethnic and racial socialization. Results indicated parent-reports of parental ethnic socialization decreased and racial socialization increased between childhood and adolescence. Parents also reported higher levels of parental ethnic and racial socialization than did adolescents at Time 2. Contrary to hypothesis, parental ethnic socialization in childhood was negatively associated with adolescent ethnic identity, but parental ethnic socialization in adolescence was positively associated with adolescent ethnic identity. With regards to discrimination, parental ethnic socialization in childhood and adolescence were both positively associated with perceived discrimination. Last, peer racial socialization in adolescence mediated the association between parental racial socialization in childhood and ethnic identity, as well as the association between parental racial socialization and perceived discrimination. The study highlights the racial and ethnic experiences of transracial, transnational adopted individuals, and illustrates the importance of longitudinal and multi-informant methodology.
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    Disability discrimination of prospective adoptive and foster parents
    (2015-04) Fleming, Grace Piechler
    Parenthood is a notion shared throughout the globe, but for persons with disabilities, the laws and regulations surrounding the adoptive and foster care process create unnecessary barriers. Vague health requirements, lack of protections for disabled prospective parents, and the patchwork of state laws threaten that disability impedes persons throughout the United States from becoming adoptive or foster parents. Prospective parents with disabilities may face categorical denials when seeking to adopt or foster children. Many face bias and speculation concerning their parenting abilities during their application process. The effects of these practices are felt not only by those who seek to expand their families, but also the growing number of children awaiting homes. Disability rights law has often focused on employment discrimination, but the Americans with Disabilities Act aimed to create equal opportunity beyond those boundaries, including within adoption and foster care systems. This article analyzes a fifty state survey of adoption and foster care laws and regulations to present several problems within this arena including inconsistencies in non-discrimination provisions, vague health requirements for prospective parents that allow for discrimination and bias, lack of professional knowledge in evaluation of prospective parents' ability to care for a child, and failure to include reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities. Fulfilling the best interests of the child must remain the paramount purpose of public and private agencies, but that should not mean that prospective parents with disabilities are denied the ability to adopt or foster when their home meets the best interests standard.
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    Foreigner objectification, bicultural identity, and psychological adjustment in Asian American college students
    (2013-08) Pituc, Stephanie
    Asian Americans have historically been subjected to unfair treatment as "forever foreigners," a phenomenon of racial discrimination defined here as foreigner objectification (FO). Recent psychological research corroborates this narrative and suggests that FO is related to negative outcomes (Armenta, Lee, Pituc, Jung, Park, Soto et al., 2013; Q. L. Huynh, Devos, & Smalarz, 2011; S. Kim, Wang, Deng, Alvarez, & Li, 2011). The present study builds upon this nascent research by investigating the construct of foreigner objectification (FO) and its relationship with bicultural identity, psychological distress (depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, and social interaction anxiety) and subjective well-being (self-esteem, satisfaction with life). The sample consists of 718 self-identified Asian American undergraduate students from multiple sites across the United States. The primary research question asked whether bicultural identity profiles (as indicated by the affirmation/commitment component of both ethnic-racial identity and national American identity) moderate the relationship between FO and psychological adjustment outcomes. Identity profiles were derived using person-centered cluster analytic methods, resulting in a solution of five profiles (Strong Bicultural, Average Bicultural, Weak Bicultural, Strong Ethnic, and Strong American). The moderation model was tested with multiple group structural equation modeling analysis and conducted separately for the U.S.-born and immigrant participants. For the immigrant sample (n = 253), the relations between FO and both psychological distress and subjective well-being were non-significant, and there was no difference in the FO-adjustment relationship between identity profiles. In line with Self-Categorization Theory (Turner, 1985), the results suggest that the potentially negative impact of FO is more relevant to U.S.-born Asian Americans than to their immigrant counterparts. For the U.S.-born sample (n = 465), a significant medium sized effect was found between FO and psychological distress in the expected direction, with no observed moderation by identity. FO was also significantly associated with poorer subjective well-being for the U.S.-born individuals in the Strong Bicultural, Average Bicultural, and Weak Bicultural profiles. This association was not statistically significant for those in the Strong Ethnic and Strong American profiles, indicating a moderating role of bicultural identity.
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    Human auditory source discrimination.
    (2011-07) Gardeen, Stephen J.
