Browsing by Subject "Race"

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African American celebrity dissent and a tale of two public spheres: a critical and comparative analysis of the mainstream and black press, 1949-2005
(2010-12) Jackson, Sarah J.
This dissertation examines news coverage, from mainstream and African American print media, of black athletes and entertainers who inserted themselves into public debates about race and nation through non-traditional forms of dissent at various points in U.S. history. The way media makers, serving particular publics, understood and constructed the role of African American celebrities in discourses of race and nation is examined through a theoretical lens that combines public sphere theory, framing scholarship, critical race theory and questions of celebrity. This research contributes to understanding journalistic norms for covering intersecting issues of controversy and celebrity while complicating and advancing our understanding of how mass media construct political and social dissent levied by raced figures. At the same time, important questions regarding the agency of African American celebrities to influence media discourse and the limitations placed on this agency are addressed. Results suggest that while historical moment and intersections of identity play an important role in the construction of dominant media frames, little has changed over time in the ideological undermining and reprimanding of African American celebrities who express dissent. At the same time, discourse in the black press has become less inhibited in criticisms of the status quo over time while consistently framing African American celebrity dissent within both counter-narratives to mainstream discourse and internal community debates.
American Indians in St Paul: A Preliminary Data Report
(2000) Fitzgerald, Patricia; Martinez, Cecilia
April in Paris, Autumn in New York: Whiteness and the Racial Formation of European Jazz in the US, 1940s–1970s
(2022-04) Vad, Mikkel
This dissertation charts the US reception and dissemination of European jazz and how ideas of European jazz were shaped through racialized narratives in the meeting of African American culture and European whiteness. In a series of roughly chronological of case studies, it traces how Americans wrote and thought about European jazz and explore the lives of Europeans jazz critics and musicians who went to the US.As a historiographical intervention, the dissertation responds to the fact that histories of transnational jazz in large part locate “the transnational” outside the US. The histories told in this dissertation show that the idea of “European jazz” was not only created in Eu-rope, but was also defined by discourses and music created in the US. Mobilizing critical race studies, the dissertation also argues that scholarship on European jazz has avoided the question of its overwhelming whiteness at the expense of colorblind cosmopolitan univer-salism. By focusing on how European jazz fared in the US, this dissertation highlights how the unavoidable fact of jazz’s Blackness came to set the whiteness of European jazz in re-lief. This also shows that the account of whiteness and jazz, even within the US, cannot be bounded by strict national frameworks. Chapter 1 shows how European critics were positioned in the US press as culturally superior to American jazz critics and audiences, through discourses of high-art class hierar-chies and racial whiteness. Chapter 2 explores of the US careers of the European singers Alice Babs and Caterina Valente, whose gendered whiteness was positioned as a form of exoticized Europeanness in the US. Chapter 3 is a portrait of the Austrian pianist and key-board player Joe Zawinul, who used narratives of miscegenation, racial passing, and “soul” in ways that rely on the fundamental instability of racial markers but also on his white privi-lege to tell such stories. Chapter 4 is a case study of the most prominent European jazz rec-ord label, ECM, which built an identity as a European label upon the already established American ideas of European jazz, specifically its high-art status, “serious” approach to mu-sic, “pure” sound production, and whiteness. The research presented herein reveals that Americans used the specter of Europeanness for their own purposes, reshaping American jazz discourse through transatlantic juxtaposi-tions. Most consistently, American critics and musicians saw these fault lines as one marked by class and race, associating European critics with intellectualism and European jazz with the idea of high art (for instance, through the comparison with European classical music). European ethnicities functioned as a white privileged position from which musi-cians could negotiate their identities with African Americans, claiming both solidarity and difference. American notions of an intrinsic white, highbrow European sensibility worked to uplift jazz in the cultural hierarchy.
Assessing the "goodness of fit" between scholarly assertions and audience interpretations of media images of Black male athletes
(2013-06) Houghton, Emily Jane
The purpose of this study was to examine the "goodness of fit" in sport media research, specifically how audiences interpret media images of Black male athletes and the ways in which their interpretations "fit" with scholarly assertions pertaining to racially marked media depictions. Participants in the study (n=36) were part of eight focus groups segmented by age, gender and race. They viewed and discussed mainstream media images of Black male athletes found on major American sport media websites (ESPN.com and SI.com). The images corresponded with five categories of representation found in the literature: highly competent/natural athlete, exotic savage, deviant, emotionally immature, and race transcendent. Although results were systematically compared across groups, race seemed to be the most significant factor in focus group responses. White participant responses provided support for some of the scholarly assertions (stereotype interpreted as reality, conditional acceptance of Black male athletes, perception of sport as upward mobility and the myth of meritocracy) while African American focus group responses were more likely to challenge some assertions (stereotypes interpreted as reality, perception of sport as upward mobility and myth of meritocracy), and confirm the existence of others (conditional acceptance of Black male athletes). Similar to the sport media study by Kane and Maxwell (2011), which utilized audience reception research, this project aims to generate knowledge and awareness that sport leaders could use to implement programs or practices which have the ability to transform sport and society into a truly equitable realm.
