Research

I am a social scientist who studies race and politics. My research focuses on Black politics, identity and stigma, political psychology, political behavior, and public opinion.

Book

Respectability Politics, University of Chicago Press · Forthcoming Summer 2027

Respectability Politics examines why members of marginalized groups sometimes police the behavior of their own. Focusing on Black Americans, the book shows how concerns about group reputation and the perceived collective costs of individual behavior can generate support for social control within the group. At its core, the book is about how stigma can transfigure the experience of shared identity within marginalized groups.

Selected Publications

White Racial Identity, Political Attitudes, and Selective Exposure to Information about Racism

Koji J. Takahashi*, Hakeem Jefferson*, and Allison Earl
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
*Equal contribution and shared first authorship

Across a series of studies, we examine how racial identity and political attitudes independently influence whether White Americans seek out or avoid information about racism.

The Politics of Black Classification: Sociopolitical Cues and Racial Perception

Lauren D. Davenport, Hakeem Jefferson, and Hunter E. Rendleman
Perspectives on Politics, forthcoming

Using a conjoint experiment, we examine how social and political cues influence the way Americans draw racial boundaries and decide who counts as Black.

The Curious Case of Black “Conservatives”: Assessing the Validity of the Liberal-Conservative Scale among Black Americans

Hakeem Jefferson
Public Opinion Quarterly 88(3), 2024, 909–932

Many Black Americans labeled “conservative” in surveys are unfamiliar with the terms “liberal” and “conservative,” raising questions about a standard measure of ideology and helping resolve the long-standing puzzle of why Black Americans’ partisan attachments often appear mismatched with their ideological identification.

The Politics of Respectability and Black Americans’ Punitive Attitudes

Hakeem Jefferson
American Political Science Review 117(4), 2023, 1448–1464

This article shows how concerns about racial group image and status can lead Black Americans to police fellow group members and develops a new measure of respectability politics that predicts support for punitive policies.

Seeing Blue in Black and White: Race and Perceptions of Officer-Involved Shootings

Hakeem Jefferson, Fabian G. Neuner, and Josh Pasek
Perspectives on Politics 19(4), 2021, 1165–1183

Black and White Americans can reach different conclusions about officer-involved shootings even when given the same information, with these divides arising largely from different prior beliefs about race and policing.

Work in progress

One of Us: Discrimination, Collective Costs, and Ingroup Policing among Black Americans

Can Black People Be Middle Class? Examining Americans’ Implicit and Explicit Associations between Race and Class

with Nico Studen and Alan Yan

When the Powerful Feel Voiceless: Racial Voicelessness and Feelings of Power among White Americans

with Koji Takahashi

Curriculum Vitae

For a complete record of my publications and other professional activities, see my CURRICULUM VITAE.