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Theoretical work on objectified body consciousness, comprised of body surveillance and body shame, proposes several negative sequelae of holding an objectified view of the self (i.e., valuing the body primarily for its attractiveness to others). Few studies have examined associations between objectified body consciousness and academic beliefs and strategies among adolescent girls, especially girls of color. In the present study, we investigated a conceptual model whereby exposure to Eurocentric appearance norms through TV consumption is related to body surveillance and body shame which, in turn, are related to academic beliefs and strategies among a racially diverse sample of United States girls. Participants were 650 self-identified Asian American/Pacific Islander, Black, and White adolescent girls (M age = 15.45, SD age = 1.50). Higher Eurocentric appearance norms exposure was associated with higher body shame which, in turn, was associated with maladaptive academic beliefs and strategies for all three groups of girls. In contrast, higher Eurocentric appearance norms exposure was associated with higher body surveillance and just one academic belief, and in White girls only. Future work should continue to examine these associations among adolescent girls of color. In addition, we encourage educators to include body image content in media literacy curricula as a means of disrupting associations between Eurocentric appearance norms, body shame, and academic functioning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is substantial research on the nature of gender prescriptive and proscriptive stereotypes. However, there has been relatively little work on whether these normative stereotypes are equally attributed to men and women of different identities. Across two studies (total N = 928), we assessed the extent to which stereotypes are prescribed and proscribed for men and women of different sexual orientations (Study 1) and races (Study 2) in the United States. We asked participants to rate the desirability of possessing 70 traits based on an "average American." Although results showed the persistence of gender normative stereotypes in society, the normative nature of these stereotypes was influenced by sexual orientation and race. There was strong evidence of a heterocentric bias, as normative stereotypes of generic men and women most closely aligned with those of straight men and women. There was weaker evidence of a Eurocentric bias. Furthermore, observed gender differences in normative stereotypes were significantly smaller for sexually- and racially-minoritized targets compared to straight and White targets. These findings combined suggest that the practices and policies that attempt to address gender inequality might not be as effective for people with multiply-marginalized identities that face distinctly different patterns of normative pressures. Online slides for instructors who want to use this article for teaching are available on PWQ's website at https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/03616843231187851. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines how comparative literature as a discipline has never confronted its interlocking contexts of settler colonialism, imperialism, and racialization as its conditions of possibility in the United States. Inspired by recent efforts at decolonization in other disciplines, this essay calls for decolonizing comparative literature via a critique of the discipline from the nineteenth century to the present. From evolutionary scientism at its origin, overarching and continuing Eurocentrism, the disavowal of area studies, the rise of literary theory, and the primacy of non-US-focused postcolonial studies to problematic conceptions of multiculturalism, the discipline has scrupulously dissociated itself from the US reality. This dissociation, in the final analysis, replicates and supports the settler-colonial structure that evacuates the Indigenous peoples from their land and replaces Indigenous knowledge with settler knowledge, showing comparative literature to be a settler-colonial discipline. Hence, the necessary settler-colonial critique of comparative literature ought to be superseded by Indigeneity-centered practices in our work for decolonization to be possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Advancing equity in early childhood education is crucial as our broader society faces issues of inequities across systems, including education. Professionals must honor children's home language and cultural contexts, coming from a perspective of value and respect rather than from a traditionally dominant Eurocentric perspective. Through this study, we share the perspectives of 22 U.S. parents of dual-language learners (DLLs) as they experienced an evaluation for preschool special education. Through a mixed-methods approach using survey and interview data, three primary themes emerged: (a) relationships and interactions, (b) home language and cultural context, and (c) the evaluation process. Significant differences in satisfaction emerged between those who had participated in Part C Early Intervention services versus those who had not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Schools are expected to empower students to develop not just academically but also socially and emotionally. In the United States, the typically Eurocentric ideologies that undergird opportunities and curricula in the schools