Assimilating Hawai‘i:racial science in a colonial “Laboratory,” 1919-1939
(2012-07) Manganaro, Christine Leah
This dissertation demonstrates how American physical anthropologists and sociologists working in Hawai‘i framed the biological and cultural assimilation of mixed race people and Asian migrants into Americanness as natural rather than ideological, thus naturalizing the islands' incorporation into the United States as a story about integration rather than colonization. Scientists argued that mixing in this "racial laboratory" improved the quality of the majority non-white population, that migration and colonization were features of a natural historical trajectory of Americanization, and that race relations in the islands were the product of a human ecology that went hand in hand with capitalist development. All of these ideas became the racial common sense that traveled to the continental U.S. and perpetuated American amnesia about empire. This project revisits the historiography of the supposed retreat of scientific racism and, by closely examining the methods, actual data, and conclusions of scientists whose work shaped their disciplines, demonstrates how racialist thinking persisted in work that has been characterized as either questioning the race concept, as politically progressive, or both. Taking cues from studies of settler colonialism in Hawai‘i and recent debate about the actuality of a retreat of scientific racism in the United States, this dissertation demonstrates how treating assimilation as a natural process that needed to be better understood, rather than a discursive project of colonial governance, legitimated American power in the islands. During a period when scientists and politicians alike were interested in fitness, degeneracy, and the consequences of immigration and miscegenation as part of debates about national progress, scientists viewed Hawai‘i as a laboratory where they could conduct research on heredity and cultural change that was difficult or impossible to do in the continental United States. American social scientists working in Hawai‘i framed the processes they studied, particularly the assimilation of mixed race people and Asian migrants into American culture and identity, as natural rather than ideological. American scientists with sometimes opposing political orientations such as Louis R. Sullivan and L.C. Dunn concluded that, unlike mixed race people generally and especially "mulattoes," Chinese-Hawaiian "hybrids" were actually improvements on their supposedly pure parents (chapter 1). Physical anthropologist Harry Shapiro, in his study of racial plasticity among migrants in a changed environment, developed few concrete findings, but helped establish Hawai‘i as a long-term human research site. Sociologist Romanzo Adams, who was trained at the University of Chicago, produced the history of Hawai‘i as a history of admixture that exaggerated the degree of interracial reproduction and suggested that the territorial population was well on its way to complete biological amalgamation (chapter 3). Through a series of interviews with couples in interracial marriages and the collection of student papers about identity and racial prejudice, many of which contradicted Adams' findings and predictions, graduate researcher Margaret M. Lam recorded the testimony of residents who both resisted certain types of racialization as they also participated in the construction and maintenance of racial boundaries and meanings (chapter 4). Finally, sociologist Andrew Lind, framed social inequality and tense race relations in the territory as a product of competition for jobs and housing, a "natural" feature of "human ecology," rather than a product of intentional labor control and government decisions (chapter 5). This advanced the idea that social conditions in Hawai‘i were a natural product of modernization rather colonization.
Baltimore's urban fix: sounds of excess and exclusion in Station north
(2013-03) Kotting, Jennifer
This research seeks to tell a different kind of story about urban development, attentive to the details of everyday life that are often ignored by both supporters and critics of such projects. The case study of Station north is an immediately relevant project meant to improve the city as a whole by attracting capital investment. However, the social and political contradictions involved show the devastating consequences of a spatial fix for an urban neighborhood. Mapping neighborhood change is common, but using sound and digital mapping to evoke under-explored parts of everyday life is less typical in the field of urban studies.
Baseball in the Black Public Sphere: Curt Flood and the disappearance of race.
