About
I am an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University. My specialties include racial politics, black politics, public opinion, and urban politics.
I am particularly interested in examining how what we watch and listen to, as well as who we watch and listen to influence our ideas about politics, and our public policy preferences. For example, how does reading a newspaper story about a black male HIV/AIDS victim change our attitudes about black men? How does reading that story change our attitudes about behavior related to HIV/AIDS? And I do not confine my analysis to the news. Chuck D. once said that rap was “black America’s CNN”. My first book Stare in the Darkness: Rap, Hip-hop, and Black Politics (under review) examines how rap not only influences youth attitudes, but also how it reflects and at the same time creates black politics.
My work has been published in a variety of outlets, from The Washington Post and the Saint Louis Post-Dispatch, to web magazines like Africana.com and Salon.com, to prestigious academic journals such as The American Journal of Political Science, Political Research Quarterly, Political Analysis, the WEB Dubois Review, and the National Political Science Review. A frequent radio commentator I can regularly be heard on NPR. My goal is to continue to publish ground breaking social science research, while simultaneously engaging in critical dialogue with mainstream audiences.
The recent presidential election represents an excellent opportunity to create a new set of shared meanings about America and its possibilities. I seek to help in that effort.