Ethnic Studies Research Paper Award

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  [2025 Winner] Fear is Knocking: No Abras La Puerta

  Destiny Jimenez

  This paper explores the impact of deportations and unauthorized immigration on the Mexican community. By focusing on the social, emotional, and economic challenges faced by Mexican immigrants due to their legal status, this paper examines how deportation policies disproportionately affect their lives. Drawing from my own family's experience, I reflect on my mother's journey as an immigrant and how her experiences shed light on the broader struggles of many in the community.

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  [2025 Honorable Mention] The White Savior Trope in a “Post-Racial” Era

  Gannon Camp

  This paper explores how the media's promotion of the white savior trope, particularly following Obama's election, contributed to a false perception among Caucasians that significant racial issues had been resolved, despite evidence to the contrary.

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  [2025 Honorable Mention] Racial Marginalization and Pesticide Exposure in Monterey County

  Haleigh Fagundes

  This paper examines the concept of environmental racism in the context of harmful pesticides and their disproportionate use in prominently Hispanic communities. These communities continue to face the consequences of exposure despite their activism. The concept of environmental patriotism, as proposed by Anne Todd in Communicating Environmental Patriotism: A Rhetorical History of the American Environmental Movement (2013), is incompatible with the data that supports the existence of environmental racism. In this piece Todd argues that channeling the pride one feels for their country is an effective way of promoting environmental efforts amongst individual citizens. The data to be presented denies the possibility of this approach, as patriotism becomes a difficult morale to promote when the unequal distribution of environmental hazards exists. Ultimately, this paper argues that when aware of the environmental harm being done to them, communities such as those of the agricultural Salinas Valley are unlikely to ascribe to the theoretical framework of environmental patriotism.

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  [2025 Honorable Mention] Pedagogies in the Flesh and Recovery of Historical Memory From the Perspective of a Salvadoreña

  Janelle I. Martinez

  My submission is a praxis paper. First, I explore the concepts and theories I would like to put into praxis, which are pedagogies in the flesh and recovery of historical memory. I then explain how and why I put them into praxis.

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  [2025 Honorable Mention] ICE: Trauma, and the War on Immigrant Families

  Brittney M. Williams

  This paper exposes how immigration enforcement under the Trump administration’s second term has crossed the line from policy to persecution. ICE is operating like a secret police force, using fear tactics and legal loopholes to tear families apart without cause or due process. The impact is not theoretical. It is real, measurable, and devastating. Children are being taken from schools. Parents are disappearing without explanation. Communities are being pushed into silence and survival mode. This paper focuses on the trauma being inflicted, especially on immigrant youth, and the way outdated laws like the Alien Enemies Act are being twisted to justify actions that are unconstitutional and inhumane. It also examines the role of language and media in normalizing this cruelty. But it is not just about the damage. It is about the resistance. From organizers on the ground to leaders like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, there are people fighting back. This is a call to pay attention, to stay loud, and to remember that the cruelty is not a mistake. It is the point.

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  [2024 Winner] Dreaming Ourselves Out of Settler Colonialism

  Lesley Solano-Alonso, Deborah Williams, and Isela Delgado

  This podcast episode explores Decolonization through the concepts of Settler Colonialism, our positioning within settler colonialism in the U.S., and how we can move toward decolonization.

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  [2024 Honorable Mention] Hasta que el Cuerpo Aguante

  Brisa Rosiles

  The focus of this project revolves around a critical examination of the alarming occurrences of heat stroke-related deaths among field workers in California, with a specific emphasis on cases documented in the Salinas Valley. The core of my artistic expression lies in a digital painting that captures the reality of a laborer enduring the devastating effects of heat stroke in the agricultural fields.

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  [2024 Honorable Mention] Diversifying Local Histories: Religion’s Erasure of Indigeneity

  Christina Fultz, Helene Marie Kristensen, and Camille Herrera

  Our podcast explores the nature in which the Carmel Mission has been projecting a false narrative of their religious origins. Hence, erasing the indigenous culture and communities while developing the Mission System. Our research unveils the historical discrepancies, the accurate portrayal of Junipero Serra. While acknowledging the traumatic experiences of Indigenous communities when facing religious indoctrination.