(2010-09) Khan, Abraham
At the end of the 1969 Major League Baseball season, the St. Louis Cardinals traded their all-star centerfielder, Curt Flood, to the Philadelphia Phillies. Refusing the trade and seeking his unconditional release, Flood filed a lawsuit suit in federal court accusing baseball owners of exercising a collusive labor restriction - the "reserve clause" - in violation of federal antitrust statues. Flood's lawsuit was heard by the Supreme Court in 1972, and even though he lost, many observers have credited his case with transforming sport into its present form as high-salaried spectacle; Curt Flood inspired "free agency." In January 1970, weeks after filing suit, Flood appeared on national television and described himself as a "well-paid slave." At the time, some observers saw this as a fair analogy to his working conditions, and others saw it as an indecorous, racially motivated attack on the national pastime. With the remark, Flood initiated a public discussion of sport's labor practices that threatened not only baseball's sacrosanct pastoral image, but also its status, established through Jackie Robinson, as a cultural referent of racial progress. In the context of contemporary anxieties regarding the disappearance of the black activist athlete, Curt Flood is commended by many contemporary critics for having fought a lonely battle against the sports establishment. This nostalgic impulse, I assert, contains a paradox: Flood is martyred as the hero who made athletes rich, but it is the wealth of black athletes that is often blamed for their tragic disengagement from politics. By refusing to sell-out, Flood seems to have created a generation of sell-outs. This project investigates what many believe to be his only consistent source of support: the black press. In both Flood's historical moment and in the annals of public memory, Flood's blackness figures into his case prominently but ambivalently. As he is often remembered, Flood's racial experiences as a minor-leaguer in the south "sensitized" him to injustice which, in turn, motivated him to sacrifice his career in defense of a universal, "colorblind" principle. I argue that such a position overlooks the ways in which the protean appearance of Flood's racial identity helped the black press construct a liberal political imagination, one that is currently faced with a crisis of representation over the meaning of the activist-athlete. Unlike other athletes of his era taking principled stands on matters of racial justice, Curt Flood's challenge required the formation of an interracial coalition with white players. As such, the public discourse surrounding his case offered black newspapers the rhetorical resources necessary to elaborate the ostensibly universal premises of liberal integrationism. Consonant with the ways in which they awkwardly imagined their own institutional existence, black newspapers presented Flood as the black embodiment of a universal principle. In short, I argue that as sport and liberalism found convenient articulations in the black public sphere through Flood, the problem of race disappeared from view. Consequently, sport was preserved as a cultural space in which the success and wealth of black athletes indexed liberalism's progressive character.
Being Hmong, being American: making sense of U.S. Citizenship
(2014-09) Simmons, Annette Marie-Miller
This ethnographic case study was conducted in one 12th-grade American Government class at a public high school in a large Mid-western city. The class included 10 Hmong students, and eight of these youth agreed to participate in the study. Multiple data sources were analyzed for themes, patterns, and issues, including classroom observations and document analyses of instructional texts and American Government curriculum utilized in the observed classroom. All eight participants contributed to at least two focus group interviews, and four of these eight students completed two additional individual interviews, acting as focal contributors to this research. Two formal and various informal interviews were also conducted with the classroom teacher regarding her ideas and intentions around citizenship education for her students.Three significant findings emerged in this study. First, the American Government classroom was a space for civic and political identity construction for Hmong youth. Second, the American Government classroom was not the only active political socialization agent; Hmong youth shaped and negotiated their citizenship identities with others including family members, and in other venues like youth clubs and cultural activities. Third, Hmong youth negotiated their citizenship identities in relationship to race, gender, and class. However, as Hmong youth prepared for adult, democratic citizenship, they experienced little opportunity in their American Government course to practice ways to navigate racialization, gender issues, and economic challenge in their personal lives. Ongoing professional development is needed to help social studies educators address critical issues around race, gender, and class in their classrooms and schools, especially for immigrant students.
Beyond Orange Slices: The Contested Cultural Terrain of Youth Soccer in the United States
(2019-06) MANNING , CHARLES (ALEX)
This dissertation builds on my four-year ethnographic immersion into the world of youth soccer in the Twin Cities and dozens of interviews with players, parents, and coaches. My dissertation, titled “Beyond Orange Slices: The Contested Cultural Terrain of Youth Soccer in the United States”, demonstrates how various spaces of youth soccer in a metropolitan city are social environments where social inequalities, identities, and discourses of race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, and community are constructed, challenged, and reproduced. In my dissertation I examine how the field of youth soccer raced, classed, and gendered; how larger social systems of inequality appear and shape taken for granted, but prevalent cultural spaces, such as sport; and how practices of youth soccer serve as a contested cultural site of meaning with regards to parenting culture, families, sporting discourse, youth development, community, identity, and social difference. The first section of my