RESEARCH AND WRITING
My research interests include Black politics, political behavior, public opinion, urban politics, political communication, and political psychology. My research has been funded by the University of California Hellman Fellowship, the UCI Center for the Study of Democracy, and the UCI Medical Humanities Initiative Research Grant.
My book with Cambridge University Press, titled The Anger Gap: How Race Shapes Emotion in Politics, was released in Dec 2019. This book integrates work from political psychology, Black identity and political behavior to argue that not all anger is created equally. In fact, the way in which the emotion state of anger is leveraged in politics widens the participation gap between Black and White people. Combining archival research, survey data analyses and original experiments, I illustrate that the specter of the “angry Black” stereotype and the lack of collective efficacy exhibited by Black people—which I label racial resignation—results in a racial anger gap. Anger consistently mobilizes White Americans toward a wide range of political actions more effectively than African Americans, who are more consistently mobilized by positive emotions, such as pride and hope.
Thanks for stopping by. I am an Associate Professor in political science at UC Irvine. (Zot!) I earned my Ph.D. in Public Policy and Political Science from the University of Michigan. (Go Blue!)
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TEACHING AND SERVICE
I teach classes in American politics including Intro to Race and Ethnicity, African American Politics, Mass Media and Politics, Urban Politics and Policy, and Public Opinion. I was the recipient of the 2017-18 Dean’s Honoree for Teaching Excellence Award. In 2019, I received the Distinguished Lecturer Award from the Black Leadership Advancement Coalition. Also in 2019, the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) recognized me with the Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Fostering Undergraduate Research.
I am proud to serve as Co-Director of the First Generation First Quarter Challenge, a trailblazing peer mentoring program for first year social science students who are seeking to become the first in their families to graduate from a four-year university. I am also a faculty co-founder and co-adviser for the Black Internationalists, a campus-wide program devoted to sharing tools with UCI’s Black students to help them take advantage of the UCI Study Abroad program, and exchange perspectives with one another about experiences of Blackness abroad.