Browsing by Subject "Discrimination"
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Item A Brave Space for Community: Bolstering K-12 Theatre Education for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion(2019-05) Loest, Tylor; MA in Arts AdministrationChanges in and enhanced access to K-12 theatre education can create greater long-term diversity, equity, and inclusion in American theatre. Recent data on theatre participation demonstrates audience participants to be primarily white, older, and highly educated. This group of participants is aging and decreasing their attendance. This paper explores how twentieth-century suburban growth, racial discrimination, and widening income inequality led to a system of Opportunity Hoarding. This opportunity for early arts-access, created predominantly for white Americans, aided their lifelong participation. As America shifts to a majority-minority in 2045, classrooms will begin to become more racially and ethnically diverse beginning around 2020. The second part of this paper examines how practices of the twentieth century created a diversity gap in the classroom, failing to reflect todayās students and communities. This gap hinders students from fully embracing lifelong participation in theatre. The findings of this paper demonstrate how professional theatres and community arts and cultural organizations, through a social justice lens for community engagement, can aid schools in eliminating bias within K-12 theatre education to build future participants. To combat widening income inequality, these arts and cultural leaders can work with students and communities to meet their needs in gaining access to live theatre. Finally, with public schools focused on standardized tests and the charge to fill science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) careers by 2020, access to K-12 theatre education must be redefined to restore its place among core areas of study. The creation of a brave space for community building in schools for K-12 theatre education can aid in increasing test scores, developing social-emotional skills, re-engage civil discourse, and move STEM to STEAM. These changes can result in enhanced access to K-12 theatre education. This early exposure to theatre will build a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive American theatre.Item Detroit: A White Woman's Recollection. Essays on Fifteen Years of Living in The Motor City(2019-01-29) Farrell Azuta, Michele; Toumani, Meline; Lessard, Suzannah; Goucher College Creative Nonfiction Program; MFA in Creative NonfictionDetroit: A White Womanās RecollectionItem The Effect of Criminal Record Discrimination on Future Orientation and the Buffering Impact of Social Support.(2021-01-01) Harrison, Geoffrey D; Hunter, Bronwyn; Pitts, Steve; Psychology; PsychologyIndividuals returning to communities post incarceration face uncertainty. They are faced with discrimination and prohibited from many aspects of society. During community re-entry, individuals may benefit from future orientation. Future orientation has been defined as one's ability to set future goals and plans. Social support may be able to lessen the detrimental effects of discrimination and bolster future orientation, but it is critical to decipher which type of social support is most effective: specific or general. To explore this relation, 3 models were executed with both types of support analyzed as moderators in three separate binomial logistic regressions. The results suggest that participants who reported having ample general social support were able to conceptualize a positive future for themselves even in the face discrimination due to their criminal record, but individuals lacking in sufficient general social support had their future orientation greatly and negatively affected by criminal record discrimination.Item The Impact of Criminal Record Stigma on Quality of Life: A Mediation Model(2020-01-20) McWilliams, Elaina; Hunter, Bronwyn A; Psychology; PsychologyAcross multiple stigmatized groups, research suggests that stigma may negatively impact individual wellbeing. Empirical evidence suggests this occurs through a sequential pathway that includes perceiving societal stigma, a diminished and stereotyped self-concept (i.e. internalized stigma), experiences of discrimination and rejection, and attempts to cope with stigma (e.g., secrecy or withdrawal). No study has evaluated a model representing this sequence in relation to criminal record stigma. This study utilized cross-sectional data from an online survey of 198 adults to evaluate the pathways by which criminal record-related stigma impacts individual quality of life. The results indicated that perceived stigma is predictive of discrimination and rejection experiences, secrecy coping strategies, and decreased quality of life. A significant indirect association between perceived stigma and quality of life through secrecy coping was also detected. Consistent with recent criminal record stigma research, internalized stigma was low among respondents. Theoretical and intervention implications are discussed.Item The Relation between Discrimination and Cognitive Function: Moderating and Mediating Factors(2019-01-01) Taylor, Antione D.; Waldstein, Shari R.; Psychology; PsychologyDiscrimination is a chronic stressor that disproportionately affects African Americans. Chronic stress itself is a risk factor that has been linked to a plethora of negative brain health outcomes across the lifespan in both animal and human models that include damaging changes in brain structure and function, cognitive decline and increased risk for dementia. Despite an increasingly aging population, and that African Americans are disproportionately burdened by cognitive decline and dementia, little research has examined the relations of discrimination to cognitive functioning among African Americans. Using data from the Healthy Aging in Neighborhoods of Diversity across the Life Span study, multiple regression analyses were conducted on