dissertation focuses on how youth soccer is a social field with seven different sites of youth soccer. Within these different locations of soccer’s social field, clubs create, maintain, and define a group identity that is centered on how they “do” youth soccer. Different communities “do” the sport in a manner that is informed by various parenting styles, ideals about community, and visions for proper youth development. The second section of my dissertation is about gender and how different forms of playing and coaching the game are shaped by cultural ideas of masculinity and femininity during youth. Throughout the field of soccer, players, coaches, and parents often intentionally strive to challenge gender norms about who can play and succeed in the game. Yet, many participants often still reproduce gender hierarchy and normativity through soft essentialism. In the final section I argue that soccer, and youth sport, is a useful and particular sociological window into how the dynamics of race and racism operate in the United States, particularly within diverse (racial and ethnic) social spaces. In this section, I show that in many cases youth soccer is a “cosmopolitan canopy” where social difference is supported and co-exists seemingly with ease and normality. Participants in these diverse social canopies of soccer frequently view such diversity as a positive feature of the sport and reproduce happy diversity talk. However, within these diverse soccer spaces, biological notions of race, racist microaggressions, and other forms of racial marginalization and exclusion appear frequently, simultaneously, and often with no formal challenges or reconciliation. These racist ruptures reveal the tenuous characteristics of diverse social spaces and sport, and highlights the limited inclusive potential of diversity discourse
Chinese Exclusion and U.S. Empire in Hawai’i and Cuba, 1874-1943
(2020-08) Weber, Kent
“Chinese Exclusion and U.S. Empire in Hawai’i and Cuba, 1874-1943,” interrogates the confluences between United States’ immigration control and overseas territorial expansion in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Chinese exclusion laws, some of the earliest federal U.S. immigration laws and the first to name and discriminate against a particular migrant group based on their race, informed and moved with U.S. empire to recreate physical, political, and social borders in the Caribbean and the Pacific. The dissertation traces how efforts to control the transnational migrations of Chinese to and between Cuba, Hawai’i, and the United States became a tool for the geographic movement of U.S. state power as American borders expanded for empire and further attempted to control and limit the movements of Chinese migrants. By examining Cuba and Hawai’i together, the dissertation argues that the exclusion laws offered an adaptable system of corporeal control that aided U.S. colonial projects in each place. The spread of the Chinese exclusion laws outside the continental United States by the end of the nineteenth century did not only occur in the context of expanding U.S. empire, but also helped to define and constitute the boundaries of America’s new imperial domain.
Collective identity and African American views of Africa, African immigrants, and immigrant entitlements.
(2010-06) Pendaz, Sadie
In this dissertation, I examine how collective memory and collective identity impact African American interpretations of Africa, African immigrants and African immigrant participation in affirmative action programs. The setting of the research is the Minneapolis/St. Paul area of Minnesota (the "Twin Cities"), which has a notable historical and contemporary African American population and the largest eastern African population of immigrants from Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and the Sudan. I find that rather than expanding their definition of African American ethnic identity through their interactions with African immigrants, African Americans, relied on a bifurcated notion of the historical place of Africa as part of the two-ness of African American ethnic identity, and African immigrants as an on-the-ground reality. Methodologiclly, I use historical newspaper analysis and extensive in-depth interviews with African Americans and eastern Africans from the Twin Cities. Theoretically I analyze theories of collective memory, intergroup contact and challenge the notion that African American ethnic identity is equatable with black racial identity.
Deconcentrating Poverty in Minneapolis: Hollman v. Cisner. Report No. 3: Baseline Data Analysis for North Side Redevelopment.
(Minneapolis: Center for Urban and Regional Affairs (CURA), 2001) Goetz, Edward G
Deconcentrating Poverty in Minneapolis: Hollman v. Cisner. Report No. 4: Changes to the Public Housing Stock in Minneapolis.
(Minneapolis: Center for Urban and Regional Affairs (CURA), 2001) Goetz, Edward G
Deconcentrating Poverty in Minneapolis: Hollman v. Cisneros, Reports 1-8.
(Minneapolis: Center for Urban and Regional Affairs (CURA), 2002) Goetz, Edward G
Deconcentrating Poverty in Minneapolis: Hollman v. Cisneros. Report No. 1: Policy Context and Previous Research on Housing Dispersal.
(Minneapolis: Center for Urban and Regional Affairs (CURA), 2002) Goetz, Edward G
Deconcentrating Poverty in Minneapolis: Hollman v. Cisneros. Report No. 2: Planning for North Side Redevelopment.
(Minneapolis: Center for Urban and Regional Affairs (CURA), 2002) Goetz, Edward G
Deconcentrating Poverty in Minneapolis: Hollman v. Cisneros. Report No. 5: Relocation of Residents from North Side Public Housing.
(Minneapolis: Center for Urban and Regional Affairs (CURA), 2001) Goetz, Edward G
Deconcentrating Poverty in Minneapolis: Hollman v. Cisneros. Report No. 6: The Experiences of Dispersed Families.
(Minneapolis: Center for Urban and Regional Affairs (CURA), 2002) Goetz, Edward G
Deconcentrating Poverty in Minneapolis: Hollman v. Cisneros. Report No. 7: Mobility Certificates.
(Minneapolis: Center for Urban and Regional Affairs (CURA), 2001) Goetz, Edward G
Deconcentrating Poverty in Minneapolis: Hollman v. Cisneros. Report No. 8: Replacement Housing.
(Minneapolis: Center for Urban and Regional Affairs (CURA), 2001) Goetz, Edward G

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