Title page of our paper, “The Politics of Black Classification: Sociopolitical Cues and Racial Perception,” with Lauren Davenport (Stanford) and Hunter Rendleman (UC Berkeley), dated April 14, 2026. Abstract: What makes someone Black in American society today? From Donald Trump questioning Kamala Harris’s racial identity to Joe Biden’s claim that hesitant Black voters “ain’t Black,” American politics frequently brings questions of racial authenticity and belonging to the surface. Yet political science often approaches race as a fixed attribute rather than a social construction. Here, we seek to understand how Americans define blackness in social and political life. Using a conjoint experiment with a racially diverse sample that includes Black, white, and mixed race Black-white respondents, we evaluate how ascribed and acquired traits influence perceptions of blackness. The results show that inherited characteristics—particularly parentage and skin tone, which are the strongest determinants of racial classification—play a central role, while sociopolitical cues such as partisanship, neighborhood context, and spousal race also influence racial classification. Using a continuous measure, we also show that respondents make graded assessments of blackness rather than purely binary classifications, with some individuals perceived as more Black than others. Black respondents are more likely than white respondents to classify a broader set of profiles as Black, consistent with a more inclusive understanding of racial membership, yet they also place greater emphasis on shared political identity. These findings clarify how racial categories are socially constructed and why that construction carries real political and social consequences.

Our paper, “The Politics of Black Classification: Sociopolitical Cues and Racial Perception” (w/ Lauren Davenport & @hrendleman.bsky.social), has been conditionally accepted at Perspectives on Politics!

Sharing abstract below. Long time coming, but we are really proud of this paper.

More soon!

ChatGPT’s latest stylistic quirk is sinister, infuriating – and absolutely everywhere | Stuart Heritage Once you start noticing “it’s not X, it’s Y” as you scroll online, you can’t fail to register it. I’ve become so hypervigilant that it has seeped into my subconscious thoughts

In 2019, I defended my PhD on 'It's not X, it's Y' and similar constructions, which I call contrastive negation constructions. Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that 'It's not X, it's Y' would become the topic of comment pieces in newspapers.
🧵

final presentation! @reycabreraperez.bsky.social + many ROLE-affiliated authors discuss the importance of cross institutional collabs and open data/open science practices to support ECRs and also improve & aid assessments. But structural support is needed!

Mauro Alberto Mendoza Posadas interrogates the concept of “hegemonic lg” as it relates to Náhuatl, applying a Gramsci-an (Gramsci-entific? 😉) lens; along the way, he encourages us to think how formal analyses and subaltern practices may relate and conflict

Sailee Charlu, @reycabreraperez.bsky.social & Elizabeth Peña show that arts-based multilingual progs can disrupt ideologies underpinning why the overwhelming majority of US students in bilingual lg programs think Spanish isnt for school. students had a more positive, expansive view of Spanish

Alejandra Raisman-Carlovich centers the multimodal bilingualism of deaf LSM signers/Spanish reader-writers across a range of psycholinguistic tasks, arguing that, as their lexical knowledge is integrated across languages/modalities/channels, we need a wider view of lingustic repertoires

now Edgar Sanabria Ramos & Miroslava Cruz-Aldrete on how authority & community belonging shape how new words are adopted and integrated in Lengua de Señas Mexicana, and how this is negotiated alongside deaf identity in online spaces

Afternoon ROLE sessions continue: first, @kellykendro.bsky.social & @reycabreraperez.bsky.social on systematic terminological review as a methodological approach to metaresearch, and Vilani Rajapakse on individual differences in picture naming RTs amongst bilinguals

some takeaways from Dra Buenabad’s talk: a model for Indigenous education that continues through higher ed, that recognizes childrens’ complex linguistic & cultural relations (including dynamic and complex relations to speakerhood), and where communities *plural* are at the center

Dra Elizabeth Buenabad has worked for decades on the education of Indigenous children in the state of Puebla — she highlights the multilingual and multicultural reality of the area across centuries (i can’t keep up the crossling live posting but this talk is 🔥 and plz check out the recording after!)

we’re breaking for an online poster session — link is available only to registrants, but you can still join us at 11:20 CDMX time for our keynote!