    The aim of this study is to examine the auditory system's ability to process low energy frequency transpositions of complex sounds. The auditory processing of complex sounds such as musical instruments, voice, or environmental events is currently an active area of research. Some propose that auditory "objects" are represented by neurons which encode the `invariant' spectro-temporal acoustic properties (Griffiths & Warren,2004). These sound features tend to be heavily damped and very transient and, therefore, frequency rich. This study shows the auditory's sensitivity to detect these adjustments by detecting the pre-attentive magnetic mismatch response (MMNm) from 8 subjects passively listening to complex audio stimulations. Responses were detected from most subjects even though participants could not attentively discriminate the sounds. This result is somewhat controversial in that current views suggests that a mismatch response indicates processing that is available for higher processing i.e. should be attentively discriminable (Näätänen et al., 2010). Localization results suggest the mismatch processing is performed in the auditory associations regions (superior temporal sulcus, insula) of the auditory cortex. These results suggest that transient sounds might be essential to auditory object identification, and that the auditory system is able to distinguish at a sensory level, shifts in the heavily damped spectral structure of complex sounds even though some cannot do so attentively. This could be due to the greater analysis given by the human brain to determining the pitch center rather then the sound timbre, yet some trained musicians have the ability to distinguish these subtle differences (i.e. differences between manufacturers of the same kinds of instruments).
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    Renaming Campus Buildings: A Step Towards Reparations at the University of Minnesota
    (2019-04) Holly, Lauren
    Most of the buildings that make up the University of Minnesota campus have been around since the university was founded in 1851. Many of these buildings have remained permanent fixtures on campus and each holds with it a history, and, of course, a name. However, four of these buildings–Coffey Hall, Coffman Memorial Union, Middlebrook Hall, and Nicholson Hall–are named after individuals who held a vision for the University of Minnesota much different from the U we see today. The men whom the buildings are named after were claimed to uphold racist ideals and promote discrimination during their time on campus. I set out to learn about the history behind these buildings and to explore the current efforts to have them renamed. I also wanted to learn more about individuals who resisted oppression at the university at this time.
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    School Psychologists’ Decision Making in Evaluations for Emotional Disturbance
    (2016-07) Sadeh, Shanna
    For decades, there has been a persistent national trend of public schools disproportionately qualifying more Black students relative to White students for special education under the category of serious emotional disturbance (ED). Such disproportionality suggests but does not prove racial bias in ED evaluations. I experimentally tested how much, if at all, school psychologists’ racial bias impacted eligibility determinations using a vignette methodology and between-group design with three conditions that varied by level of data ambiguity: (a) low-ambiguity data that do not meet ED criteria; (b) low-ambiguity data that meet ED criteria; and (c) highly ambiguous data. The hypothetical student in each vignette was a fifth grade male who had primarily externalizing problems. Participants completed one vignette in each ambiguity condition; student race (Black versus White) was experimentally manipulated. Participants were 60 practicing school psychologists in a northeastern state that adopted the federal regulations for ED eligibility. For each vignette, participants decided whether the student qualified as ED, rated their confidence in their decision and the diagnosticity of data included in the evaluation, and had the option to describe additional data they wish had been included in the results. Chi-square analyses indicated there were no statistically significant differences based on race between students qualified and disqualified as ED across ambiguity conditions, providing some evidence against the racial bias theory of disproportionality. Under the highly ambiguous data condition, there was no statistically significant difference between students qualified as ED and those not qualified – i.e., regardless of race, all students had a coin-toss chance of qualifying as ED. This finding makes sense in light of the numerous ambiguous key terms in the ED criteria, which allow for more than one reasonable interpretation. Results also showed that most school psychologists were at least moderately confident in their determinations across ambiguity conditions. Their confidence in the low-ambiguity conditions makes sense because those vignettes were designed to be relatively easy. Their confidence in the highly ambiguous data condition may illustrate the potency and frequency of confirmation bias in decision making under conditions of high uncertainty. Across ambiguity conditions, participants frequently identified behavior rating scales and infrequently identified achievement and intelligence scores as highly diagnostic. They identified interviews, family information, and observations with varying frequency across conditions, demonstrating that the diagnosticity of data can fluctuate depending on the presenting problems and evaluation results. Finally, school psychologists who opted to describe additional data they wish had been included in the evaluation results primarily requested more information about interventions that had been attempted and consultation with outside mental health providers. Implications for practice and further research opportunities are discussed.
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    The spirit and strength of Somali youth in America
    (2012-12) Leet-Otley, Jill M.
