Critique [of Retention of Undergraduate Minority Students in Institutions of Higher Education]

Increased retention of minority undergraduates is a goal that can be supported for a variety of reasons, from the avoidance of human waste, to concern for balanced institutional budgets, to the desirability of turning out larger numbers of minority graduates who will become professional role models for the next generation. The authors have presented a state·of·the·art review of some promising retention programs, together with recommendations for strengthening such programs

Ethnicity and Empowerment: Implications for Psychological Training in the 1980s

Psychological services, as a part of the health-care system, have been embedded in specific configurations of cultural meanings and social relationships, [1] and the role of patients and healers cannot be understood apart from that context. This article explores the failure of psychology to effectively address the inhibiting impact of racism on human development, and it suggests a corrective agenda for the training of socially responsive and responsible psychologists, an agenda derived from the literacy education model of Paulo Freire

Critique [of Between Shadow and Rock: The Woman in Armenian American Literature by Margaret Bedrosian]

Female characters, drawn from a sampling of Armenian American writing, are examined for clues to the breadth of their individual and group experience in this brief literature review. The author early concludes that the range of experience and personality available for examination in such an overview is extremely limited. The bulk of the review is then given to a presentation of possible historical and cultural explanations for the typical flat, narrow, and slightly negative portrayal

[Review of] Evelyn Kallen. Ethnicity and Human Rights in Canada

Ethnicity and Human Rights in Canada is a sequel to Kallen\u27s The Anatomy of Racism: Canadian Dimensions. Whereas her earlier work sought to clarify the concepts of race and ethnicity as they applied to a neutral, if not tolerant, nation, the social context of the current work is less benign. Factors implicated in the shift to more contentious racial and ethnic relations include a struggling national economy, separatist moves in Quebec and the West, a rapidly expanding non White immigration, and advancement of natural resource claims by aboriginal groups at a time when federal pressure for energy development in the North conflicts with these rights. Although the bulk of Ethnicity and Human Rights in Canada is specific to the Canadian context, several sections are more broadly applicable. The introduction provides a brief biological discussion of genetics and race, racism, and human rights. Of particular value in this section is a clear explanation of the impact of continual structural discrimination, in the self-fulfilling prophecy of White racism. The relationship of race, culture, and ethnicity is explored in chapter three, which uses the Canadian situation to illustrate points of broader significance. Contrasting cultural understandings of land ownership, for example, are problematic beyond Canada\u27s boundaries. In this chapter, Kallen introduces classification schemes, such as the typology of rights and the typology of claims, which clarify the bases for argumentation for protection or advancement of human rights

[Review of] Sipho Sepamla. A Ride on the Whirlwind: A Novel of Soweto

South African poet, playwright, and teacher Sipho Sepamla has in his second novel, produced a fictional but tensely revealing narrative of events surrounding the 1976 Soweto riots. Dedicated to the young heroes of the day, the novel chronicles daily life in an atmosphere of fear, suspicion, distrust and terrorism

[Review of] J. Eugene Grigsby, Jr. Arts and Ethnics: Background for Teaching Youth in a Pluralistic Society

Created to respond to an issue before art educators in this country since the early 1970s, this well-referenced work, complete with index and illustrations, accomplishes that task with reasonable success. Teachers of art have struggled for decades with curriculum materials that restrict the discussion of art history to the European tradition, labeling art of any other origin as folk art unworthy of academic attention

[Review of] C. Kamarae, M. Schultz, and W.M. O\u27Barr, eds. Language and Power

In recent years, educators concerned with issues of access and equity have supported a variety of bilingual educational delivery systems. Similarly, feminists seeking representation and recognition have advocated inclusive language and nonsexist job titles. From these and other arenas, the relationship of language and power has surfaced as an issue of national importance. In this timely collection of essays, Kamarae and her associates have legitimated and extended the discussion

[Review of] Jay C. Chunn, II, Patricia J. Dunston, and Fariyal Ross-Sheriff, eds. Mental Health and People of Color: Curriculum Development and Change

American colleges, universities, and medical schools have developed elaborate structures for the study, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of mental illness and associated problems in living. The history of psychological training is not value free, but rather is imbedded in the general history of the culture, and reflective of its problematic issues. Whatever theoretical perspective mental health practitioners are trained in, whatever internship experiences are designed to complement the instructional program, the rates of success in identifying and resolving difficulties vary with the ethnicity of their clients. Success is shown disproportionately for a limited population-the clients of European American background. In each of the mental health fields examined in this volume, available data indicate underutilization, high non-return rates, client dissatisfaction, and generally poorer outcomes when mental health professionals turn their attention to the problems of people of color. Assuming a benign interest on the part of the practitioners, and assuming that the client would prefer health, the explanation for such unsatisfactory outcomes must lie in the training deficits of mental health professionals

[Review of] Henry H. Pontell. A Capacity to Punish

Given the extraordinary costs of prisons, the current political climate which pushes for less government and lowered public spending, and the incapacity of the legal system to carry the entire burden of social control, Pontell argues for reexamination of the criminal justice system from a sociological perspective. Drawing upon data from the 1966-1974 period, Pontell\u27s doctoral study, the basis for the book, searched for ecological relationships among crime rates, expenditures, conviction rates, and demographic features in the California counties under review

Female Power, Ethnicity, and Aging

The standard academic presentation on the topic of power rarely alludes to the elderly, ethnic groups, or to females of any age or race. The cultural history of humankind has been one of gross inequities in the distribution of power, and much of this distributional variance has been attributable to the categories of race, gender, and age. When these categories overlap, the impact on individual access to power has been, and continues to be, the greatest