Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: African Americans have long experienced high marital disruption rates relative to other Americans. Attempts to explain those differences using economic and demographic factors have obtained limited success. I use longitudinal data from two waves of the National Survey of Families and Households to test the extent to which structural and non-structural individual premarital traits, as well as spousal dissimilarity, can account for unexplained inter-group differences in marital disruption risk. Although African Americans do differ from non-African Americans in several attitudinal and behavioral measures that are related to disruption risk, the direction of the association is mixed and, on net, those factors do not help explain the racial gap in marital disruption risk. Structural factors explain more of the gap, though the mechanisms through which some influence disruption risk are likely to involve attitudinal components. Regarding spousal dissimilarity, African Americans exhibit relatively greater levels of intra-couple disparities in attitudes and church attendance, and those differences are associated with greater risk of marital disruption. But results suggest that the greater dissimilarity is not do to greater initial differences, but rather to less resolution of premarital differences. Thus the observed dissimilarity appears to be more the result of marital processes that heighten disruption risk than they are a cause of them.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This is a priming study to investigate implicit racial affect among African American students. Clark?s (1963) hypothesis that pro-black pronouncements may reflect a "norm of racial pride" rather than genuinely held feelings is supported.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Through obtaining an education at some predominantly African American secondary and post-secondary schools, African American women became teachers which enabled them to better educate the African American community. This review of the literature explores how African American women played a tremendous role in the education of African Americans when parts of American society forbade some African Americans from obtaining a formal education. It will investigate how access to educational opportunities provided African American women with the tools to teach other African Americans; and African American women’s educational philosophies that are often invisible, but became instrumental in the education of African Americans. I suggest some ways in which researchers can conduct research and work with local communities, parents, teachers, and students to provide better learning experiences for African American students.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: An extensive body of research has illustrated the various ways in which media can help form perceptions of various social groups. Theories such as cultivation, stereotype theory, social learning and social identity theory, all discuss how viewers can internalize and project what they see presented in media, to what they believe to exist in reality. But many of these theories pay less extensive attention to both negative and positive stereotypes, and perceptions of multiple social groups within the same context. Likewise, research ahs less frequently examined the perceptions of marginalized social groups held by African American media viewers. The present study examines the underlying dimensions of stereotype by applying to the stereotype content model (SCM), as it applies to African Americans’ perceptions of media representations of their own group and of other groups.

Publication Type: Individual Paper
Abstract: This paper critically examines the foundation and development of African American historiography. I will focus on how conceptualizations of and perspectives on African American history evolved throughout the 20th century within the contexts of both United States history, especially in relation to other ethnic histories, and the broader framework of Black history. I also explore new directions and methodology for historical research pertaining to Africans in the United States.

I will first illustrate the distinctive formation of African American historiography in the early 20th century, based on the orientation and ideas of Black history which Carter G. Woodson, W. E. B. Du Bois and other scholars originated. I will further examine the development of methods and methodologies within African American history with special emphasis on the analysis of sources, including the consideration of biases, unintelligibility, authenticity, and authority which recent African American historiography questions. Subsequently, I will analyze the applicability and position of African American historiography within traditional American history and its role with regard to the idea of pluralism in larger American society, especially after the establishment of Ethnic Studies in the late1960s. Finally I will delineate the insights that I have gleaned through this examination and pose expectations and directions for the future of African American history.