Brisa del Bosque & Marty Buck asked 65 students in Spanish as a Heritage Language course at U of New Mexico what ethnic identifiers they prefer and if they ID as a heritage speaker — speakerhood, heritage, citizenship, racialization & degree of assimilation all shape how they id

Ailyn Figueroa González presents a multimodal discourse analysis of linguistic agency drawing from a rich corpus of tiktoks with the hashtag #nosabokids

Next Marina Cuartero Marco discussed how affect and social networks are important factors in a dynamic model of heritage language maintenance

ROLE conf started now! You can still register and join — and presentations will be online! We started with an inspiring intro by Dani who stated that our research must reflect a reality where mobility, migration, and multilingualism are the norm

hope you can join the conversation, and thank you as always to the amazing ROLE Community for making this conference happen!

The ROLE Collective - 3rd ROLE Symposium On This Page:

And we have an amazing lineup of presentations about Nahuatl, LSM, heritage language identity, education policy, open science, and more — in English and Spanish! www.rolecollective.org/events/3rd-r...

Poster for THE 3RD REFRAMING OUR LANGUAGE EXPERIENCE ROLE SYMPOSIUM 2026 image of keynote presenter Dra Buenabad from Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla The Reframing Our Language Experience (ROLE) Collective (http://www.rolecollective.org) was established in 2022 with the intent of bringing together researchers, clinicians, policy makers, and educators to move away from linguistic injustice that has been created by native speaker ideologies. Location: SALA DE VIDEOCONFERENCIAS (VIDEO CONFERENCE ROOM) INSTITUTE OF PHILOLOGICAL RESEARCH National Autonomous University of Mexico LIVE TRANSMISSION: www.youtube.com/@IIFLSTREAMING

Along with hearing more about Dani’s work, we have a keynote by Dra Elisabeth Buenabad scholar.google.com/citations?us..., entitled Diversidad Lingüística: ¿Riqueza o problema en el sistema educativo mexicano?

DANI STRANSKY My research focuses on investigating the linguistic outcomes of  Returnee heritage speakers  (RHS)  specifically Mexican-American migrants deported/returned to Mexico after residing in the United...

Dani studies the language of returnees; those people who have returned or been deported to Mexico after having spent a long time in the US. Her work complicates how we think of language learning and socialization across the lifespan www.danistransky.com

This year is our first experiment in having a hybrid conference, and we’re honored to partner with UNAM! I’m especially looking forward to hearing about the work of Dr Dani Stransky, who, with the amazing @reycabreraperez.bsky.social and Dr Mary Rosa Espinosa, made this all happen.

The ROLE Collective - 3rd ROLE Symposium On This Page:

en route to Mexico City for the 3rd ROLE Conf; looking forward to presentations rethinking categorization across languages & borders

it’s not too late to register for the online Friday symposium www.rolecollective.org/events/3rd-r...

(we’ll have trilingual interpretation: English&Spanish to ASL)

A star scientist showed that better genetics lessons could reduce racism. It was the death knell for his career

The loss of Brian Donovan’s grants and job speak volumes about federal funding priorities — and academia

www.statnews.com/2026/04/07/b...

Someone sent me this.

ALSO! If you're not good with the idea of a future child being LGBTQ+ you're not fit to be a parent.

SEND TWEET.

To do this on Trans Day of Visibility is violence.

At 15, I was sent to a "troubled teens boarding school" that used conversion "therapy"...it is torturous & I know of five who experienced it that died by suicide.

This "therapy" is not evidence-based, it is unscientific, and it kills.

Plus, a comprehensive explainer thread by paper's first author @pfcook.bsky.social, well worth checking out.👇

in an interview with 404media, a former data labeller said it should be called African intelligence given how much the tech industry relies on exploitative labor in Kenya and other countries in Africa. that really stuck with me.

This is it exactly. As @isaacsederbaum.bsky.social and I wrote in a piece out today--even as these states deny the existence of trans identity, they build administrative systems to track us-- an expanding architecture of surveillance and control. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/when-compl...

We Are Lady Parts | “Bashir With the Good Beard” Punk Anthem Jam Session YouTube video by Peacock

Oh no, Ive gone down the best rabbit hole, never leaving youtu.be/tzAGqmdOBzE?...

If you, like me, have Peacock for a limited time so you can watch the Olympics and Paralympics, give yourself the gift of watching We Are Lady Parts as many times as possible before you cancel your subscription. We Are Lady Parts. Just over and over again. Your life will improve.