may make such empowerment difficult for Indigenous students. This article explores Sabzalian's (2019) six frameworks for instruction that can empower Indigenous identities in the classroom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Professional identity formation (PIF) is considered a key process in physician development. However, early PIF research may have inadvertently left out experiences from ethnically/racially minoritized physicians. As a result, the PIF literature may have forwarded dominant perspectives and assumptions about PIF that does not reflect those of minoritized physicians. This study used a cross-sectional study design, in which interview data was initially collected using constructivist grounded theory and then analyzed using critical lenses. Participants included 14 Black/African American students, 10 residents, and 17 attending physicians at two Southern medical schools in the U.S. Coding included the both/and conceptual framework developed out of Black feminist scholarship, and further analyzed using medicine's culture of Whiteness. These lenses identified assumptions made in the dominant PIF literature and how they compared to the experiences described by Black physicians. The results show that medical education's historical exclusion of minoritized physicians in medical education afforded a culture of Whiteness to proliferate, an influence that continues to frame the PIF research. Black physicians described their professional identity in terms of being in service to their racial/ethnic community, and the interconnectedness between personal/professional identities and context. Their professional identity was used to challenge larger social, historical, and cultural mistreatment of Black Americans, findings not described in the dominant PIF research. Black physicians' experiences as minoritized individuals within a culture of Whiteness reveals that the PIF literature is limited, and the current framings of PIF may be inadequate to study minoritized physicians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to Richard Florida, the world is in the grip of a 'New Urban Crisis'. In his most recent book Florida recounts a visit to Medellín that provoked an epiphany in which he realized that the New Urban Crisis is global in scope. Unfortunately, Florida's discovery of the global South is informed by a deeply Eurocentric understanding of urbanization. This leads him to conclude that Southern cities should 'unleash' creativity, and he proposes that the United States should develop a global urban policy that would export a version of American urbanism. In this essay we deconstruct Florida's notion of the New Urban Crisis and show that its Eurocentric assumptions obscure the very real environmental, economic and political challenges facing cities in the global South and their residents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This narrative inquiry explores an African American read-in entitled Black Girls Read! This read-in was organized by four Black, women scholars who, in celebration of Black History Month, continued the tradition of Black women throughout history who have resisted the dominant narrative perpetuated by mainstream culture. Attended by over 100 Black girls, the read-in provided an opportunity and a space for Black girls to connect with their cultural heritage and to build upon their individual, literate identities. A Black girls' literacies framework was used to examine the diverse experiences of the attendees and to highlight the need for educational experiences that affirm the identities of Black girls and defy a single narrative of Black girls' literacies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 1906 and 1920, eight of the most prominent Black Greek-letter organizations were established. The creation of the Black fraternity had a dual purpose. First, these organizations were established for the greater purpose of pooling the resources of African Americans in the hopes of acquiring an education. Second, these organizations were formed as an attempt by Black students to gain acceptance into American society. Black Greek-letter organizations are some of the most influential organizations in the country. Collectively, these organizations claim approximately 800,000 members, with many coming from the social elite of Black culture. Despite the great influence and vast membership that these organizations possess, the activities of the Black Greek-letter organization have included secret meetings, selective membership, and a preference for lighter-complexioned members. Moreover, the failure and shortcomings of the Black Greek-letter organization have allowed Black elites to create a separate privileged society based on snobbery and arrogance and have thus enabled these organizations to perpetuate the vicious cycle of racial prejudice and White supremacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

