“Dear Future President of the United States”: Analyzing Youth Civic Writing Within the 2016 Letters to the Next President Project

2019 ◽  
Vol 57 (3) ◽  
pp. 1159-1202
Author(s):  
Antero Garcia ◽  
Amber Maria Levinson ◽  
Emma Carene Gargroetzi

This article investigates the civic writing practices of more than 11,000 students writing letters to the next president in the lead up to the 2016 U.S. election. We analyze how letter topics are associated with socioeconomic factors and reveal that 43 topics—including ones prevalent among students such as immigration, guns, and school costs—were significantly associated with socioeconomic and racial majority indicators. Furthermore, we conducted a qualitative analysis of the kinds of arguments and evidence developed in letters from five schools serving predominantly lower income students and/or students of color in different regions of the country. Student arguments and types of evidence used were site dependent, suggesting the importance of teacher instruction. This analysis expands previous conceptions of youth civic learning.

Author(s):  
Judith Daar

This chapter analyzes the racialization of infertility care in the United States, and seeks to understand why ART stratifies along race and ethnic lines. Researchers and scholars have proposed several theories, including lower income levels and access to insurance in minority populations, social factors that make women of color less likely to seek treatment for infertility, historic factors that give rise to a continuing aura of mistrust in the doctor–patient relationship, and express and implied discrimination by doctors who view minority populations as less deserving of parenthood than white patients. The chapter shows how these new eugenics, like the old eugenics, can persist only so long as political power structures support and advance their agenda.


Author(s):  
Erica N. Spotswood ◽  
Matthew Benjamin ◽  
Lauren Stoneburner ◽  
Megan M. Wheeler ◽  
Erin E. Beller ◽  
...  

AbstractUrban nature—such as greenness and parks—can alleviate distress and provide space for safe recreation during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, nature is often less available in low-income populations and communities of colour—the same communities hardest hit by COVID-19. In analyses of two datasets, we quantified inequity in greenness and park proximity across all urbanized areas in the United States and linked greenness and park access to COVID-19 case rates for ZIP codes in 17 states. Areas with majority persons of colour had both higher case rates and less greenness. Furthermore, when controlling for sociodemographic variables, an increase of 0.1 in the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index was associated with a 4.1% decrease in COVID-19 incidence rates (95% confidence interval: 0.9–6.8%). Across the United States, block groups with lower income and majority persons of colour are less green and have fewer parks. Our results demonstrate that the communities most impacted by COVID-19 also have the least nature nearby. Given that urban nature is associated with both human health and biodiversity, these results have far-reaching implications both during and beyond the pandemic.


2019 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 211
Author(s):  
Alireza Jalilifar ◽  
Yasamin Moradi

Today, studying tourism discourse has become widespread among scholars in the field of text analysis. However, few, if any, studies which have addressed the language of tourism have examined the verbal content of travel brochures from the point of view of the appraisal model. The major questions addressed in this study pertain to Graduation strategies as part of appraisal strategies in the discourse of tourism as well as the lexico-grammatical resources for the coding of these strategies in texts. The dataset comprised 50 e-brochures released by tour operators across the United States within the period 2012 to 2013. First, the data were examined quantitatively to identify the statistical variations in utilizing Graduation strategies in tourist brochures. The preferences for lexico-grammatical resources for the construal of these strategies were also illustrated in light of a qualitative analysis. The results of the study revealed that the discourse of travel brochures is loaded with Graduation strategies. The subsystems within the system of Graduation were shown to serve as strong tools in promoting various aspects of tourist destinations such as the number and distribution of tourist sites over an area.


2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 17-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jerjes Aguirre Ochoa ◽  
Casimiro Leco Tomas

The so-called self-defense forces in Mexico must be seen as a form of vigilantism generated by an incipient process of democratization that has not produced the institutional quality necessary to contain the activity of organized crime groups driven, essentially, by the high demand for drugs in the United States. Our qualitative analysis of Mexico’s Tierra Caliente (‘Hotlands’) revealed profound processes of institutional deterioration in politics and the economy that have created conditions ripe for vigilantism. In the absence of substantial improvements in the quality of Mexico’s democracy, especially at the levels of state and municipal government, the emergence of other forms of vigilantism and ongoing violence are foreseeable.


