Recent election cycles show a reluctance among Black millennials to support the Democratic Party, which suggests that they are not captured by the party like their predecessors. While we know that African Americans have historically remained a loyal voting bloc, it is important to analyze whether there are generational differences with respect to Black Democratic Party loyalty. In this study, I analyze Black millennial partisanship identification and compare it to Black non-millennials (Baby Boomers and Gen X’ers). To test this, I employ a multi-method approach. My results show that while Black millennials continue to identify with the Democratic Party, they are not as loyal to the Democratic Party when compared to Black non-millennials. Further, I find that Black millennials are not changing loyalties to the Republican or a third party. Instead, Black millennials are willing to withhold their vote altogether if they are not satisfied with any Democratic candidates. My work has critical implications in how we understand Black politics and reveals that Democratic candidates will have to earn Black millennials vote going forward.

The majority of protests in support of racial justice are peaceful. However, since the racial reckoning of 2020, there has been debate about when and how exposure to violent or disruptive protest activities can shift public opinion towards a social movement. Using the Black Lives Matter Movement as a lens, we design a survey experiment to test the causal effects of different protest tactics on support for protesters and the movement itself among Black and white Americans. We include a control condition with no protest and manipulate the level of disruption in each treatment condition, ranging from a simple march in response to the police killing of an unarmed Black man to a protest in which participants set fire to an empty police headquarters. We use OLS regressions to estimate average treatment effects. Overall, we find that both Blacks and whites react negatively to more disruptive protests but whites tend to react more negatively than Blacks. Conversely, we also find that whites overall report more confidence in the ability of Black Lives Matter to facilitate racial equality after exposure to a protest, even when that protest employs disruptive tactics. We also test for the moderating effects of racial identity and racial resentment. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for the broader literature on social movements and public opinion.

As demographic groups’ heterogeneity increases, questions emerge about how elected and unelected political representatives respond to such diversity. Representative bureaucracy scholarship suggests that representatives will rely on shared values and interests with clients of their demographic group to make decisions or implement policies that improve the group’s status. However, differences in immigration histories, demographic characteristics, language, and discrimination experiences within racial and ethnic groups are points of diversion that could affect representation. We explore the relationship between race and ethnicity to understand how within-group differences may disrupt the traditional assumptions of representation. Centering on the experiences of Afro-Latinx students, we ask, What effect do within-group differences have on bureaucrat-client representation?” Afro-Latinx students share a racial identity with Black education bureaucrats and an ethnic identity with Latinx education bureaucrats but may also differ from both groups in their language acquisition, culture, norms, and interests. We find that Black representatives offer Afro-Latinx students substantive representation, while Latinx representatives do not when we consider their racial identity. The research holds implications for understanding the boundaries of representation and may offer insight into the importance of disaggregating groups in representation studies.

Although there is increasing academic attention for the rise of Animal Advocacy Parties (AAPs), existing accounts overlook their emergence in the context of the politicization of race and religion. This contribution deploys Rancière’s political thought combined with a critical race theoretical lens to analyze the project of the leading AAP after which most international sister parties are modeled: the Dutch Party for the Animals. We find that the party on the one hand disrupts the anthropocentrism characteristic for the Dutch social and political order but on the other hand affirms and contributes to the policing and racialization of Muslims. This became most apparent in their proposal to ban unstunned religious slaughter. We demonstrate that this proposal was part of the party’s general inability to recognize the contemporaneous logics of race and religion. This leads us to conceptualize the party’s project as a colorblind, or in non-ableist terms, color-evasive animal politics.

This study examines racial discrimination faced by Black immigrants in the US, focusing on its impacts on well-being, social integration, and intergroup relations. It highlights a gap in understanding African immigrants' discrimination experiences despite documented hate crimes. The research aims to understand how Nigerian immigrants are affected by integration into US society. Using a mixed methodology with surveys and interviews, the study reveals varied correlations between integration factors and discrimination experiences. It provides nuanced insights into how integration, national identity, and social networks influence Nigerian immigrants' relationships and encounters with discrimination in the US, contributing valuable perspectives on integration-discrimination dynamics.

How does context influence individuals’ misinformation about socially marginalized groups? Scholarship has long found that one’s geographical and social environment are important determinants for one’s political attitudes. But how these contexts shape individuals’ levels of misinformation about stigmatized groups remains an open and pressing question, especially given the swift rise of misinformation in recent years. Using three original surveys, we find that individuals who report more contact with a diverse group of individuals were significantly less likely to be misinformed. These findings are particularly pronounced among white Americans. Moreover, contrary to the popular belief that where one lives is a strong determinant of racial attitudes, we also find that partisan and racial context did not meaningfully shape misinformation. These findings shed light on the factors that helps us to understand the misinformation that exists about this sizable share of U.S. society.

The United States is in a time of reckoning with whiteness. Despite white people benefiting from a disproportionate amount of power at every level of government, a significant racial wealth gap, preferential treatment in the legal system, and a rise in white supremacy, “colorblind” critics continue to argue against the relevance of race in a purportedly post-racial society. We assert that parents’ ethnic-racial socialization (ERS) of their children shapes how children view their racial identity and thus influence important political attitudes. ERS is a process by which individuals are taught values, beliefs, and attitudes about ethnicity and race. Most existing research among families of color suggests ERS is strongly linked to a variety of adult political attitudes. However, less is known about the impact of ERS on political attitudes for white young adults. Drawing on survey data from a national U.S. sample of 944 white, young adults (18–25 years old), we find that white ERS is linked with political attitudes. Specifically, we find that increased cultural socialization, preparation for bias, and egalitarianism are positively related to politically conservative ideology, while anti-racism is positively related to politically liberal ideology. Preparation for bias and egalitarianism are positively related to Republican party identification. Promotion of mistrust, silent racial socialization, and anti-racism are positively related to Democratic party affiliation. We suggest ERS impacts the way a person conceptualizes ethnicity and race and is inextricably linked to political outcomes.

Negative racial stereotypes routinely work together with myths about American equality to undermine public support for policies that would reduce inequality. But what happens when white Americans are confronted with information about structural racial inequality, which contradicts the myth of equal opportunity? Evidence from an original survey experiment conducted among approximately 4,000 white Americans demonstrates that emphasizing the systemic origins of racial inequalities in the COVID-19 pandemic makes respondents more accepting of policies aimed at reducing racial inequalities in a variety of domains. Qualitative insights from post-treatment reflections further show that facing the reality of structural inequality disrupts blame-based narratives and generates support for policies meant to confront inequality. The findings suggest that discussing structural inequality can disrupt individualistic understandings and increase approval for policies that promote equality across multiple domains; they also illuminate why opponents of equality see discussions of structural inequality as so threatening.