African American and Black Caribbean relations dominate research on interactions across black ethnic divides. Using National Survey of American Life data, we explore a different aspect of black interethnic attitudes: how close these groups feel towards Africans. African Americans and Black Caribbeans were largely similar in their feelings of closeness to Africans. For Black Caribbeans, younger and male respondents, those reporting higher levels of financial strain, living in the northeast and persons who immigrated to the US at least 11 years ago, report feeling especially close to Africans. Being male was the only significant correlate among African Americans. The findings are discussed in relation to how race, ethnicity and national origin shape personal identities within the US and their significance for intergroup perceptions. These broader issues warrant further consideration in light of assertions that race as a defining feature of American life and intergroup relations is obsolete. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using two survey experiments, I reconsider the role that the racialized physical traits and level of assimilation of salient immigrants play in shaping attitudes toward immigration. In the first experiment, a nationwide sample of 767 White, non-Latino adults was exposed to a story about a family of undocumented immigrants living in the Unites States who were at risk of deportation. Subjects were randomly assigned to view a version of the story in which the immigrants were depicted with light skin and stereotypically Eurocentric features, or dark skin and stereotypically Afrocentric features, and their level of assimilation to mainstream American culture was suggested to be high or low. Similar to previous research, the study's results show that assimilation has a direct effect on attitudes toward immigration. Yet in contrast to previous studies, the racialized physical traits proved to be a much more important factor in shaping attitudes toward immigration than previously demonstrated. The role of an immigrant's racialized physical traits was replicated in a second survey experiment of 902 White, non-Latino adults. Overall, the findings shed new light on how media depictions of immigrants are affecting immigration attitudes, as well as the nuanced ways that race continues to shape public opinion in the United States today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The demise of the Soviet Union, which was celebrated in the Anglosphere as the triumph of US supremacy, gave rise to different paradigmatic interpretations of the evolution of the world. The bulk of the evolving mainstream discourse was agendadriven and projected a continuation of the US hegemony of the global capitalist system. Two theses stood out in the context of the post-Cold War. The first was the optimistic assumption encapsulated in the notion of "the end of history," which projected a world having arrived at the last station based on the victory of liberal democracy and continued US hegemony. The second was the counter-assumption of the thesis of The Clash of Civilizations, which rejected the harmony interpretation of international relations and considered the future contradictions and conflicts to be related to cultural, not to say civilizational, antagonisms. The evolution of the world order in the past few decades demands a theoretical shift explaining the transformation, which takes into consideration the geostrategic and geopolitical ascendency of Eurasia and the Eastern Asia-Pacific hemisphere as well as the relative decline of the hegemony of the Anglosphere. Understanding the process at work makes it imperative to include the historical perspective. In this context, the growth of China and India as powerhouses in the world political economy cannot be exclusively defined as exemplars of catching up or late development but by the notion of "return of history." After a long period of self-centered development, they are gradually reinserting themselves in the world system and reemerging into their former dominant status prior to the eighteenth century and the Western imperialist intrusion in the East. The aim of this paper is to explore and explain the economic and political consequences this ongoing transformation will have for the future of geopolitical and geo-economic domination of the West. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An interview with professors Ella Shohat and Robert Stam from New York University, New York City, is presented. Particular focus is given to postcolonial studies in Portuguese language, especially from Brazil. The interviewed highlight the hybrid character of the culture of the Americas. Subjects include African diaspora in the Americas, eurocentrism, and mestizaje.

The role of Europe and Europeans in the archaeology of post-1500 history has recently been critiqued. Some research has been pejoratively labeled Eurocentrism. This paper addresses the problems with adopting an emotional understanding of Eurocentrism and argues instead for its archaeological examination within the framework of an explicit rnultiscalar modern-world (historical) archaeology. An example comes from seventeenth-century Dutch settlements located in and around present-day Albany, New York. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the relationship between the interdisciplinary fields of American studies and comparative literature. The author explains that a divide exists between the two fields, largely based on the Eurocentric view of comparative literature expounded by mid-20th century adherents, along with the discipline's lack of focus on social and historical matters. Conversely, the author notes that American studies is grounded in such fields as history, sociology, and political science as a means to examine U.S. culture. The field's support of an exceptionalist view of U.S. culture and literature is also detailed. It is argued that comparativists can utilize an non-exceptionalist American studies model in such areas as postcolonial studies and African American literature.