a sample of 946 socioeconomically diverse African Americans (mean age = 47.4 years old, 56.2% female, 50.1% above the poverty line) to examine the interactive relations of discrimination (assessed by the Williams' Everyday Discrimination Scale), age and poverty status on cognitive functioning. Further analyses examined potential biobehavioral mediators of the relation of discrimination to performance on neuropsychological measures. Results revealed no significant three-way interactions of discrimination, age, and poverty status or two-way interactions of discrimination and age with respect to cognitive outcomes. There was only one significant two-way interaction of discrimination and poverty status on the Digit Span Forward subtest (p < .05), such that attention was better for those who reported higher levels of discrimination and were above the poverty line, but worse for those who reported higher levels of discrimination and were below the poverty line. Results also revealed one significant association of discrimination and cognitive function such that higher levels of discrimination were related to higher scores on a measure of memory, the CVLT short delay free recall (p < .05). No proposed candidate mediator attenuated the significant findings. Results indicate a relative absence of a relation of discrimination, and its interaction with age and poverty status, with cognitive function in the present, predominantly middle-aged African American sample. While the minimal significant findings may be spurious, it is possible that relations of discrimination to cognitive function may vary by socioeconomic conditions in select instances. Because the present sample was much younger than prior investigations that noted significant relations of discrimination to cognitive function, it is plausible that such associations may not be seen earlier in the lifespan. While the findings of this study were largely nonsignificant, the results represent an important contribution to the field in understanding the complex relations between discrimination and cognition among African Americans in different sociodemographic groups across the lifespan. Future research investigating relations of discrimination to cognitive function, and associated underlying mechanisms, remains critical to inform efforts to reduce racial disparities in cognitive impairments.Item What if we prayed more? Discrimination, religious and spiritual coping, and cardiovascular disease risk among African American women and men(2023-01-01) Ashe, Jason; Waldstein, Shari R; Psychology; PsychologyInterpersonal discrimination is a chronic stressor for many African American (AA) adults and is implicated in racial disparities in cardiovascular diseases (CVDs). AAs, and particularly AA women, often turn to religion and spirituality (R/S) to cope with undue mistreatment and racism, but no prior studies have examined whether religious/spiritual coping might differentially buffer the associations of discrimination with CVD risk factors among AA women and men. This study examined the interactive relations of self-reported multidimensional discrimination, religious/spiritual coping, and sex with several traditional cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors ? including systolic and diastolic blood pressure (SBP, DBP), glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c), body mass index (BMI), and total cholesterol (TC) ? in a sample of midlife AA women and men. Data were drawn from 753 AA adults (52.9% = women; mean age = 48.73 years; 44.4% below the federal poverty level; 61.9% religiously affiliated with most identifying as Christian/Catholic) in the Healthy Aging in Neighborhoods of Diversity across the Life Span (HANDLS) epidemiological cohort study in Baltimore, Maryland. Participants underwent comprehensive medical examinations, including clinical assessment of SBP, DBP, HbA1c, BMI, and TC; self-reported multiple dimensions of interpersonal discrimination (social status-based, lifetime burden, gender, racial, and everyday) and endorsed frequency of religious/spiritual coping use. Multivariable linear regression examined interactive relations of multidimensional interpersonal discrimination, religious/spiritual coping, and sex to CVD risk factors in models that adjusted for age, poverty status, educational attainment, health insurance status, history of clinical CVDs, and use of antihypertensive, blood glucose-lowering, and lipid-lowering medications. Further sensitivity analyses adjusted for affective (depressive symptoms), biobehavioral (substance use history), social support (marital status, instrumental and emotional social support coping use), and biomedical (BMI when not assessed as an outcome) factors. Results revealed significant three-way interactions among discrimination, religious/spiritual coping use, and sex for SBP, DBP, BMI, and TC (after removal of one outlier). Although visual plots demonstrated similarly patterned findings across these CVD risk factors, all simple regression slopes were nonsignificant. Significant main effects of religious/spiritual coping (b = 0.45, p = .031) and sex (b = 2.50, p = .003) were noted for DBP levels. More frequent religious/spiritual coping use was associated with higher DBP; and men had higher DBP than women. These relations became nonsignificant when social support variables were added to the base models in sensitivity analyses; however, these variables did not mediate the associations. These largely null findings suggest that, in this sample of AA women and men, religious/spiritual coping use may not differentially buffer the associations between multidimensional interpersonal discrimination and CVD risk factors. However, complex methodological considerations lead us to call for further investigation of this topic using improved measurements of other forms of discrimination, multidimensional assessments of religious/spiritual coping use and other forms of religiosity, and increased attention to Intersectionality-driven statistical models.