Student loan debt continues to be an issue in the U.S., with potential long-term effects on loan repayment and potential wealth accumulation. In particular, minorities face barriers in the educational system and accruing wealth. Hispanics occupy a middling position in the U.S. racial hierarchy. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 geocode data, in this study I examined how Hispanic-White differences in student debt change over time and how student debt influences wealth. In addition, I accounted for immigration status via parents' nativity status to investigate debt burdens and subsequent wealth for these respondents. I used hierarchical linear growth models to examine debt growth over time and linear decomposition to examine Hispanic-White differences in wealth accumulation and the impact of student debt on these differences. While findings were largely statistically insignificant, I found that Hispanics tended to start with less debt than their White counterparts and that student debt initially grew for both groups. However, White respondents pay off their debt more quickly than Hispanics. In addition, I found that the wealth gap between White and Hispanic respondents grew significantly between the ages of 20 and 35. While Hispanics tended to start with less debt, my findings suggest that …

This study used an archival data set of 26 healthy adult immigrants from a sub-Saharan African country to the United States (Mage 39.0, SD = 11.36; Meducation 16.33, SD = 2.88; 40.7% male). Additional archival data was used for 32 healthy African American adults (Mage 34.06, SD = 11.18; Meducation 16.16, SD = 2.49; 53.1% male). A bivariate correlation indicated that acculturation to African culture, as measured by the mBIQ (M 49.29, SD = 8.66), was significantly positively correlated with ethnicity, r = .632, p = .000, ηp2 = 0.399. Two-way ANOVAs revealed that African Americans were able to name more animals than African immigrants (F(1, 54) = 4.82, p = 0.32, ηp2 = 0.82) and exhibited greater organizational skills during a task of cognitive set shifting and problem solving than African immigrants, regardless of level of acculturation (F(1, 54) = 4.47, p =.039, ηp2 = 0.078). In contrast, African immigrants scored higher than African Americans on indigenous fruit (F(1, 54) = 7.60, p =.008, ηp2 = 0.123) and object naming (F(1, 54) = 5.59, p =.022, ηp2 = 0.094). Results of the study concluded that there are small variance effects in language tasks as well as strategy-based approaches to …

This thesis seeks to examine the levels of support for African American reparations amongst minorities. After providing a historical account of redress efforts separated racial group and discussing factors that influence reparations, I argue that minority groups possess cross-racial linked fate (minority linked fate) that significantly impacts their political attitudes concerning reparations for African Americans. Additionally, I argue that higher levels of minority-linked fate will equate to significant support for reparations. The probit regressions reaffirm the initial hypotheses that minority-linked fate has a significant impact on support for African American reparations. However, the racial groups most affected were not suspected initially.

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore how individuals from different multiracial/multiethnic groups experience and process the phenomenon of parental racial ethnic socialization (RES). Critical multiracial race theory, critical race theory, and bioecological systems theory offered a conceptual framework to how RES is often presented and processed. This study was guided by two research questions: (1) What are the experiences of RES among multiracial individuals? and (2) How do multiracial individuals process the parental racial ethnic socialization they were offered? Nine qualitative, one-on-one, semistructured interviews were conducted with individuals from three different multiracial/multiethnic groups. Results revealed that experiences of RES varied along with how participants processed RES. Three subthemes and one theme emerged related to the RES experiences of participants. For some participants lack of conversations were evident in their RES, which meant that conversations surrounding multiraciality and other racialized topics were not present. Other participants disclosed the subtheme of preparedness as part of their RES experience, while others mentioned the importance of environment to their RES experience. Additionally, the theme of changes over time arose, demonstrating how different life events can impact RES experiences. As for how multiracial/multiethnic individuals process RES experiences, the main theme of identity …

Video from The Black Academy of Arts and Letters showing guests and performers at a symphony leaving the venue and interacting with each other on their way out.

