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!

TTRPG with old-school "you can die in character creation" mechanics, except most terminal events are stuff like "reached adulthood with no major traumas" or "found a love of carpentry", so your goal is to make enough bad life choices that your character is a big enough loser to become an adventurer.

More deaths in US immigration camps this fiscal year than over the past 2 decades!!!

#NoBorders

It is also an interesting connection with Player of Games, where Gurgeh seems to be viewed with awe even though he pretty obviously has an unhealthy relationship with games and competition.

That’s a good point, and to be honest, I think it reflects the views of the Pentagon regarding what they think is really unacceptable (American troops being deployed in dumb ways, losing) and what they think is not that big a deal (bombing anybody ever).

But the cabinet has much less to offer. All they can tell us is that Trump is bloodthirsty and mercurial, which we already know because he keeps posting saying so.

I am not sure I agree with your analysis here. The Pentagon media leaks office has been working nights and weekends telling us about the various ground invasion plans they’ve been asked to prepare and be ready for, probably partly because leaking them makes them less likely to happen.

bonus trivia question: into how many congressional districts is the average city in Hawai’i divided?

live by the slate pitch, die by the slate pitch

Actually we should just give citizenship to every undocumented person in the United States who wants it. Walking over an imaginary line isn't some great moral atrocity. Making people live in the shadows as a permanent underclass absolutely IS.

you may not like it but this is what peak performance looks like

Let's do this one time in good faith: Wealthy private universities in blue states should be bastions of humanistic education (including basic science), fully protected from the anti-education laws being passed in red states that afflict private and public schools alike. But instead .... /1

although there is certainly something very American about the legitimation ritual being an intentional disavowal of previously agreed parliamentary procedure without bothering to change the procedure. america: fuck it, we'll do it live

there is a sense in which having to stand up and say "motion to overrule the parliamentarian's finding" at the end of every session is not really that different from having to stand up and say "le roy le vult" at the end of every session...

there is an even better plausible future version of this where eventually every law passes by including it in a reconciliation bill and then ritually overruling the parliamentarian saying none of these laws belong in the reconciliation bill

not everybody has to play

I would probably say “where did you get this hot dog” but if I’m honest there are very few answers where I wouldn’t start eating the hot dog

candyland is well designed

Ultimately Star Trek is about a spaceship that belongs to a state (and, notionally, that state is the United States, which is why the military posture of Starfleet varies so wildly in correlation with the self-conception of America at the inceptions of each series)

In the context of the homeless of course this is deliberately created; last semester we read Stuart’s Down, Out, and Under Arrest on the creation of the idea that homeless people want to be homeless (which forms the basis of municipal legal arguments for sweeps; see ACLU v. Honolulu)

I think there is a deep disconnect in these conversations where people kind of fail to think that if they personally have a desire to behave prosocially then probably most other people do too, and if the other people are behaving antisocially it’s probably because something is wrong.

Iran-frastructure week

Gold text on a maroon background reads Break Our Games March! Below is a strip of film divided into four sections, each which has a photograph inside. The first is a photograph of a filled-in character sheet. The second is two young people sitting at a round tabel with paper and writing tools in front of them. The next picture is the printed text of Dog Eat Dog with a collection of clear tokens on top. The last picture is cut off but it shows more young people sitting at a table with cards and tokens.

A film strip graphic divided into four strips, each filled with a photograph. The first is a photograph of a partially-filled in character sheet. The second picture is a young person wit blond hair and glasses setting up a game at a tabletop. The third picture is a printed copy of Princess with a Cursed Sword with a few maroon dice on top. The four picture is a section of another picture featuring young people sitting at a table.

Maroon background with two photographs in diagonal corners and a long diagonal banner between them which reads The Blue Way Prototypes in light blue letters. The photograph in the top left shows a deck of cards fanned out. The backs of the cards feature a portrait of a king with his eyes blurred out and his open mouth prominent. The photograph in the opposite corner shows a grid of six character sheets which have various portraits beneath a layer of text.

Thanks to everyone who came to our Break Our Games night last Friday! We heard some great stories being told and watched some quality playtesting, too. Check out these photos for a surprise at the end... See you all for the next BOG on April 10th!

#playtesting #ttrpgs #thebluewaygame

This is a very funny episode because the author takes extra time to write in that threatening the administrators of the “alien” healthcare system with death from preventable illness is canonically ethical behavior

the thing the show does really well and really originally is deliver a moriarty that is both surprising and unsurprising and it feels like they didnʻt realize that was the thing they did well, because they then started doing a bunch of other stuff for some reason

-Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

“In so far as this mask represents the conception we have formed of ourselves - the role we are striving to live up to - this mask is our truer self, the self we would like to be. In the end, our conception of the role becomes second nature and an integral part of our personality.”

"Friends" is a beloved American sitcom that aired from 1994 to 2004, following six young adults—Rachel, Ross, Monica, Chandler, Joey, and Phoebe—living in New York City. The show explores their friendships, romances, careers, and personal growth over ten seasons.

Very important to make sure people know they should be playing roles instead of getting confused and rolling dice or something