Institute on Race and Ethnicity- Category A (Research)

Margo Anderson and Jasmine Alinder, UW-Milwaukee
Angela Byars-Winston, UW-Madison
Cindy I-Fen Cheng, UW-Madison
Mark Everingham, UW-Green Bay
Michael Haupert, UW-La Crosse
Donald Hones, UW-Oshkosh
Baodong Liu, UW-Oshkosh
Diane Reddy, UW-Milwaukee
Anne D'Antonio Stinson and Ellen Smith, UW-Whitewater
Sherwood Thompson and Susan Wolfgram, UW-Stout
Barbara VanHaren, Bertram Chiang, and Craig Fiedler, UW-Oshkosh

Margo Anderson and Jasmine Alinder, Department of History, UW-Milwaukee - "The Japanese Internment: Research and Teaching Opportunities."
This grant will enable Anderson and Alinder to jointly collaborate their research on the evacuation and incarceration of the West Coast Japanese ancestry population during World War II (Japanese Internment). Funding will support Anderson's research trips to the San Francisco Bay area, particularly to the National Archives in San Bruno and to the University of Washington, Seattle, for examination of the collections on the internment.
Alinder is revising a book-length manuscript that investigates the uses of photography in the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II and in the making of incarceration into a historical event. The book seeks to understand why photographs of the incarceration were made, how they were meant to function, and how they have been reproduced subsequently by the popular press and museums to construct versions of public history. Funds from the Institute will allow Alinder to complete two research trips to the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, and to UCLA's special collections in Los Angeles. Funds will also be used for high quality image reproduction of key photographs held by these archives that will be reproduced in her book.

Angela Byars-Winston, Department of Counseling Psychology, UW-Madison - "Cultural Diversity in STEM Retention for Racial/Ethnic Minority Undergraduates."
This study aims to improve retention in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) majors for racial/ethnic minority undergraduates at UW-Madison by identifying salient factors in their academic and career development that facilitate their persistence, and how these vary in importance within these populations. The research design will use both qualitative (in-depth interviews) and quantitative methods (surveys) across three academic years to examine retention from the students' perspectives. Individual, social, environmental, and cultural variables that emerge as important to retention will be examined.

Cindy I-Fen Cheng, Department of History, UW-Madison - "Negotiating Race and Nationality in the Hunt for Reds."
This project will broaden the scope of Cheng's research of Chinese in the U.S. during the early Cold War period from 1946 to 1965. Specifically, it will build on her examination of the impact that anti-Communists hysteria had on the Chinese in this country. She will demonstrate how the politics of red baiting often prompted the visible and public declarations of support for Chiang Kai-Shek's Nationalist regime by the Chinese in the U.S., the deportation of Chinese Communist sympathizers, and the cultural labor of Chinese American intellectuals who produced numerous sociological studies on Chinese life in China for the U.S. government in order to establish their loyalty to this country and assist the U.S. Cold War agenda in Asia.
This inquiry is part of a larger study on the uneven incorporation of the Chinese in relation to other ethnic and racial groups in Cold War America.

Mark Everingham, Social Change and Development, UW-Green Bay - "Community Land Restitution and Indigenous Knowledge: Returning Home in Post-Apartheid South Africa."
Institute funding will contribute to the ongoing research on land restitution among Xhosa-speaking indigenous peoples of the Eastern Cape of South Africa. In the case of Dwesa-Cwebe, the return to the land raised many difficulties with communal land ownership and rural economic development. The grant will facilitate collaborative research, with an anthropologist from Rhodes University, on how to apply indigenous knowledge to methods of natural resource management and rural economic development in the Dwesa and Swebe Nature Reserves and surrounding village settlements. It will also facilitate collaboration with a post-doctoral fellow at the University of the Western Cape who is conducting innovative research on land restitution and the return of Mfengu people in the Tsitsikamma in the former Ciskei homeland.

Michael Haupert, Department of Economics, UW-La Crosse - "Black Ball, Red Ink: A Financial Analysis of the Negro Leagues."
This project is designed to measure the cost of the discriminatory practice of segregated professional baseball that prevailed from 1885-1947. The social costs of discrimination and racial tensions are well documented in the literature. Until now, however, an examination of the explicit costs of discrimination in professional baseball has been lacking. The implicit costs of exclusion have been well researched, including the emotional costs, the concern about the attitudes created and the scars left from physical confrontations, lost opportunities, and bigotry. However, they lack the concreteness of an explicit measurement.
In the first stage of this project, the researcher will gather the data and reconstruct the annual financial statements for specific teams for each year of the existing data set. The second stage will involve using the financial statements to calculate annual profits and rates of return on investment in the team, as well as labor productivity and the contribution of individual workers to the revenue of the team. In combination with his previous work, this study will also add to the literature by establishing a measure of the degree of labor exploitation for two distinct baseball labor markets segregated by race. The third stage will involve comparing the financial returns and marginal revenue products between teams in the Negro Leagues with those of the MLB teams previously analyzed. A comparison of the data between teams in segregated leagues will allow for the construction of an explicit cost of segregation in professional baseball by comparing revenue streams, cost of operation, degrees of labor exploitation and returns on investment. By comparing salaries and returns to capital, a measurement can be made of the "cost" of segregation to African American baseball players and owners.