Some Hispanic students are making it through the Eurocentric, United Statesian education pipeline, but exponentially more are failing. Meanwhile, poor Chican@ communities are disproportionately suffering from unemployment, low levels of education, chronic illness, pollution, and myriad social ills. At this historical crossroads, it behooves Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) and surrounding communities to establish and nurture true partnerships from a grassroots approach rather than an already-attempted institutional approach. “We” need to connect today's educational “crisis” to a historical, assimilationist trajectory that undermined and deteriorated our communities and our gente with a purposeful, racist backdrop. We call for a reinvigorated HSI mandate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing inspiration from the critique by Patricia Hill Collins of the "Eurocentric, masculinist knowledge-validation process," the author examines various ways in which universities, both in Britain and the U. S., have long suppressed critical inquiry into the history of empire, slavery and the slave trade. Parallel to this critique, he examines museums and other memorial sites devoted to slavery in Britain and the U. S., including a small number of initiatives that challenge hegemonic accounts and draw attention to the agency and the resistance of the enslaved. He further draws attention to initiatives within academic institutions in the U.S., Britain and other parts of Europe to challenge dominant accounts of slavery and its legacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For more than a century, the US government seized all the lands now called the "United States" by procuring 'treaties' that it has represented as valid agreements or contracts obtained through international norms of treaty-making. However, the method created by the US to obtain Indian 'treaties' deliberately omitted key procedures used between Western nations to assure mutual consent and honest practices. This method differed so significantly from the standards and norms of international practices that it constituted an entirely unique system reserved for use against Indigenous peoples in North America, a racist foundation for all contemporary relations between the US government and Indigenous nations and peoples. The Indian Treaty system was the foundational tool of colonial empire used by the US government to obtain the enormous wealth of Native Americans, impoverishing them forever and forcing them into dependence on American 'generosity.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children and young adult publishing in the United States of America is a Eurocentric business that overlooks non-white ethnicities. In the recent past the publishing industry has begun to produce materials for African American children and young adults that is relevant to today's society and the issues facing these children and young adults. A piece of written work, whether a picture book, novel, or anything in-between, for children and young adults will only be relevant if it addresses the issues that young African Americans are facing today. African American children and young adults are facing body image issues just as all other ethnicities are. In the United States there is a main focus on "fat lit" or literature about the obese white American child. African American children and young adults face this same body image issue, but also two others. These body image issues, that include their skin tone, hair type, and weight, are often overlooked. Taking a closer look at what the publishing industry is producing in regards to these issues allows non-African Americans to get an insiders view and gain knowledge on what other ethnicities in the United States are facing everyday. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although counterpublics have been well theorized by N. and M. , little research has been carried out along the lines of J. Habermas's (1962/1989/1991) original study, examining their 'structural transformation.' Working class history might be used as a method to understand the interaction between the state-corporate nexus and counterpublics. Through an overview of Jewish working-class history in the United States, I demonstrate that counterpublics and their media are shaped in relation to the state and commercial interests, and community activity. I argue that attention to the role of community, as conceived by , might help us move (counter)public sphere theory away from a Eurocentric and toward a humanocentric (S. ) framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work reflects on the changes geopolitics has undergone on the previous centuries, from the Eurocentric colonial model to US hegemony. Particularly, it lays an emphasis on geopolitical turns produced by the emergence of manifold issues and agents mediating on a worldwide scale, shaping a contemporary order characterized by plural power relationships and by strains overcoming the nation-states regulating role and intertwining on various scales, from the international to the regional and local levels. Geopolitics appears to be linked today both to the political management of individuals' life and control over their bodies, through landscape ranking and nature control, as well as to care and diffusion of collective security producing techniques. In the end, a reflection is suggested on the potential consequences of these hegemonic discourses on Panamazonian territorial planning and on its traditional dwellers' life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a comparative study of romantic anti- Americanism focusing on Britain, Germany and France. On the basis of the hypothesis that romanticism invented what might be called the basic vocabulary of anti-American discourse, the article presents a taxonomy of this vocabulary and points to the determining factors underlying the romantic disaffection for America and Americans. Five motifs are singled out as fundamental to romantic anti-Americanism: the lack of history and culture in the US, the crass materialism of its inhabitants, their vulgarity, their religious excesses, and the flaws of the American political system. The article closes with an interpretation of romantic anti-Americanism as a strongly self-affirming, Eurocentric discourse, which accustomed Europeans to think of Europe and America as antithetical entities, thereby paving the way for cultural constructions not only of the American 'other', but also of a common European identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article utilizes a Latina/o critical race theory (LatCrit) framework to disrupt a narrowly defined process of knowledge production in academia, informed by Eurocentric epistemologies and specific ideological beliefs. This process has created an apartheid of knowledge in academia. Disrupting this apartheid allows critical race researchers to move forward in developing methodologies that can be used