I’ve already mentioned this on facebook, but my book Stare in the Darkness: Rap, Hip-hop, and Black Politics has been accepted for publication by the University of Minnesota Press. I plan to rewrite portions of it, to turn it in by August, for August 2010 release.

Along similar lines I believe I’ve mentioned this on facebook, but my article “Episodic Marginalization, HIV/AIDS, and African American Public Opinion” was recently published in Political Research Quarterly. HIV/AIDS has been and remains a scourge in black communities, hitting black women particularly hard. Many blame the rise of HIV/AIDS among black women on black men who claim to be straight but engage in sex with other men. What I do in my article is test the effects of this particular story about hiv/aids transmission, on black attitudes. How does reading a story about a black man infected with hiv/aids through sex with another man influence black attitudes about black men, about hiv/aids, about solutions to it?

I’ve got a proposal in the works that will similarly test the effect of Obama on black public opinion. Well, not Obama per sé but black leaders including Obama. If blacks are exposed to a statement by Obama putting the blame for black problems on black men are they more or less likely to support it? Are they more or less likely to support the types of policy solutions that come along with this?

And my next book project is on neoliberalism in black politics. The goal is to get three solid chapters of this project done by this time next year…in fact sooner than that. We’ll see.