To contain the spread of COVID-19, experts emphasize the importance of wearing masks. Unfortunately, this practice may put black people at elevated risk for being seen as potential threats by some Americans. In this study, we evaluate whether and how different types of masks affect perceptions of black and white male models. We find that non-black respondents perceive a black male model as more threatening and less trustworthy when he is wearing a bandana or a cloth mask than when he is not wearing his face covering—especially those respondents who score above average in racial resentment, a common measure of racial bias. When he is wearing a surgical mask, however, they do not perceive him as more threatening or less trustworthy. Further, it is not that non-black respondents find bandana and cloth masks problematic in general. In fact, the white model in our study is perceived more positively when he is wearing all types of face coverings. Although mandated mask wearing is an ostensibly race-neutral policy, our findings demonstrate the potential implications are not.

We fielded an experiment on a sample of approximately 400 Black state legislators to test whether they would be more responsive to an email that mentioned the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) relative to an email that mentioned Black Lives Matter (BLM). The experiment tested Cohen's theory of secondary marginalization (1999), whereby relatively advantaged members of a marginalized group regulate the behavior, attitudes, and access to resources of less advantaged members of the group. We expected that Black legislators would be less responsive to an email that referenced BLM, an organization that is associated with more marginalized members of the Black community. Contrary to our hypothesis, Black legislators were as responsive to emails referencing inspiration from BLM as they were to emails referencing inspiration from the NAACP. Thus, we do not find any evidence of intragroup discrimination by Black state legislators. To our knowledge, this is the first field experiment to test Cohen's theory of secondary marginalization.1

The study of American racial politics has long focused on the conditions that activate racial animosity. A central line of research demonstrates that campaign messages that highlight negative stereotypes of African Americans can activate whites' racial attitudes. However, little is known about whether this activation can be overcome. I develop a theory of racial deactivation and test its predictions with two survey experiments. I find that explicitly criticizing the racial nature of an attack restores support for white candidates, but not African American candidates. However, African American and white candidates fare equally well using two rebuttal styles: a credible, non-racial justification of the attacked action or an explicit racial critique combined with the justification. The results have implications for how race affects campaigns, the susceptibility of the American public to racial cues, and campaign strategy.

Racial disparities in traffic stop outcomes are widespread and well documented. Less well understood is how racial disparities may be amplified or muted in different contexts. Here we focus on one such situational factor: whether the initial traffic stop was related to a traffic safety violation or a (broadly defined) investigatory purpose. This is a salient contextual characteristic as stop type relates to different levels of assumed discretion and purpose. While all traffic stops involve some officer discretion, investigatory stops are more easily used as justifications to conduct a search based on an officer's diffuse suspicion; traffic safety stops are more often just what they seem. Using millions of traffic stops from several states, we show that black male drivers are more likely to be searched and less likely to be found with contraband and that this relationship is amplified where the initial stop purpose is investigatory. One implication of this is that one path to alleviating disparities in traffic stops for agencies is emphasizing traffic safety, rather than using stops as a supplemental investigatory tool.

This paper examines the context-dependent role of race as a predictor of non-electoral political participation. Prior country-level studies have documented group-level differences in a variety of forms of participation in South Africa and the United States, but have found few to no differences in Brazil. Why are members of one group more engaged in certain political activities than members of other groups only in specific contexts? Why do members of socioeconomically deprived groups, such as non-Whites, participate more than better-off groups in acts that require group mobilization in South Africa and the United States but not in Brazil? Results from the World Values Survey and the International Social Survey Programme show that Blacks and Coloureds in South Africa and Blacks in the United States participate more than Whites in activities that demand prior organization and mobilization, whereas group differences are negligible in Brazil. I argue that (1) race as a driver of political mobilization is conditional on the existence of politicized racial identities; (2) members of groups that share a strong collective identity participate in direct political action more than predicted by their socioeconomic background; (3) politicization of identities is the product of racial projects that deploy the state apparatus to enforce group boundaries for the implementation of segregationist policies as well as the reactions against them; and (4) by enforcing group boundaries, those systems unintentionally create the conditions for the formation of politicized group identities. In the absence of such requisites, political mobilization along racial lines would be weak or nonexistent.

Autonomy carries the promise of resolving longstanding distributive inequalities between indigenous and non-indigenous groups. Yet, contemporary autonomy arrangements have often been associated instead with a reduction in native communities' access to needed public goods and services. I situate these negative effects within a broader autonomy-representation dilemma: autonomy provides indigenous groups with more responsive coethnic leaders, but these leaders frequently face difficulties in collecting and deploying revenue. These capacity constraints often arise from the way national governments have recognized autonomy. As such, pursuing coethnic representation within the state might—under certain conditions—be more likely to provide indigenous groups with needed goods and services. Drawing on natural experimental evidence and an original survey of indigenous community presidents from Peru, I first demonstrate that achieving coethnic political representation within the state can expand indigenous groups' access to the public good they most need: water. I then illustrate how capacity constraints that arise from autonomy have prevented native groups in Bolivia's autonomous municipalities from achieving similar distributive gains. Ultimately, the findings provide insights for understanding the sources of—and potential institutional remedies for—indigenous groups' unequal access to local public goods in the Americas and beyond.

Research into the impact of a politician's sociodemographic profile on vote choice in Westminster-style systems has been hindered by the relative sociodemographic homogeneity of party leaders. Past research has focused mainly on the evaluation of local candidates in the American context, but given that elections in plurality systems are far less candidate-oriented , the evaluation of local candidates tells us little about the prevalence of affinity or discrimination in other contexts. This article investigates the effect of political leaders' ethnicity on political behavior by looking at the case of Jagmeet Singh in Canada, the first federal party leader of color in the country's history. While the literature has shown that the gender of leaders in Canada can matter, little is known about the attitudes of Canadians toward party leaders of color specifically. We are interested in the evaluations of Singh and his party, as well as the shifts in voting intentions between elections in 2015 and 2019. We uncover affinity-based behaviors from individuals who identify as Sikh, as well as a negative reception of Singh's candidacy in Quebec.