in anti-racist social justice research. This article describes the use of testimonio as methodology in a LatCrit research study. This conceptual piece will describe how theory, methodology, and epistemology led to the development, collection, and analysis of 40 testimonio interviews with undocumented and US-born Chicana college students. Specific methodological strategies for employing testimonio in LatCrit research are also provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay explores the proposition that China and Vietnam represent a fourth class route to modern nationhood, in addition to the ethnic (German), civic (French) and plural (American) routes. Nation-states emerging along the class route are characterised by an exclusive membership based on social class rather than just ethnicity, living under the same laws or participation in liberation from foreign rule. The essay compares China's and Vietnam's class-based nationalism with the more inclusive labour movement nationalisms of Norway and Cyprus. Then it explains how the class route differs from the French civic route. In the conclusion, the author concedes that the Chinese and Vietnamese class route is perhaps a detour rather than a route of its own, since it leads to inevitable tension between the divisive history of how the nation was formed and the need of its later leaders to include and represent the same social classes that were originally excluded. These leaders and their national storytellers are forced to undertake a redefinition of the national self as ethnic, civic and/or plural in an attempt to recreate national legitimacy, often in competition with more radically nationalist opposition groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent decades of women's rights advocacy have produced numerous regional and international agreements for protecting women's security, including a UN convention that affirms the state's responsibility to protect key gender-specific rights, with no exceptions on the basis of culture or religion. At the same time, however, the focus on universal women's rights has enabled influential feminists in the United States to view women's rights in opposition to culture, and most often in opposition to other people's cultures. Not surprisingly, then, feminists across the global South have criticized the universal-women's-rights agenda. This article reviews representative critical responses to universal-women's-rights advocacy. The author argues that, taken collectively, these critical responses do not reject the possibility of cross-cultural feminist advocacy but they do suggest the need for feminists in the United States and Europe to focus less on transferring rights across the obstacles of culture and more on how they can revise and expand their own understanding of women's rights in response to the struggles of other women, many of whom view women's rights as organic to their own cultures and as connected to broader social struggles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper puts in critical focus a major tenet of the state rescaling literature. This is that over the last 25 years or so there has been a significant decentralization of state functions, largely with a view to re-energizing national economies. Several points are at issue. The first is that the evidence for a decentralization of any significance is insubstantial. Second, the territorial structure of the state has indeed been in question but largely as a result of bottom-up forces contesting it, in part, on distributional grounds. And third, the American case underlines both the Eurocentric character of this literature and the weakness of whatever decentralization has indeed occurred. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Information about socially appropriate behavior and norms shape identity, and with few exceptions, most people conform in one way or another to some form of acceptable behavior. Without a strong collective identity as a referent, blacks in the U.S. have had a long struggle with Eurocentric beauty standards, since they exclude skin colors and hair types which many black females have. This critical-interpretive analysis of cultural dominance and cultural identity explores how Eurocentric beauty paradigms impact black female identities. Specifically, the research examined ways in which black females' cultural identities are adapted--then communicated as a result of dominant beauty standards. It was found that European beauty constructs are internalized by blacks in general, and black females in particular. Lighter skinned females with longer hair reported social acceptance and other forms of validation, resulting in higher levels of confidence, self-esteem, and individual successes. Inversely, darker skinned participants, particularly those with shorter hair, experienced feelings of isolation, resulting in lowered self-esteem, some of which limited their social and employment opportunities. To combat dominant beauty standards, participants stressed the need to strengthen cultural identities by using an Afrocentric rather than Eurocentric construct of beauty; the need for positive family messages to counter negative dominant messages; and the need for individual self-acceptance, regardless of skin color, hair, or beauty paradigms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethnic studies in the United States were academic areas conquered by the fights of racial minorities on the inside of the empire in the decades of the 1960s and 1970s; since their foundation these studies have been attacked because of their eurocentricity. This field of knowledge has made fundamental contributions to the understanding of racial, sexual and gender discrimination. Today there is a debate inside of ethnic studies that might be relevant to other countries as well. On the other hand, ethnic studies are conflicted between interdisciplinary studies; meaning colonized studies of eurocentristic academic disciplines and decolonial studies focused on transdisciplinarity, decolonialization and transmodernity. In this article, the debate inside the United States ethnic studies is discussed in detail, along with its consequences for the decolonialization of knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

the article presents the author's viewpoint on the social effects in the U. S, of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. He states that Katrina forced the U.S. to look closely at harsh realities, to recognize the connections between race and socioeconomic status, the inverse relationship between ability and opportunity for African Americans, and the disproportionate benefits of living in a capitalist society. He likens the treatment of African American academics at universities and colleges to the "other side of town" mentality. He comments on Eurocentric versus Afrocentric views, perceptions of pre-determined patterns of pathology, and inferences from terms used to refer to the displaced population.