    Somali youth experience significant amounts of racism, xenophobia, and Islamophobia in our schools and communities. In addition, Somali girls are seen as being monolithically oppressed by their culture and religion. My dissertation research demonstrates the spirit and strength of Somali youth as they respond to these marginalizing discourses. My year-long ethnographic study took place at a K–8 charter school that was founded by the Somali community in order to meet the academic, cultural, and religious needs of Somali students. I was primarily interested in how fifth and sixth grade Somali youth experience racialization, and how Somali girls make sense of Somali and American gender norms. Findings reveal that racialization was highly gendered. Somali boys took up some Black cultural discourses, such as listening to rap music and speaking in Black stylized English, but resisted identifying as Black. Instead they created hybrid Somali American identities. At the same time, parents and elders worried about Somali boys “sagging their pants” and “acting like African Americans.” African American youth culture became synonymous with the negative aspects of American youth culture such as drugs, gangs, and violence. Meanwhile, fewer girls engaged with Black cultural discourses. The greater concern within this community was that Somali girls who wore pants or tight clothes would start ‘acting like White girls.’ The concern with ‘acting like a White girl’ was a trope for being sexually promiscuous; in other words, for not being Muslim. Experiences with racialization were necessarily bound up with hegemonic notions of White masculinity and femininity. Although the hijab is often seen as a symbol of oppression in the West, I show how the girls embraced the veil and subverted the discrimination they experienced, insisting that they are equal to boys. Wearing the veil allowed the girls to challenge some gender norms while remaining connected to their families, their faith, and their community. My research shows how the girls wove together American, Somali, and Muslim gender discourses based on their homegrown experiences and unique desires and interests. The most significant way in which the girls embraced gender equity was in the high academic and professional goals they had set for themselves. Very little research exists on immigrant youth of this age and almost no research is available on second generation Somali American youth. My research breaks new ground, both in terms of my participants, and in the ways in which I attend to their creativity and strength, and their determination to succeed in America.
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    "What's the big deal?": recognition of racism and impairment of cognitive functioning.
    (2012-08) Tran, Giac-Thao (Alisia) Thanh
    Resource depletion theories posit that cognitive resources exist in a limited pool. Thus, stressful stimuli can produce impairment on subsequent cognitive tasks, as limited resources (e.g., attentional or regulatory processes) are directed toward managing this initial stressor or task. Using experimental methodology, the study applied resource depletion theories to examine the effects of recognizing the existence of racism in American society in a White American undergraduate sample. The investigation examined impairments in cognitive functioning (i.e., executive functioning in Study 1 and creative mental processes in Study 2) and psychological functioning that were presumed to occur because racism acts as a stressor with the potential to arouse strong emotional responses and deplete resources. Study results suggested recognition of racism had some effects on cognitive and psychological functioning, but the results were limited and inconsistent. Of primary interest, recognizing racism only had a marginal effect on creativity in the form of ideational fluency, whereas recognizing discrimination resulted in fewer errors on a computerized Stroop task in one experimental procedure, thus contradicting predictions and a resource depletion perspective.
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    When worldviews collide: the role of emotion in reactions to symbolic threats.
    (2011-08) Hunt, Corrie Valentine
    Until recently, intergroup relations research has undervalued the role of emotion. This dissertation examines how people's emotional reactions to challenges to their cherished values--symbolic threats--shape social attitudes. I argue that people respond with distinct emotions depending on whether the symbolic threat comes from within their ingroup or from outsiders, and that these emotions explain why those who feel that their cultural values are threatened are less accepting and tolerant of outsiders. Using a survey, Study 1 showed that when participants believed that Muslims rejected core American values, they felt angry at and less sympathy toward Muslim immigrants, and in turn, opposed granting civil rights to Muslim immigrants. Participants who believed that Americans, in general, disagreed on the importance of different values felt less proud to be American and held more negative attitudes toward Americans. Study 2 showed a similar pattern of results with a different outgroup. Participants--particularly those high in authoritarianism--felt disgusted and angry with, as well as less proud of, gays and lesbians. Negative emotions explained why high authoritarians who perceived gays as a symbolic threat expressed intolerant attitudes toward gays and lesbians. Using an experimental manipulation of symbolic threat, Study 3 partially replicated the findings from Study 1. High threat from Muslim immigrants led to anger at Muslim immigrants, which in turn, predicted more negative attitudes toward Muslim immigrants. High threat from within the American ingroup made people--especially authoritarians--less proud of Americans, which predicted more negative attitudes toward the ingroup.