Resilience to Adversity: How Black Voters Are Mobilized to Counter Suppression

(Working Title, for Book Manuscript in Development)

My book project, based on my award-winning dissertation, examines how experiences of persistent economic inequality intersect with Black Americans’ racial identity, thus shaping their political psychology, behavior, and interactions with political institutions. The book asks: How do Black Americans withstand political obstacles to protest, vote, and organize? I answer this question by demonstrating that Black Americans use racial resilience, a novel psychological resource, to cope with and engage in costly political behaviors strategically. Through observational surveys, interviews, and a survey experiment, I show that Black voters are mobilized by racial resilience to engage in high-cost political behaviors that counter suppressive tactics at the ballot box and beyond.  

For generations, African Americans have fought for equality despite systematic barriers and limited economic resources. Resilience to Adversity shows how persistent racial inequality has produced a unique psychological resource - racial resilience - that empowers African Americans to protest, organize, and vote despite voter suppression and political exclusion. Drawing on interviews, focus groups, and surveys, the book reveals how cultural traditions, Black led institutions, and shared experiences of economic inequality cultivate resilience as a coping mechanism and source of political empowerment. Rather than deterring engagement - leading to political apathy, increased radical resilience motivates African Americans to “make a way out of no way”, “do more with less,” and “work twice as hard to get half as far,” transforming hardship into a collective strength. Too long have scholars of political behavior studied Black participation from a deficit approach, without accounting for agency in political decision making.

• Book manuscript workshop held in February 2025. Preparing for Submission.

The Moorman-Simon Interdisciplinary Career Development Professorship at Boston University funds my current research. The manuscript is based on my dissertation project, which was supported by the Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship (2020), the Institute of Amerian Cultures and the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA (2020), and the American Political Science Association (APSA) / National Science Foundation (NSF) Dissertation Development and Improvement Grant (2020).   

For a synopsis of the research, listen to the Say More on That Podcast episode of April 14, 2021 (hosted by Hilary Malfess), where I discuss racial resilience, Black countermobilization, and my research more broadly.