Current Projects
Black Community Building: Public Housing Reform and the Promise of an Alternative Model to Mixed Income Neighborhoods
(Under contract with Georgetown University Press)
Studies of the consequences for displaced public housing residents who moved to mixed-income neighborhoods indicate that mixed-income housing as a solution to poverty is a policy failure on the grounds that it pushes poverty to other areas within cities and doesn’t largely produce the outcomes alleged by its proponents. Despite this fact, the devotion among policymakers and others remains commonplace. My first book argues that mixed-income housing creation as urban social policy must be abandoned because it serves as a vehicle of death for Black communities in high-poverty neighborhoods. It offers an alternative conceptual model of community building—“Black urbanism”—that grounds the well-being of Black communities in high-poverty neighborhoods targeted for capital reinvestment vis-a-vis reflection on the transformation of one historically Black neighborhood in Washington, D.C.
How Race, Religion, and Democratic Values Shape Attitudes toward Government Assistance for the Poor
This study evaluates attitudes toward assistance programs for the poor and other individuals in need (also known as social equity programs) across race and religion. While the American public has historically supported government spending to aid people experiencing poverty to get on their feet, they tend to be much less supportive of government spending on means-tested social equity programs. In his landmark study on welfare [1999], Martin Gilens argues that opposition to government assistance programs for the poor is largely driven by racial stereotypes, specifically by the perception that most people on them are Black and that they are less committed to a hard work ethic than the rest of Americans. This study measures whether people with sincerely held religious beliefs hold similar views and whether those religious beliefs make people more likely to support assistance programs for the poor and other people in need than the general American public.
Determinants of the Political Attitudes and Behaviors of Black, Latine, and White Americans Who Qualify as Christian Nationalists
In this study, we examine the determinants of the political attitudes and behaviors of Black, White, and Latine Americans who qualify as Christian nationalism adherents and sympathizers (hereafter Christian nationalists) in the aftermath of the 2024 presidential election. Existing research focuses almost exclusively on White Americans who qualify as Christian nationalists and does so through observational analysis with few exceptions. This study leverages observational analysis and causal inference to analyze the attitudes and behaviors of approximately 2,500 Black, Latine, and White American adults in the context of the 2024 presidential election.
Research Affiliations
