Ain’t No Stopping Us Now: African Americans, Political Engagement, and the Role of Resilience

A talk by Christine Slaughter, PhD Candidate, Department of Political Science, University of California, Los Angeles. What explains the role of resilience to adversity for African American political behavior within American politics? Numerous attempts to understand Black political behavior have theorized how Black identity, and solidarity among African Americans acts as a pathway to collective political decision-making. Engaging with decades of research in personality and social psychology on resilience, I introduce and explore the role of racial resilience, a psychological attribute characterizing the collective triumph over prolonged adversity, as a stimulant of African
American political behavior. Using an original measure, I find that racial resilience is consistently and significantly associated with political behaviors of weighted stress and risks. I find that African Americans with a greater perception of racial resilience report engaging in these higher cost political acts, more so than individuals with a lower perception of racial resilience. The findings demonstrate how facets of Black identity are politically salient and relevant to understand both the frequency and substance of political participation.

For more information on Christine Slaughter, please click here.

Sponsored by the Political Science Department, Black Studies Program, Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity, and the Creating Connections Consortium (C3)