In the Fall 2003 issue of Educational Studies, Ian Harris provided a historical assessment of the progress of peace education in the United States, in which he concluded with the sobering observation that, "peace education remains peripheral to mainstream educational endeavors" (349). Harris attributed the failures of peace education to the difficulties inherent in developing a research paradigm capable of demonstrating the efficacy of peace education programs. The contribution of this article is to advance the proposition that the dominance of Eurocentricity in peace education leads to the exclusion and distortion of African American perspectives and this restricted focus undermines the status and viability of peace education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explores author Cedric J. Robinson's scholarship and radical pedagogy within the context of the development of Black studies in the United States academy and the challenges that this posed to the "master narratives' of Eurocentric scholarship. Importance of Robinson's works and his development of the concept of racial capitalism to the political thrust of Black studies; Influence of Robinson's historical and philosophical works on subsequent scholarship; Importance of creating a sustainable community of scholars to carry on the radical tradition.

This essay describes Testimony therapy, the name given to a range of therapeutic practices grounded in the culture, history, and experience of the African-American community. Testimony therapy is an African-centered 1 therapy that focuses on the personal stories of those who consult with the therapist, as well as the collective stories of the African experience in the United States. The focus on storytelling relates Testimony therapy to narrative therapies. The focus on and centering in indigenous cultural ways of being relates this approach to therapies such as the Just therapy of the team in New Zealand. Testimony therapy is communitarian, that is, it emphasizes the person within community and is social constructionist in its outlook. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines the relationship between Americanism, the distinctive ideology of the U.S. American empire, and the predominant discourse in the age of its war on terror, and Eurocentrism, its competing ideology but nonetheless also its ally in defending the West against different "barbarian" threats. It characterizes them as two different forms of hegemonic identity politics: one based in the idea of the particularity of culture, and the other on the idea of universality. A different form of discourse based on the struggles of the traditional targets of those two ideologies is proposed here as an alternative basis for a different historical project centered on the idea of decolonization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports the findings from a comprehensive survey of US foreign correspondents conducted in 2001. Some trends - such as Eurocentrism, relatively high degrees of education and the like - continue. New trends also appeared in the study. More foreign nationals work for US media than ever before. The Internet is having a profound impact on the way foreign correspondents go about their work. Both of these new findings, which have important implications for foreign news coverage, are discussed. Overall, nothing in this study suggested that the general neglect of traditional foreign news gathering will be reversed in the near future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the assessment of multicultural learners with learning disabilities (LD) in the U.S. Impact of legislation on the traditional Eurocentric educational system in the country; Discussion on the 1997 Individuals with Disabilities Education Act; Perspective on LD beyond eurocentrism.

