A Need for Occupational Justice: The Impact of Racial Microaggression on Occupations, Wellness, and Health Promotion

“Ism,” in general terms describes a practice that denotes oppression of a group based on the characteristics of its members: racism, sexism, and ageism, are the three types most commonly identified. “Isms” often impose limits on people, and while we have been aware of those limits at the macro level, we have been less aware of acts that happen at the level of the individual, the micro level. These acts, which are frequently heard and seen in the media, have personal, occupational, and health implications for those affected by them. The purpose of this paper is to raise awareness about the issue of racial microaggression and, from occupational therapy and occupational science perspectives, explore how it impacts engagement in valued occupations, wellness, and health. This paper aims to encourage scientific discourse among practitioners, students, and educators so that we can truly be client-centered and culturally effective advocates for inclusion and participation in life

Hair: How Naturals Are Using Social Media to Reshape the Narrative and Visual Rhetoric of Black Hair

Black women’s natural hair has been subject to both praise and scrutiny, though the latter is more common despite the steps taken towards inclusion and diversity. In the age of social media, members of the natural hair community have been able to voice and communicate ideas and issues that are specific to their discourse community. This study explores how the natural hair community uses social media, more specifically Instagram, to discuss the complex issues that surround natural hair including historicization, workplace bias, colorism, and social justice. Additionally, this study argues that natural hair is a form of visual rhetoric as well as a metaphor for rhetorical reappropriation both visually and textually. The concept “good hair” continues to be significant in natural hair discourse as it can be associated with numerous artifacts and ideas of what “good hair” means to Black women with natural hair. A theoretical approach was taken to investigate textual trends in user discourse as well as visual rhetoricy on one Instagram page using André Brock’s Critical Technocultural Discourse Analysis (CTDA) as a model

Understanding multiracial college student virtual community

Includes bibliographical references.2022 Fall.The purpose of this study was to understand the role of social media in the lives of Multiracial college students as they build and maintain community. A phenomenological approach enabled answering the research question: How do Multiracial students use social media to build and maintain community? Informed by critical multiracial theory and virtual kinship frameworks, the study included elicitation interviews with 10 Multiracial students as they shared self-selected examples from their social media. Three themes emerged from the data: seeking similarities with Multiracial people, cultivating an online persona, and engaging in Multiracial discourse. Based on this study's findings, practitioners and scholars are encouraged to adopt a critical approach to Multiracial policy and practice and facilitate the development of virtual Multiracial affinity spaces

Fat for an Asian : The Embodiment of Asian Stereotypes in an Online Community

Previous research has suggested that different racial groups have differing expectations of body size, but Asian Americans have largely been absent from this literature. Thick Dumpling Skin, a blog that focuses on body image issues and eating disorders in the Asian American community, provides an opportunity to study this unexplored topic. Thick Dumpling Skin is highly interactive and features submitted posts from multiple users. Using qualitative content analysis to code archived blog posts from 2011 to 2014, this paper studies how online users in this community come to embody stereotypes regarding the Asian body. In my analysis, I discuss how users define the ideal Asian body in ways that make thinness and Asian-ness synonymous. To members of this community, being a fat Asian is a contradiction and threat to their Asian identity. Using the microaggressions literature, I examine the potential psychological consequences of not fitting the ideal Asian body. This paper also asserts that Asians do subscribe to a thin ideal, but it is not the same ideal held by whites. I conceptualize the need to attain the perfect Asian body as the embodiment of the model minority stereotype

#BLACKONCAMPUS: A Critical Examination of Racial and Gender Performances of Black College Women on Social Media

Thesis advisor: Ana M. Martinez-AlemanMore than 98 percent of college-aged students use social media and social media usage has increased nationally by almost 1000 percent since 2007 (Griffin, 2015). College students’ social media profiles can be understood as cultural performances and narratives of identity that possess aspects of both fiction and real life (Martínez Alemán & Wartmann, 2008). According to Dalton & Crosby (2013), social media have and will continue to transform the experiences and objectives of colleges and universities and the ways in which students choose to share components of their experience and identity must be examined. This dissertation uses a critical race theory framework to examine how African American college women perform race and gender on social media. This dissertation addresses the following questions: • How do black college women construct identity on social media? • How do black college women perform race and gender on social media? 15 participants from three predominately white institutions (Oxford, Cambridge, Kings College) engaged in individual interviews, participant observations, artifact collection and focus groups as a part of this study. The findings suggest that in person experiences inform what is presented and performed on social media and social media experiences enhance participants lives as college students on their campuses. Black women respond to and are affected by the campus environment in which they routinely encounter racial stress and stereotypes and choose to share some of these experiences on social media.Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2017.Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education.Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education