Author(s):  
Rosalia Aparecida Moreira ◽  
Hugo Rodrigues Araujo

Em 1986, foi criado nos Estados Unidos a Rails-to-Trails Conservancy, entidade sem fins lucrativos com a missão de contribuir para conservação do patrimônio ferroviário, transformando os ramais abandonados em trilhas ferroviárias destinadas, exclusivamente, para caminhantes, ciclistas e cavaleiros. Com essa perspectiva, há 15 anos iniciou-se uma mobilização comunitária para transformar o antigo Ramal Ferroviário Corinto-Diamantina, localizado no Vale do Jequitinhonha/MG, na primeira trilha ferroviária do Brasil, denominada Trilha Verde da Maria Fumaça - TVMF. Além da conservação dos bens ferroviários, a TVMF busca a dinamização da economia local através do Turismo de Base Comunitária. Este artigo corresponde a um estudo de caso da TVMF, de caráter exploratório-descritivo. A pesquisa envolveu revisão bibliográfica e entrevista do gestor da ONG Caminhos da Serra, utilizando questionário semiestruturado. A análise qualitativa dos dados permitiu obter resultados que proporcionam o entendimento sobre a TVMF, contribuem para a abertura da discussão sobre trilhas ferroviárias no Brasil e fornecem informações para subsidiar aplicações práticas em outras ferrovias que se encontram abandonadas. Trilha Verde da Maria Fumaça: railroad heritage and tourism in the Vale do Jequitinhonha (Brazil). In 1986, the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy was created in the United States, a nonprofit organization with a mission to contribute to conservation of the railway heritage, turning extensions abandoned on rails trails, designed exclusively for walkers, cyclists and riders. With this perspective, 15 years ago a community began a mobilization to transform the old Railway Corinto-Diamantina, located in Vale do Jequitinhonha / MG, into the first rail trails in Brazil, called Trilha Verde da Maria Fumaça - TVMF. In addition to the conservation of rail assets, TVMF seeks to stimulate the local economy through the Community Based Tourism. This article is an exploratory and descriptive case study of TVMF. The research involved literature review and interview questions for the manager of the NGO Caminhos da Serra, by using semi-structured questionnaire. Through qualitative analysis of data it was possible to get results that provide an understanding of the TVMF, contribute to opening the discussion about rails trails in Brazil, and provide information to support practical applications in other railways that are abandoned. KEYWORDS: Railway Tourism; Sustainable Tourism; Rails Trails.


Author(s):  
Monica Gray ◽  
Connie Lundy

Successful engineers must be technically savvy, self-confident as well as culturally competent. Cultural competence is the ability to tolerate ambiguity and empathize with the socio-cultural nuances of different people groups. This calls for a diverse engineering workforce especially in today's increasingly global economy. In the United States, Minorities and Females constitute only 4% and 15% of the engineering workforce respectively. Research shows that women and students of color, dropout due to feelings of not belonging coupled with low self-efficacy. To change the profession's diversity portfolio requires a plethora of high impact approaches. Common among successful retention strategies is the provision of structured opportunities for all students to develop self-directing competencies in both the cognitive and affective learning domains. This chapter demonstrates that the study abroad experience engenders, facilitates and fosters these very aptitudes as well as cultural literacy, and advocates for its inclusion in discussions on increasing under-represented participations in engineering.


Social Forces ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Kennedy ◽  
Chris Hess ◽  
Amandalynne Paullada ◽  
Sarah Chasins,

Abstract Racial discrimination has been a central driver of residential segregation for many decades, in the Seattle area as well as in the United States as a whole. In addition to redlining and restrictive housing covenants, housing advertisements included explicit racial language until 1968. Since then, housing patterns have remained racialized, despite overt forms of racial language and discrimination becoming less prevalent. In this paper, we use Structural Topic Models (STM) and qualitative analysis to investigate how contemporary rental listings from the Seattle-Tacoma Craigslist page differ in their description based on neighborhood racial composition. Results show that listings from White neighborhoods emphasize trust and connections to neighborhood history and culture, while listings from non-White neighborhoods offer more incentives and focus on transportation and development features, sundering these units from their surroundings. Without explicitly mentioning race, these listings display racialized neighborhood discourse that might impact neighborhood decision-making in ways that contribute to the perpetuation of housing segregation.


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