Research
Research
"To Trust or Not to Trust? Black Voters, White Representatives, and Perceptions of Racial Sincerity" [Job Market Paper]
Abstract: The Supreme Court's decision in Louisiana v. Callais has renewed longstanding concerns about the security of Black political representation and the conditions under which Black political interests are advanced. Most Black Americans are represented by white legislators. This paper asks how they come to trust those representatives, and what signals of allyship inform that judgment. I develop a costly signaling framework arguing that behaviors requiring sustained political investment provide more credible evidence of commitment than low-cost symbolic gestures. I test this framework using observational data on legislators’ behavior and a nationally-representative conjoint experiment administered via YouGov to 1,000 Black American adults. The results show that Black voters place substantially greater weight on costly, targeted demonstrations of commitment than on symbolic expressions of racial solidarity. By centering Black evaluations of white representation, this paper contributes to research on political trust, descriptive and substantive representation, and Black politics.
"Black Skepticism of White Allyship." Revise & resubmit.
Abstract: Recent work documents declining racial resentment among white Democrats, particularly after 2020, yet we know far less about how Black Americans interpret these shifts or whether they view white Democrats as credible racial allies. I address this question with an original conjoint experiment, motivated by a nationally representative survey showing that white Democrats are more optimistic than Black Americans about whites’ capacity for allyship and the trajectory of racial progress. The conjoint varies four commonly cited signals of racial progressivism---partisanship, policy preferences, racial attitudes, and social embeddedness in Black communities---to identify which cues shape evaluations of white allies. While these attributes structure perceptions of political orientation, they do little to reduce perceptions of racial prejudice; partisan identity is an especially weak signal of racial sincerity. These findings reveal the limits of attitude-based measures and show that Black Americans evaluate allyship using more demanding, relational criteria.
"Race and Representation in Local Legislative Politics: Evidence from the Great Migration in Chicago, Cleveland, and St. Louis." Revise & resubmit.
With Dr. Michael P. Olson | 2026
Abstract: Is legislative organization used to diminish the political influence of racial minorities? We argue that Black constituents and Black legislators may be subject to either positive or negative discrimination in committee assignments. Drawing on fine-grained ward- and alderperson-level data from the city councils of three major American cities during the First Great Migration, we show that neither ward nor legislator race consistently predict the likelihood of that ward's representative serving as a committee chair or on a powerful committee. Combining our quantitative analyses with historical materials, we find evidence of discrimination when legislators from Black constituencies serve in the minority party, and that local party organizations and elites -- especially Republicans -- used their influence to elevate African Americans in local politics, subject to institutional constraints. Our study provides rich new evidence for the nature of local legislative politics amidst the demographic upheaval of the First Great Migration.
"The World in Black and White: The Racial Perception Gap in Progressive Political Signals"
Abstract: While scholars have extensively documented white Americans' racial attitudes, few studies ask whether the two sides of this exchange align: whether the meaning white liberals intend to convey is the meaning Black Americans receive. I theorize racial-progressive signaling as a two-sided perception problem and provide the first direct empirical estimate of the gap between the signals white liberals send and how Black Americans interpret them. I find a substantial perception gap between Black and white Americans in interpretations of racial progressivism. These findings carry implications for interracial coalition politics, which demands attention to the perceptions of both racially advantaged and disadvantaged groups.