Our Stories: Black Families in Early Dallas enlarges upon two pubLications by the late Dr. Mamie McKnight’s organization, Black Dallas Remembered—First African American Families of Dallas (1987) and African American Families and Settlements of Dallas (1990). Our Stories is the history of Black citizens of Dallas going about their lives in freedom, as described by the late Eva Partee McMillan: “The ex-slaves purchased land, built homes, raised their children, erected their educational and religious facilities, educated their children, and profited from their labor. “ Our Stories brings together memoirs from many of Dallas’s earliest Black families, as handed down over the generations to their twentieth-century descendants. The period covered begins in the 1850s and goes through the 1930s. Included are detailed descriptions of more than thirty early Dallas communities formed by free African Americans, along with the histories of fifty-seven early Black families, and brief biographies of many of the early leaders of these Black communities. The stories reveal hardships endured and struggles overcome, but the storytellers focus on the triumphs over adversity and the successes achieved against the odds. The histories include the founding of churches, schools, newspapers, hospitals, grocery stores, businesses, and other institutions established to nourish and …

Audio interview from the Wes Phelps Podcast Interviews Collection recorded on August 26th, 2022 in Houston, TX. Phelps interviews former United States Representative Craig Washington on his experiences with the Texas State Legislature. Washington begins by discussing a penal code which came to the legislature in 1973, exploring his involvement in rewriting and codifying said penal code. Specifically, Washington speaks on his attempts to repeal sodomy laws found under code 21.06 from state legislation.

Audio interview from the Wes Phelps Podcast Interviews Collection recorded on October 14th, 2022 in Washington, D.C. Phelps interviews Lori Montgomery over her involvement with the murder case of Tommy Lee Tremble and John Griffin as a police reporter in 1988. She speaks on an interview conducted with Judge Jack Hampton, the Dallas criminal district court judge criticized for his lenient sentencing of Richard Bednarski, murderer of Tremble and Griffin. Montgomery discusses homophobic comments made by Judge Hampton which would lead her to write a newspaper article covering discrimination in the case of Tremble and Griffin.

Audio interview from the Wes Phelps Podcast Interviews Collection recorded on October 21st, 2022 in Houston, Texas. In this interview, Chris Haight discusses the lives and deaths of John Griffin and Tommy Lee Tremble, two gay men who were close friends and roommates in Dallas in the 1980s. Haight discusses their negative treatment through newspaper coverage following their murders and the significance of applying humanity to their cases. Haight continues on to describe the trial and arrest of Richard Bednarski for the murders of the two men, critiquing his sentence and the roll Judge Jack Hampton played in his case.

American Sign Language interpretation of Dr. Torget's lecture covering the lead up to the Civil Rights Movement in Texas. Covers Mexican americans and LULAC, African Americans and the NAACP, and the aftermath of the Brown Decisions. Video contains picture-in-picture rendering of slides and original narration and was recorded after the original world record attempt in order to complete the course.

Victims of racial discrimination often experience negative consequences that extend into all aspects of well-being (e.g., psychological, subjective, social). Racial microaggressions describe a series of verbal and non-verbal behaviors that cause harm, perpetuate negative stereotypes, and negate the experience of racial/ethnic minorities. Research has found a negative relationship between experiencing racial discrimination and psychological well-being, as well as a potential buffering effect of racial/ethnic identity. However, less information is available about the existence of these relationships with social well-being. The purpose of this dissertation is to fill a gap in the literature in regard to racial microaggressions, racial/ethnic identity, and social well-being in 453 racially diverse undergraduate students. Quantitative results indicated that African Americans reported higher levels of racial microaggressions and racial/ethnic identity than other groups, racial microaggressions were negatively associated with sense of belonging, racial/ethnic identity was positively associated with sense of belonging, and the association between racial microaggressions and sense of belonging was not moderated by racial/ethnic identity. Qualitative analyses using the conventional content analysis revealed two clusters of facilitative behavioral expressions of university/community inclusion: (a) interpersonal expressions of inclusion and (b) systemic expression of inclusion. I conclude by discussing limitations, areas for future research, and implications for …

Audio interview from the Wes Phelps Podcast Interviews Collection recorded on August 11th, 2022 in Denton, Texas. In this interview, Phelps and Professor of Law Dale Carpenter discuss the history of the supreme court case Lawrence v. Texas. Carpenter discusses the events in the case which led to the end of sodomy laws in Texas. He covers the incidents which occurred prior to the case, leading to the arrests of John Lawrence and his partner Tyron Garner. Carpenter, additionally, discusses the roll that sodomy laws played in the lives of everyday gay and lesbian Texans leading up to the supreme courts ruling over Penal Code 21.06 in 2003.

