Christine Slaughter, Ph.D.
csla@bu.edu
Assistant Professor
Boston University
Year of PhD: 2021
Phone: 617-353-3409
City: Boston, Massachusetts - 02119
Country: United States
About Me:
Welcome! I’m Christine Marie Slaughter, Ph.D. and I am currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Boston University, where I hold the Moorman-Simon Interdisciplinary Career Development Professorship. Before Boston, I was a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Politics at Princeton University, jointly appointed to the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics in the School of Public and International Affairs, and a UC Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Irvine. I earned my Ph.D. in political science with a concentration in Race and Ethnic Politics from the University of California, Los Angeles. My book project examines how experiences of persistent economic inequality intersect with Black Americans’ racial identity, thus shaping their political psychology, behavior, and interactions with political institutions. My book project, “Resilience to Adversity: How Black Voters Are Mobilized to Counter Suppression” asks: How do Black Americans withstand political obstacles to protest, vote, and organize? I answer this question by demonstrating that Black Americans use racial resilience, a novel psychological resource, to strategically cope with and engage in costly political behaviors. Through a series of observational surveys, interviews, and a survey experiment, I show that Black voters are mobilized by racial resilience to engage in high-cost political behaviors that counter suppressive tactics. My research has been published in the Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law, Politics & Gender, PS: Politics and Political Science, PHILLIS: The Journal for Research on African American Women (PHILLIS), and the Oxford Handbook of Political Participation. I have also written articles for the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage Blog, and my research has been quoted in USA Today, and Capital B News. I graduated from Spelman College, a historically Black women's college in Atlanta, Georgia, in 2015. At Spelman, I participated in the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship and graduated Phi Beta Kappa. I enjoy reading historical fiction novels, and volunteering throughout the community when I am not conducting research. Please visit my website for more information about my research, publications, and teaching or email me at csla@bu.edu (Slaughter is a long surname, apparently!). I’d love to chat!
Research Interests
Race, Ethnicity and Politics
Political Psychology
Political Participation
Class, Inequality, and Labor Politics
Black Politics
Black Women's Politics
Poverty
Voting Behavior
Voting Rights
Surveys, Opinion Polling
Countries of Interest
United States
Publications:
Journal Articles:
coauthored with Christopher Ojeda Context: This article untangles the effects of depression on voter turnout among blacks and whites and among women and men and considers several factors—income, health insurance, church attendance, group consciousness, and empowerment—that may mitigate the negative effects of depression on turnout. Methods: The authors estimated regression models of voter turnout on depression across race and gender groups using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. They used interaction terms to assess whether the effect of depression is conditional on the potential mitigating factors. Findings: Reporting increased depressive symptoms was associated with a lower probability of voting across electoral contexts for all respondents, and few factors mitigated this negative effect. Only in the case of black men did the authors find that a coethnic candidate mitigated the negative effect of depression, while a higher level of group consciousness did the opposite. Conclusions: The effect of depression was strong, cut across racial and gender groups, and was generally robust to the effects of income, health insurance, church attendance, group consciousness, and empowerment. More research is required to understand how to reduce depression and improve turnout among those who experience it.
Books Written:
How do perceptions of racial resilience of African Americans influence the frequency and substance of their participation in American politics? To date, there are few accounts of how racial resilience, or an individual resilience matters in politics. Nor are there accounts of how racial resilience influences political engagement and participation, particularly in costly political acts. This dissertation examines the role of racial resilience among African Americans – a racial group that votes at higher rates compared to non-black minorities, and as a bloc for the Democratic party - and the influence of racial resilience in American politics. This project presents a novel framework and an original measure of racial resilience to investigate how the varied response to adversity – including an orientation to Black triumph, and an awareness of Black economic subjugation – shape political involvement and engagement among African Americans. The main theoretical argument is that African Americans’ experience of prolonged adversity has bestowed a unique worldview of responding to adversity with persistence, which in turn, pushes African Americans to embrace the politics of resilience, which is associated with increased participation in politics. Using surveys, survey experiments, and qualitative data, I create, construct, and validate a novel measure of racial resilience. I explore the demographic contours associated with higher racial resilience. I find that racial resilience is a salient attribute and is consistently associated with higher cost political engagement among African Americans. The findings of this dissertation also have implications for how Black political behavior is motivated through shared group attributes. Furthermore, the contributions of this dissertation expand beyond racial and ethnic politics to understand how politics, today, requires extra-ordinary effort and engagement, and resilience to adversity is central to participation.
Book Chapters:
Intersectionality situates the nexus of multiple marginalized identities, and this chapter argues its importance to the study of political participation. Intersectionality lessens the extent that differences are essentialized across groups, by examining the intersection of relevant identities. Grounded in Black feminist theory, this chapter examines how gender, race, ethnicity, and class influence women of color’s participation compared to their male counterparts. The chapter demonstrated how political participation research must consider how multiple identities—not just in isolation, but constitutive, and proximity to institutional access and power among women shape their engagement in the political process. Examining political participation and social movements must be historically and contextually informed by the group’s unique characteristics and the conclusions one seeks to draw about their engagement in the political process. Incorporating and intersectional framework is best suited to capture the distinctiveness in political participation of marginalized groups.
Media Appearances:
TV Appearances:
CityLine: Campaigns focused on getting the Black Vote
Blog Posts:
The Divine Nine and Black voter support for Kamala Harris A closer look at the history and contributions of Black Greek Letter Organizations.
Kamala Harris’ historic nomination could mobilize Black women voters Our research shows Biden picking Harris as running mate in 2020 boosted Black women’s political engagement.
Voter suppression tops Black women’s concerns about democracy For Black women, the Voting Rights Amendment is essential for democracy.
How Black women get their political news matters for this election A new study investigates the ways Black women use social media, TV news, and other sources to engage with politics.
How Black women will be especially affected by the loss of Roe With higher maternal mortality, more problem pregnancies, worse health care and less insurance, Black women especially need reproductive autonomy.