Academic Research

Over the past three decades the fields of black, racial, and urban politics have exploded as the partial function of an increased coterie of scholars interested in studying black, racial, and urban politics combined with the increase in the number of datasets designed to deal with the subjects. It is now possible to ask and answer a variety of questions it was virtually impossible to ask or answer a generation ago. Over the past several years I have used a variety of methodological approaches to not only extend what we know about black political ideology, black political empowerment, and the role of the media on politics, I have also contributed to the growing field of health politics, and to the important work on legitimacy. More recently I have begun to focus on intra-racial inequality, a subject seriously understudied within the literature, and one of immense intellectual and practical importance.

I've published articles on American institutional legitimacy in the wake of the contentious 2000 Presidential election, about the effects of long-term black political empowerment on black participation, about the role of media narratives on black attitudes about HIV/AIDS, and about the determinants of support for black nationalism, among others. My first book Stare in the Darkness: The Limits of Hip-hop and Black Politics is one of the first books to empirically examine the effect of hip-hop and rap on black politics, as well as one of the first books to take the neoliberal turn in black politics seriously.

Select Publications:

2011. Stare in the Darkness: The Limits of Hip-hop and Black Politics.University of Minnesota Press.

2010. "Context, Black Empowerment, and African American Political Participation."American Politics Research 38:909-30. (with Harwood McClerking)

2010. "Episodic Frames, Hiv/Aids, and African American Public Opinion." Political Research Quarterly 63:257-68.

2009. “Revisiting Local Incorporation and Black Political Participation.” Urban Affairs Review 2:274-285. (with Harwood McClerking)

2007. “AIDS, Context, and Black Politics.” National Political Science Review 11:87-102. (with Rena Boss-Victoria)

2005.“True to Our Native Land: Distinguishing Attitudinal Support for Pan-Africanism from Black Nationalism.” The Dubois Review: Social Science Research on Race.2 (1): 91-111. (with Todd Shaw and Rob Brown)