Affirmative action policies have been a popular topic in U.S. media since their inception in the Civil Rights Act 1964. Previous studies note that race, gender, and political identity are known influencers of support for affirmative action policies; however, this dissertation analyzes the mediating effects of perceived experiences of discrimination in the workplace on a person's level of support for the preferential hiring and promotion of Black Americans based on the intersection of the race, gender, and political identity. Through social dominance theory (SDT), this dissertation highlights the motivations people may have in support or opposition of affirmative action, especially for Black Americans. Due to the historical lineage of African Americans in the U.S., stereotypes about Black people's work ethic have continued to be mostly negative-which inform hiring, promotion, and admission procedures today. Using the General Social Survey (GSS) to conduct regression and mediation analysis, this dissertation found significant support for mediation of perceived experiences to increase support for affirmative action among white females, and Black people regardless of gender or political identity. While race and gender discrimination were thought to be the most influencing forms of discrimination experienced, age discrimination showed to transcend racial, gender, and political barriers. Accordingly, …

American Sign Language interpretation of Dr. Torget's lecture covering the the Civil Rights Era in Texas. Covers desegregation in Texas Schools, a crisis at Mansfield High School, the return of the Republican Party, JFK and LBJ, and the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. Video contains picture-in-picture rendering of slides and original narration and was recorded after the original world record attempt in order to complete the course.

This study explored the effects of cultural consequences identified through a ranking task on the selection of interlocking behavioral contingencies and aggregate products constituting ethically self-controlled responses when participants had pre-existing relationships. Two experiments were conducted to explore these effects. Experiment 1 had two triads of three participants each recruited from a university-based autism center. Experiment 2 had three triads of three participants each; participants in Triads 3 and 4 were recruited from a university-based rock-climbing club while participants in Triad 5 were recruited from the same university-based autism center as in Experiment 1. All participants were exposed to a task that involved choosing odd or even rows from a matrix displayed throughout the experimental session. Individual contingencies were programmed in all conditions while metacontingencies were programmed in some conditions. Participants selected the topography of the cultural consequence through a pre-experimental ranking task prior to the onset of the experimental session. A change was made to the experimenter's verbal behavior in all operant and metacontingency conditions for Experiment 2. The results of both experiments indicate that identification of the cultural consequence through a ranking task with participants having pre-existing relationships did have an effect on the continued selection of the …

This dissertation examines representations of the Pacific theater in World War II in ethnic American literature, with a focus on its rendition of US and Japanese racism and imperialism in the mid-twentieth century. Reading a range of African, Asian, Jewish, Mexican, and Native American literary writings, I investigate their modifications of the American master narrative that the Second World War was "good" and "necessary," a war fought against fascism and for democracy, justice, and freedom. Instead of such a simplistic and reductive view, ethnic American writers envision the Pacific theater as a race war between whites and persons of color and as a conflict between two imperialist nations, the United States and Japan. Ethnic Americans' racial double consciousness functions to resist an oversimplification of the Pacific theater. In these ethnic writers' work, American characters from diverse backgrounds create friendships with those of Asian nationalities, including Chinese, Filipinos, Koreans, and Japanese. These texts are necessary because ethnic Americans' experiences are underrepresented in the traditional WWII narrative of Western masculinity, originated by Ernest Hemingway and completed by President Truman and Douglas MacArthur. As opposed to the typical white American literary and cinematic treatment of the war as fought in the land of …

This research examines the political implications of the Millennial generation on American politics by exploring the interaction of generational cohort with race, social issues, and civil liberties. Relying on the 2016 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey and the 2018 General Social Survey, I examine (1) Millennial attitudes toward race and ethnicity by looking specifically at racial linked fate, (2) how Millennials interact with race and evangelical Christianity and how this interaction influences social policy preferences, and (3) how generational factors influence Millennial attitudes toward American civil liberties. I find that there are measurable effects of generational cohorts on the predicted value of Linked Fate for racial minority groups in the United States. My results suggest that Millennials are significantly more likely to have higher levels of linked fate for Latino and Asian Americans. However, I do not find sufficient evidence to suggest that African Americans' level of linked fate is affected either positively or negatively for Millennials. Second, for the investigation on social policy, the results suggest that those who sit at the intersection of the three groups- the Latino-Millennial evangelicals- hold policy preferences that contrast from those who are solely either Latino, Millennial, or evangelical. Latino-Millennial evangelicals are significantly more …

