Drawing from Nigrescence Theory (Cross, 1991); Social Identity Theory (Tajfel, 1982); and the Ethnic Identity framework (Umaña-Taylor, Yazedjia, & Bámaca-Gómez, 2004), this mixed method dissertation examined three questions: (1) Are there age-group differences in Oaxaqueño/a-heritage adolescents’ and young adults’ ethnic-racial attitudes and Identity-Salient Experiences (ISE)?; (2) Are there age-group differences in the interrelations among ethnic-racial attitudes, reported discrimination from Mexican peers, self-esteem, and Indigenous self-identification?; and (3) Does ethnic identity buffer the predicted negative relationship between discrimination from Mexican peers and self-esteem? Result indicate small overall age-group differences in ethnic-racial attitudes and ISE, but, compared to young adults, adolescents endorsed higher ethnic-racial Self-Hatred attitudes and lower Multiculturalist Inclusive attitudes. While 72% of participants reported experiencing discrimination from their Mexican peers, only 25% of participants recalled an ISE involving discrimination as formative to their identity. Rather, 63% of adolescents and young adults recalled an ISE involving the cultural practices of the Oaxaqueño community as formative. Adolescents and young adults cited ISEs as helping them identify and explore the cultural and racial markers that define the distinctiveness of the Oaxaqueño and Indigenous culture within the Mexican community. Second, adolescents’, but not young adults’, reported discrimination from their Mexican peers was positively correlated with their Miseducation and Self-Hatred attitudes. Only ethnic-racial Self-Hatred attitudes were negatively related to adolescents’ and young adults’ self-esteem. Among Oaxaqueño/a-Indigenous youth, those who self-identified as Indigenous reported more discrimination from Mexican peers than those who did not self-identify as Indigenous. Third, there was no evidence that ethnic identity buffered the negative effect of discrimination. Findings lend support for adolescence as a time when Oaxaqueño/a-heritage youth are particularly attuned to discrimination from their Mexican peers. The findings indicate that while discrimination may not be formative to adolescents’ identity as Oaxaqueño/a, they were related to their learned and internalized stereotypes about the Oaxaqueño community. Findings also reveal how ethnicity and race together shape Oaxaqueño/a-heritage youths’ sense of belonging as Mexican, Oaxaqueño/a, and Indigenous in adolescence and young adulthood. Finally, implications for the three theoretical models framing the study are discussed.

Does the media have a gendered lens when it covers women and men running for public office? As technology develops and the internet becomes more accessible to the public, this question becomes increasingly important. Answering whether or not news organizations have any bias when it comes to political candidates carries serious implications for how election outcomes should be evaluated and understood. The goal of this research is to shed new light on gender bias within the 2016 context by providing a comparative analysis of the coverage between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in the 2016 election. This study analyzes articles published by the New York Times in the 100 day period leading up to the election. Each article is evaluated for the candidate of focus, the number of Trump mentions relative to Clinton mentions, and its correlation with polling results. The final results find that Trump had more articles published about him than Clinton did, and more name mentions relative to Clinton per article. However, increased Trump coverage did not correlate with increased performance in the polls, which highlights some of the limitations of media bias influencing outcomes. This finding in particular points to the need for further research in order to fully determine the effect that news coverage has when it comes to women versus men running for office in general and the 2016 presidential election in particular.