It has long been offered as an explanation for the achievement gap between White and African American students, that African American youth would do better if they adopted a Eurocentric cultural values system. Unfortunately, this theory, along with a great amount of the established literature on minority youth identity development, depends on a deficit-oriented perspective to explain the discrepancy between African American and White students. This is problematic because the perspective denies minority youth a culturally specific normative developmental perspective of their own, and instead, compares their experience to the normative developmental processes observed in White children. This article invalidates that perspective with a Phenomenological Variant of Ecological Systems Theory (Spencer, 1995) approach to a study of African American secondary school students. These students, contrary to the traditionally offered "acting White" assumption, show high self-esteem and achievement goals in conjunction with high Afrocentricity. Further discussion of the study stresses the importance of considering the undeniable influence of culture and context. It makes obvious the need for researchers and policymakers to focus on the contextual challenges facing these youths to have a better understanding of and to institute better teaching strategies for African American youth and minority youth in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author contends that the struggle for cultural democracy in American education will be critical in determining the quality and the future of education and of America itself. Cultural democracy recognizes the human right of each ethnic/cultural group in a culturally diverse society to have equal access to life chances and sources of social power. Power means to have a 'voice," that is, to have the capacity to define oneself as an active participant in the world rather than a passive victim. Thus, the "voice" as expressed in the theoretical underpinnings or major premises of Afrocentrism, Eurocentrism, and cultural democracy is examined with emphasis on their current contributions and future possibilities for shaping higher education and charting the directions in intergroup relations in American society in the twenty first century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyzes the concept of exceptionalism, America's peculiar form of Eurocentrism. Connection of the United States to Europe; Geographic and political disconnection; Creation of national identity for the revolutionary generation; Multicultural understanding of the United States; Eighteenth century; Reasons for America's exceptionalism; More.

There exists a Core Culture in the United States, which is shared by all people inasmuch as they are Americans. This Core Culture is a consolidation of Anglo- American and Afro-American culture. While many authors view the black experience as distinct and separate from the core American experience, this paper argues that American Core Culture is uniquely defined by its Afro-Anglo nature, a blend of both the Afro and the Anglo culture, history, and experience. That Afro-Anglo culture has not been recognized as America's Core Culture is due both to the Eurocentrism of the dominant paradigm of American culture, and the Afrocentrist competing paradigm of a separate black American culture. Afro- Anglo Core Culture recognizes the oneness of whites and blacks together as part of the American experience. This article first, selectively examines different views of an American common culture. It stresses the similarities of these beliefs as evidence of the existence of an American Core Culture. Second, it addresses the conventional beliefs of those who see American Core Culture as the creation of a white ruling class. Finally, the article proposes that American Core Culture is a combination of Anglo-American and Afro-American Culture. This common Afro-Anglo culture, though not recognized as such, has served as an instrument of social consolidation for close to three centuries.

The article presents the author's analysis regarding the views of symposiasts Susan L. Feagin, Gary Iseminger and Ronald Moore about aesthetic education in the U.S. The three symposiasts, as cited, stressed that the author only considered Eurocentric art in her earliest definitions of art. She expresses her appreciation to Feagin for her suggestions about ways her theories applied for studio artists. She agrees to Feagin's statement that the greatest art is influenced by traditions and that artists will influence traditions in turn. The author notes that Moore is right when he said that she has put much burden on rationality. She emphasizes that failure to recognize the relationship between art and other areas of a community's life result to poor and deprived education.

The article suggests five perspectives on ethnic relations in the United States. The American population has become more culturally and ethnically diverse in the 21st century than in any other period in history. This is due to changes in government immigration policies and radical transformations in global developments. The author cites that American should adhere to one of the five perspectives: Eurocentrism, Melting Pot Assimilationism, Ethnic Nationalism, Globalism or Centered Pluralism. Eurocentrism is the vision that America is defined as predominantly northern and western European in its culture and institutions.

The article studies American textual representations of Puerto Rican popular music following the Spanish American War of 1898 focusing on the devaluation of Puerto Rican music in comparison to American and European popular music. Topics discussed include Eurocentric thought in the U.S., rhetoric used to justify American imperial-colonial intervention in Puerto Rico, ethnocentric and racist perspectives, and American national identity.