Mending the Gaps examines the failures and deficits that have occurred in education both historically and today. These gaps that already existed in learning, equality, opportunity, and technology have all been made worse after two years of a global pandemic. Focusing on students in the state of Texas, which has the 2nd largest economy in the United States, but currently ranks 34th in quality of education, now students face the reality of the COVID 19 health crisis in an already overburdened public education system. People in every area of the community, including local, state, and national policy makers, are questioning if it is time to rethink what is considered a quality education. This documentary project will take viewers from the classroom to the boardroom, as stakeholders from all levels of the educational spectrum have an earnest conversation and answer the hard question, can the current system close the gaps and salvage a generation of students?

Audio from The Black Academy of Arts and Letters of the KLRD radio broadcast for Black History Month in 1997. The broadcast features information on local African-Americans who are making history.

Considered privileged by social standards, with two loving parents and a spot in an elite, all-girls private school in New Jersey, Charlie should be happy. But at Oak Crest College Preparatory, if you're not a straight-A student, you're dumb. If you're not a star athlete, you're invisible. And if you don't compete to be the best? Well, you might as well flunk out. Charlie is already failing math, and it's only October. Why not throw school—and maybe her whole life—away? Then, one day, Charlie finds a suicide note in the bathroom at school, and her world is turned upside down. As she goes through the process of trying to find out who wrote it, the note writer herself remains hidden to herself and everyone else. A perfectionist all her life, she strives to be everything her parents and teachers expect, but does not know what truly makes her happy. The pressure to fulfill expectation is starting to weigh on her, but no one, except Charlie, can know she is thinking of suicide.

On January 30, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) a public health emergency of international concern. In March 2020, the United States government imposed impactful safety and confinement measures issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) all over the country to prevent community transmission of COVID-19. Institutions of higher education rapidly transitioned to online learning and eliminated in-person engagements in the spring of 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak. The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) followed a similar trajectory by shutting down all athletic activities due to the global pandemic. While college students in general notably experienced increased pandemic related distress and mental health concerns (e.g., depression, anxiety) during the early stages of the global pandemic, the disruption of collegiate sport competitions and seasons uniquely and significantly impacted collegiate student athletes and their overall well-being. In this qualitative study, I sought to document and understand the narrative of Black student athletes' experiences of stress and coping during the first two months of the COVID-19 global pandemic and cancellation of collegiate sports. Through reflexive thematic analysis, I found that psychosocial resources such as avoidance, acceptance, mindful self-compassion, health …

Identified with Texas is the first published biography of Texas Governor Elisha Marshall Pease (1812-1883), presented by historian Elizabeth Whitlow as a dual biography of Pease and his wife, Lucadia Niles Pease (1813-1905). Pease volunteered to fight in the first battle of the Revolution at Gonzales, and he served with the Texan Army at the Siege of Bexar. Pease served in the first three state legislatures after Texas joined the Union in 1845, was elected governor in 1853 and re-elected in 1855, and returned to the governorship as an interim appointee from 1867 to 1869 during Reconstruction. His achievements in all these positions were substantial. Lucadia Niles Pease was known as the Governor’s “Lady.” Moreover, her early, independent travel and her stated position as a “woman’s rights woman” in the 1850s, as well as her support for sending a daughter away to college in the 1870s to earn a degree, all serve as markers of her intelligence and the strength of her convictions. To tell their story, Whitlow mined thousands of letters and papers saved by the Pease family and housed in the Austin History Center of the Austin Public Library, as well as in the Governor’s Papers at the …

The 17th International Conference on Knowledge Management was held in the historic city of Potsdam, Germany. The conference was among the first post-pandemic face to face conferences, and the overall theme of the 17th edition of the ICKM conference rightly focused on “Knowledge, Uncertainty and Risks: From individual to global scale” at different levels of analysis and agency.

An essay and short story collection about rebirth and being trans and neurodivergent. The essays and stories cover the entire length of my MA, but are mostly written before I came out as trans and edited after. The arc follows this discovery as well as the discovery of my writing following more experimental means including the twisting and playing with the braided essay, the introduction of essaying moves to fiction forms, and moving from what I thought was about death to what I realized I was writing all along about rebirth.