Donald Hones, Department of Curriculum and Instruction, UW-Oshkosh - "Becoming a Bilingual Teacher: Language, Culture, and Advocacy for Children and Their Families."
In this study, two bilingual students in a teacher preparation program will spend a semester working with children in a two-way bilingual program (a model wherein a mixture of students from the dominant language - English - and another language - Spanish - learn both languages) and a newcomer program (a model wherein students new to the country can stay together in a sheltered content classroom for a period of time before transitioning into regular classes). Through a narrative research process, the university students will reflect on the experiences of these children, as well as their own experiences growing up bilingual in the U.S. Recommendations will be made for ways in which teachers and schools can acknowledge the linguistic and cultural backgrounds of all students, and advocate for immigrant children and families.

Baodong Liu, Department of Political Science, UW-Oshkosh - "Leading the Big-Easy: Will the Strategic Biracial Coalition Sustain Katrina?"
The pre-Katrina racial context helped elect Ray Nagin as the mayor of New Orleans in 2002. Relying on his business-centered and racially friendly campaign, Nagin was able to assemble a biracial coalition. This coalition, however, was put to its biggest test by Hurricane Katrina. The question remains - will the coalition led by Nagin sustain the challenge of rebuilding the city? Liu's study will examine racial voting patterns at the levels of both the election unit and the voting precinct in addition to the qualitative data collected through fieldwork in New Orleans.

Diane Reddy, Department of Psychology, UW-Milwaukee - "Improving Cervical Cancer: Screening Follow-Up in Under-Represented Women."
Reducing racial and ethnic disparities in cervical cancer has been identified as a priority health area. This research will focus on increasing cervical cancer screening follow-up in African American and Hispanic women, the two groups showing the greatest disparities. The aim is to develop and evaluate a cost effective theory-based and empirically-grounded pamphlet. A key aspect of the intervention is that it will incorporate narratives of demographically similar women who have overcome emotional barriers to following up on their abnormal Pap results.

Anne D'Antonio Stinson, Department of Curriculum and Instruction, and Ellen Smith, Department of Educational Foundations, UW-Whitewater - "Making (Post-colonial) Books in Jamaica."
For the past seven years, pre-service and licensed teachers have gone to the mountains of Jamaica where they discovered the younger children could not read the books that were brought to them. In 2004, it was decided to produce two children's books written, photographed, and put into PowerPoint by the older elementary children. These books involved sending UW-Whitewater students out into the community to walk to school with the Jamaican students and helping them photograph what they saw. Two books were produced and the same grade-two students who could not read the American books could read the Jamaican books. Since 2004, a total of four books have been produced. Funds will be used to print these books so that they can be distributed within ten schools and used for further research. The impact of these post-colonial books on Jamaican children and their families will be examined. Interviews and focus groups will be comprised of students (grades 2-9), parents, grandparents, teachers and principals. Parents and grandparents will be asked to share school experiences before and after British colonialism. Jamaican students will be asked to compare their experiences reading the post-colonial books with reading the neocolonial books. Through these interviews and focus groups, more will be learned about the reading process as it connects with culture.

Sherwood Thompson, Multicultural Student Services, and Susan Wolfgram, Human Development and Family Studies, UW-Stout - "UW-Stout Ethnic-Minority Student Affirmative Campus and Community Climate Survey."
This project aims to identify the unique needs of students of color at UW-Stout. The investigators will begin with 15-25 qualitative interviews scheduled and conducted in concert with the Multicultural Student Services Office and students of color campus organizations. The interview questions will address three primary areas of concern: classroom climate, campus services, and community climate. The aim of this research is to facilitate an enhanced university atmosphere of affirmation, inclusion, and comfort.

Barbara VanHaren, Bertram Chiang, and Craig Fiedler, Department of Special Education, UW-Oshkosh - "Culturally Responsive Beliefs and Practices to Address Racial Disproportionality in Special Education."
The overrepresentation of minority children in special education has been well established and continues to be a critical issue. A completed study conducted by the three recipients aimed to: (i) examine prereferral, referral, and assessment procedures, along with special education eligibility determination processes, employed in the identification of minority students with disabilities; (ii) develop and field test a culturally responsive rubric for schools to use in order to reduce inappropriate identification of minority students with disabilities; and (iii) disseminate a culturally responsive evaluation rubric at the local, state, and national levels. Institute funds will be used to facilitate the third component - conference presentations and publications.