Students in “Black Politics” Course Present Research at National Conference

What is the Black manosphere, and how does it impact political discourse? How important is your community identity in comparison to your racial and ethnic identity? What is the political divide between Black immigrants and African Americans? What are Black female rappers' contributions to Black feminism?

These are some research questions that students in Assistant Professor Chaya Crowder's "Black Politics" course selected and explored, demonstrating their ability to expand on course concepts and contribute to existing scholarship in the field. In March, students presented their research at the National Conference of Black Political Scientists, which was held in Los Angeles.

"Participating at conferences allows students to see that the research that we engage with in the classroom extends beyond our conversations," said Crowder, assistant professor of political science. "It also allowed students to meet some of the scholars whose work we have read in class. Marcus Board, a professor at Howard University, and Christine Slaughter, a professor at Boston University, whose scholarship is on my syllabus, both offered feedback to students during the poster session."

"It was a cool experience to present our work to some of the actual authors we read about in class," said Jacquelyn Young-Bowers '25, a computer science major and political science minor. "I found talking to people who do political science research about how they use data to be very interesting and a great complement to the class."

Young-Bowers' research partner was Hayden Johnson '25, a political science major and French minor. After reading and discussing ideas and themes in the works of Michael Dawson, who writes about race and class in African American politics, and Katherine Cramer, who analyzes rural political consciousness, they decided to delve into how geographic location impacts racial-linked fate. They looked closely at specific questions on a collaborative post-election survey, and their findings suggest that either racial-linked fate holds more significance than they initially assumed, or place-based identity carries less weight than they previously believed.

Chaiya Chatkara '25, a political science major and health and society minor, teamed up with Soleyana Shiferaw '25, a political science major with journalism and theatre arts minors, to research the Black electorate. "It is a common conception that Black people vote as a block, and Democrats assume they'll always have their vote," said Chatkara. But their findings showed that Black immigrants tend to lean more conservative, which they attribute to respectability politics. One-third of Black immigrants vote independent or third party because they don't understand the two-party system and feel that it does not represent them. They are also less likely to participate in protests for fear of losing their citizenship or being targeted. Shiferaw, whose family is from Ethiopia, said, "This project has been enlightening, and the research reflects what I see in my family dynamics."

"Black Politics" is an upper-level seminar exploring how Black people have always engaged in conventional and unconventional political participation. The course also examines the wide ideological diversity in the Black community. Instead of comparing Black people to other racial groups, as is common in social science, this class emphasizes intragroup heterogeneity among Black people and the many ways they differ when it comes to political behavior based on gender, class, sexuality, nationality, and other axes of identity.

"I was incredibly proud to see how proud my students were of their research," said Crowder. "It also excites me that some students talked about how this opportunity and engaging with professors and researchers who work for PEW Research Center, for example, opened their eyes to the many career pathways available to them."