Date of Award

12-2001

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Department

Sociology

First Advisor

David Hartmann

Second Advisor

Gunilla Holm

Third Advisor

Vyacheslav Karpov

Keywords

African-American youth, diversity, role models

Access Setting

Masters Thesis-Open Access

Abstract

The youth of today are being confronted with more diverse choices than ever. With trends like close to 70% of African-American youth (in 1994) growing up in single-parented homes, many youth are left to make these critical choices without access to sufficient numbers of trusted adults. As the Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development Concluded: "Many young people feel a desperate sense of isolation. Surrounded only by their equally confused peers, too many make poor decisions with harmful or lethal consequences" (1989). The job of social policy now must be to match these diverse choices with an equally diverse supply of mentors.

When I visit different classrooms and different schools I see boys and girls in an "identity crisis" - desperately filling in the gaps toward what they think a 'man', or a 'woman' is, fully basing their assumptions on the limited and often negative adult images that they may have access to. This takes on a cyclical effect, because kids are often exposed to the same images and stereotypes generation after generation, internalizing roles and expectations that maybe limiting and destructive to learning. This study analyzes the potentials for interventions of hope. Providing our youth with alternate perspectives from positive role models of a different gender offers a unique opportunity for critique and dialogue with 'exceptions' to adolescents' already formulating 'rules'.

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