"We are pleased to share more than 125,000 U.S. Supreme Court records and briefs. These materials which span nearly two centuries of American law are now freely accessible online."
"Includes records and briefs spanning cases from 1830 through 2019."
Really looking forward to this conversation. (Full disclosure: I expect to listen and learn more than I talk. But, I’ll do the best I can to be interesting in such impressive company!)
Despite his modesty, you really can’t talk about diversity in Black politics without talking about @coreydfields.bsky.social’s “Black Elephants in the Room: The Unexpected Politics of African American Republicans.”
Stellar book. 10/10 recommend.
And he’s smart and funny. You don’t wanna miss this.
I cannot wait to read this.
“These findings clarify how racial categories are socially constructed and why that construction carries real political and social consequences.”
May 18 in-person event
CASBS fellow @coreydfields.bsky.social a featured speaker at this @fsi.stanford.edu @stanfordcddrl.bsky.social event on Black Politics and American Democracy. Fmr fellow @hakeemjefferson.bsky.social moderates 😏
Details, bios, RSVP info: cddrl.fsi.stanford.edu/events/black...
We’re in a moment of democratic upheaval in the U.S., w/ race central to how many understand the crisis.
Join Katherine Tate, @coreydfields.bsky.social, & me as we talk Black politics & American Democracy.
In-person & Zoom!
May 18, 4–5:30pm PT
Info + RSVP: cddrl.fsi.stanford.edu/events/black...
🎯It's one thing to say (and know) that race is a social construct, it's another to drill down deep into what that means.
That’s exactly what I’m telling you!
We’re really thinking of it as perceptions of Blackness, not a direct measure of race + class. That said, traits associated with class do show up as predictors, which is part of the story.
We’ll upload the paper in the next day or so for folks to dig in early!
If not, we’ll fix it in the proof stage! And you know how memory works. I think we actually had the scale and presented the paper and someone said, “omg, there’s this snl sketch you’ve got to see!” But I def want people to know it exists!
The Blackness scale might be one of my favorite parts of the paper. People often talk about identity as continuous (“She’s Black, but she ain’t Black Black”), so we developed a way to capture that perception. We then estimate how much different traits predict those ratings.
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!
So good!!
Me, too!
Two male actors portray Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson on the Saturday Night Live “Weekend Update” set, seated behind a news desk. One holds a poster labeled “Blackness Scale,” with a vertical gradient from green at the bottom to red at the top. Small photos of various public figures are placed along the scale at different points, implying different degrees of “Blackness.” The graphic is presented satirically, while both characters maintain serious expressions.
Screenshot of a Saturday Night Live “Weekend Update” transcript. Seth Meyers introduces a segment about Barack Obama running in 2008 and the idea that the U.S. may be ready for a Black president, bringing in actors portraying Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. The transcript shows “Rev. Jesse Jackson” speaking haltingly with pauses and a stage direction indicating he repeatedly rubs his nose, followed by “Rev. Al Sharpton” slapping the desk and shouting “HALLELUJAH!!” Jackson then says they want to address Obama directly because “in America… there are degrees of Blackness,” with Sharpton interjecting “Scales of soul!” The excerpt ends with Jackson saying they came up with a chart to illustrate the idea.
Screenshot of a Saturday Night Live “Weekend Update” transcript continuing a sketch featuring actors portraying Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. A stage direction notes that “Al Sharpton” holds up a chart labeled “Blackness Scale,” described as showing the heads of Black people arranged along a colored meter. “Rev. Jesse Jackson” explains it as a scale measuring “degrees of Blackness… in the eyes of others,” while “Rev. Al Sharpton” interjects “ie: WHITE PEOPLE!” Jackson adds that everyone on the chart is “unequivocally Black,” but Sharpton argues some are “more Black than others.” Sharpton then uses analogies, comparing levels on the scale to types of cars (Oldsmobile, Cadillac, customized Impala) and to coffee preferences (with cream, straight black, or with a shot of Hennessy), reinforcing the satirical idea of graded Blackness.
One of the measures in the paper is a Blackness scale that asks respondents to place profiles along a continuum from 0 (not at all Black) to 10 (very Black).
Perhaps inspired by a 2007 Saturday Night Live sketch that introduced its own “Blackness Scale” in the context of Barack Obama’s candidacy.
What a very strange episode it all was!
This is right.
This paper was first conceived during the 2015 Rachel Dolezal debate. If race is fluid and constructed, why can’t she be Black?
Well, parentage is part of that construction, & the question is how much weight we give it alongside other traits.
A decade later, here’s the full reply.
Lots to say about this paper soon, but I hope it serves as another example for folks starting out that one needn’t be constrained by the sometimes narrow ways folks define the set of questions worthy of being asked and answered. And that it’s ok to do work that makes some folks a bit uncomfortable.
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!
Strong political parties that bend the rules to entrench their power and succumb to corruption are a consistent feature of democracy qua democracy. And if your entrenched ruling party can lose everything in a wave election, you are not living in an authoritarian state.
Nope. Nope. Nope. This post is just two false statements.
Zach gets it exactly right. Orban was an authoritarian who built a rigged election system for his own gain. But Peter Magyar cracked the code - realizing that every vote in the countryside was worth two to three votes in the cities and so racked up countryside support, winning 2/3rds of the seats.
Important work from a set of really smart colleagues
This is a great piece by a Stanford undergrad. He wrote it after lecture last week. What a privilege it is to teach.
“The President calls birthright citizenship stupid…America is not foolish for honoring birthright citizenship. America is America because of it.”
stanforddaily.com/2026/04/07/a...
I wanna be in Ann Arbor!
Go Blue!
conservative pundits, GOP apparatchiks and their various enablers spend 10 years insisting that racism is marginal to trump and trumpism
trump:
Nothing I could say about the GOP base is as illustrative as the fact that Trump understands that posting black people in what his audience considers a “white space” will make them incandescently angry bsky.app/profile/atru...
I stopped mid-read to share with Matt my fav line, “This book, like democratization of the South itself, unfolds slowly.”
Never too late to give tomorrow’s lecture! :)
I’ll try to do the work justice.
Assigned 1st chapter of @robmickey.bsky.social’s Paths out of Dixie for intro to American lecture tomorrow, and worried I’m doing myself no favors by reading this brilliant, well-argued, and deeply thoughtful text exactly a week before my revised book is due to the press.
What a bar to set, Rob!