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  [2023 Winner] The Removal of Beach Flats Community Garden: A Case of Environmental Racism

  Melissa June Boose, Alexandra De La Cruz Reyes, Palia Vang, and Nizhoni Hawthorne

  The Removal of Beach Flats Community Garden: A Case of Environmental Racism is a podcast that details the plight of the Latinx community in the Santa Cruz County area of the Beach Flats. The community reclaimed an abandoned plot of land over 25 years that was being used for drug deals and prostitution. The community changed it into a community garden celebrating the various cultures from South America. The Seaside Corporation owns the land, which, despite not using it for years, decided in 2016 they would like to reclaim the land to pave a storage parking lot. This podcast details the plight of the community, interviews a documentarian who followed the struggle for the garden, and explains that environmental racism is not always massive companies dumping toxic waste. Environmental racism can happen on a much smaller scale even in areas we don’t expect.

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  [2023 Winner] The Reclamation of Two-Spirit Identity

  Kelly Christensen and Paige Monier

  Our project looked into the history of two-spirit people, briefly talking about what happened to them during colonization, with a deeper look into how the two-spirit identity as been reclaimed and used as a way for queer indigenous people to connect with both their culture, and their personal identity.

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  [2023 Honorable Mention] What Does the Absence of My History Do to My Identity & Pride?: Utilizing Autohistoría-Teoría Methodology to Trace Educational Experience

  Jissel Antonio

  Utilizing Gloria Anzaldúa’s Autohistoria-teoría methodology, this humanistic study explores embodied experiences in the education system, guided by the question, What does the absence of my history do to my identity and pride? Theorizing across historical and personal contexts, I weave together personal archival materials, including school test scores, magical thinking, storytelling, and historical legacies of colonialism and American education. Inspired by Anzaldúa’s method of inquiry, I explore the relationship between identity and education by theorizing the reverberations between history and personal/collective experience.

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  [2023 Honorable Mention] Coerced Removal of Indigenous Children: The Past and Present Native Child Welfare in the United States

  Mad Bolander, Emily Greaves, and Amada Villa Nueva Lobato

  Our podcast attempts to convey indigenous healing efforts since the time of BIA schools in the United States. With the ICWA ruled unconstitutional, we ask what have the lived experiences been of native children who were forcibly removed from their families and tribes? And what does this mean for children who might now be taken away from their families again without the protection of the ICWA?

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  [2022 Winner] Decolonization in Higher Environmental Education

  Olivia Equinoa

  This paper introduces the practice of decolonization and discusses the importance of implementing it in higher environmental education. Using scholarly critiques and research, this paper explores ways decolonization can be enacted in universities, cautions in doing so, the consequences of not decolonizing these areas, and why it is crucial that it be practiced in the field of environmental education.

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  [2021 Winner] Incarceration as a New Age Form of Slavery For People of Color And Racism in the United States

  Tessa Rosasco

  Throughout the history of the United States, racial disparity has been rampant. This is especially true in relation to the population of people of color imprisoned in the U.S. My paper discusses the racial inequality in America, especially that of African Americans, and how people of color have been unjustly treated in a historically racist and unjust system. Special emphasis has been given to the portrayal of African Americans in the media and how presidential rhetoric and agendas have harmed communities of color.

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  [2020 Winner] The Power of Guinaiya: The Intersections of Love and Resistance Through the Native Chamoru Voice

  Emily McMath

  Over the last three centuries, the indigenous Chamoru people of Guåhan have endured several accounts of foreign colonization. Through time and physical space, native Chamorus have witnessed environmental destruction of precious ancestral land, a loss of deeply rooted cultural traditions and language, and blatant disrespect for an island and its people by the U.S. military. As an unincorporated territory of the United States, the Department of Defense has made their point clear: Guåhan is a military vessel first and foremost and the future of the island lies within the hands of the U.S. government. Though Guåhan might be small in size, the strength and resilience of the native Chamoru people has persisted despite the increased militarization and colonization of the island. Through indigenous acts of resistance and self care, the intersections of poetic expression, love, and social justice uplifts and empowers the inhabitants of Guåhan and other surrounding islands in the Northern Marianas.

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  [2020 Honorable Mention] The Stress and Mental and Emotional Health of Undocumented Students

  Sarahi Mariaca Diaz

  This paper discusses the stress and mental and emotional health of undocumented students, including DACA students (referred to as DACAmented), DREAMERS, and AB 540 students, during their college application process and their college journey. Also, this paper focuses on how immigration status and stress factors impact undocumented students’ academic and personal life, how those factors impact the mental and emotional health of undocumented students, and how undocumented students overcome or address the stress factors they experience. Finally, this paper discusses how educational institutions in higher education need to improve to make an undocu-friendly and supportive environment for undocumented students.

