<aside> 🔘 Home About RESEARCH Teaching Media Resources
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<aside> 📌 As a former organizer and lifelong activist, my scholarly work is motivated by questions around racial justice in the economy. My work examines the mechanisms that explain how Black Americans escape poverty and how upward mobility shapes Black identity. Employing a range of methods and always centering the experiences of Black workers, my research advances the sociological understanding of stratification, race, and culture and informs policies that reduce economic and racial inequality.
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On this page:
Below, find a description of my current research areas and the core questions each area pursues. You can find related papers, presentations, and abstracts below in the Publications and Working Papers section.
What factors allow social mobility for Black workers? Which occupations foster access to the middle class?
What do institutional actors tell Black workers about opportunity? What challenges do Black workers face in the modern era?
Related Projects: Testing Mobility Knowledge, Misinformed.
What are the consequences of upward mobility on Black identity, family life, and behavior? How do middle class Black people make sense of their relationships to the wider Black community?
Which Black workers get ahead and what does this teach us about race and the processes of social stratification?
Related Projects: Kin Support of the Black Middle Class, Inequality in the 21st Century.
How does racial inequality get legitimized? What prevents more resistance to the current inequality regime?
What is the role of technology and other institutions in framing inequality to the public? Are Black communities impervious to neoliberal logic?
Related Projects: Predatory Rhetorics of Urban Development, Perils of Progress, Hustle Culture & the Spirit of Platform Capitalism.
What does our theoretical understandings of stratification and racialization teach us about creating new types of classrooms? How do we train strong, ethical qualitative researchers?
Related Projects: Using Frameworks of Social Desirability to Teach Interviews.
Below is an up to date list of my published articles, current working papers, books, and policy briefs. Click a card in the gallery to find the papers’ abstract, status, and any related resources (drafts, presentations, and more).
Tip: Use the menu, currently labeled “All Research” to sort by publication type, or hover over the menu to find the search function to find a particular topic or keyword.