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Degree

PhD, University of Cincinnati, Education, Criminal Justice, and Human Services: Educational Studies, 2011.

Abstract

This dissertation examines the origin, evolution, facility, and effectiveness of Anti-racism and Whiteness Theory to eradicate racism in the United States during the last decade, 2000 - 2010. During the founding of the country, a sense of civic responsibility, and moralized manifest destiny sanctioned land conquest and enslavement of Africans for the achievement of personal gain. Society justified subjugating Africans into chattel slavery, considering color and cultural difference as confirmation and rationale to discriminate. Today, the U.S. Constitution prohibits discrimination and society at-large disapproves racist acts and behavior. Nonetheless, racist incidents continue. While undeniably, the issue of race in America is still a serious concern, many suggest civil rights and affirmative action redresses divide society, advancing one group, over others. Today, as civil rights, and affirmative action recipients, African Americans make up a significant number of the middle class, whereas whites, in contrast, comprise a considerable number of a middle class that is shrinking, from an economic recession, caused in part by globalization and the country’s transformation from industry to service. Conversely, the black underclass increases, as a result, of loss of unskilled work sent to overseas countries paying lower salaries, deficient labor laws, and environmental protections. Obfuscating the dialectical relationship existing between race and class, special interest groups incite and infuse racist rhetoric, to augment their own self-serving interest. Consequently, race baiting occurs to keep racism alive, preventing empowerment of a unified bi-racial group’s capacity to pressure political leaders to address the needs of the working and middle classes, over the interest of the wealthy. It is in this way that the capacities of anti-racist systems to eradicate racism are negated.

Subject Headings

Education History

Keywords

Social Construction of Race and Ethnicity; Racism; Whiteness Theory; Historiography of Race; Sociological Context of Race; Race Relations

Committee / Advisors

Marvin Berlowitz, PhD (Committee Chair)
Vanessa Allen-Brown, PhD (Committee Member)
Eric Jackson, EdD (Committee Member)
Stephen Sunderland, PhD (Committee Member)

Pages

354p.

Document number: ucin1303843493
Permalink: http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1303843493

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