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  [2020 Honorable Mention] The Chinatown of Soledad Street: A Historical Analysis of a Multicultural Ethnic Enclave from early 20th century Salinas

  Alfonso Calderon Reyna

  Abstract: The current conditions of the Salinas Chinatown cause many to avoid the area. In recent years, most have become unaware that Chinatown holds a significant part of our local history. The works of Lori A. Flores, and Rina Benmayor have served as an influence for engaging in this project. The main intent of this research is to expand on these works, and to support the notion that Chinatown’s history must be preserved. This study will provide a cohesive analysis which will look at themes that emerge from scholarly work and raw data. Between 2008 and 2015, Rina Benmayor led a project of collecting oral histories from individuals who interacted with Chinatown in the 20th century. This research will include content from these sources, as well as other materials dedicated to Chinatown’s history. The content of the findings will further elaborate on the themes found in the literature review. These themes include, but not limited to, social barriers, and cultural expression. Ultimately, this research will demonstrate that Salinas Chinatown possesses a significant part of our local history.

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  [2020 Honorable Mention] Six Days to Leave Home: The Diasporic Experience of Japanese Americans to American Incarceration Camps

  Evangeline Pabilona

  Using diaspora as a rhetorical framework, this paper analyses the cultural connection between American incarceration camps and the imprisonment of Japanese American citizens during World War II. The forced removal of Japanese American families from their homes to concentration camps emphasizes the negative ramifications of diaspora regarding [forced] cultural assimilation, as well as a loss of culture, language, family, and bodily autonomy.

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  [2019 Winner] Protests and Persuasion

  Gina Ion

  This paper examines the historical and contemporary effectiveness of Native American rhetorical responses to the exploitation of natural resources.

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  [2018 Winner] Filipino Americans: A health profile addressing health disparities and the effects of U.S. assimilation and discrimination

  Marisol Cruz

  Filipino Americans have a rich history in migrating to the U.S as well as assimilating into American culture. They have a distinct immigrant experience because of their colonial past. This paper states Filipino American U.S demographics, health statistics, and traditional health beliefs and practices to understand Filipino American culture and beliefs. Lastly, there is an emphasis in the leading health disparity among them, heart disease, and the effects of racism and discrimination and how that impacts a Filipino Americans overall physical and mental health.

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  [2018 Honorable Mention for Creativity] From Animals to Human

  Sabrina Lee

  My paper is a narrative research essay that involves me interviewing my grandma about her time in Laos during the Secret War and her transition to America. Throughout the paper, I had conducted researches to support my points. It does relate to the field of ethnic studies because this paper basically explains how my people (Hmong) lived back then, and how they're adjusting to the new life here in America.

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  [2018 Honorable Mention] Euro-American Sex Tourism in the Caribbean

  Bianca Figueroa

  The focus of this paper is sex tourism in the Caribbean, more specifically on Euro-American white women traveling for sexual relationships with Caribbean men. I will be analyzing these relationships through an intersectional approach by race, gender, and socioeconomic perspectives. The key point of my paper is to gain insight into the complicated sex for money 'relationships' and how they exist in places such as the Caribbean.

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  [2017 Winner] Minority Ethnic Groups and their Experiences with Racial Profiling and Mass Incarceration Rates within the American Criminal Justice System

  Mary A. Cabriales

  My paper helps to shed light on the many inequalities and injustices that our minority ethnic groups face on a higher level versus their (majority) white counterparts, and it addresses how our legal system implements policies that perpetuate the oppression and suppression of marginalized groups. My paper also incorporates U.S. history and how our history has many deeply rooted practices related to racism and bigotry, and how certain xenophobic and nativist perspectives help to promote the false and negative connotations given to our minority ethnic groups. This in turn causes our law enforcement teams to be racially biased and prejudiced towards most minority groups to the point where they are stopped and frisked, detained, and incarcerated at a much higher rate versus people who are of European descent.

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  [2017 Honorable Mention] The American Dream (Some Restrictions May Apply): Racial Boundaries to Class Mobility in American Immigration Narratives

  Olivia L. Basso

  This paper analyzes three works of fiction to see the role that race plays in immigrants' ability to achieve social mobility.