ABSTRACT The rising prominence of Indian Americans in US politics was on display in 2024 in both parties. While Democrats long enjoyed the support of Indian American voters, the election shows a drift toward Donald Trump. Drawing upon survey data collected in 2020, I find that Indian Americans with a stronger connection to India and sense of ethnic identity have a greater desire for descriptive representation. While this worked in the favor of Biden and Harris in 2020, I offer two potential explanations for the small but notable drift away from Democrats in 2024: The salience of ethnic identity may have waned amongst Indian Americans muting the mobilizing effect of Harris. Alternatively, while not at the top of the ticket, the visibility of Indian Americans within the Republican party could signal that Indian Americans continued to desire descriptive representation, but the ideological or partisan preferences of a minority shifted in 2024.

ABSTRACT Christian nationalism often shapes the political views of Black and White Americans differently, particularly on racial justice issues, inclining White Americans toward more reactionary views while often inclining Black Americans toward more progressive views. In this study, we show Christian nationalism can operate similarly for Black and White Americans on “moral issues,” to the Republican Party’s benefit. Drawing on national data collected before the 2024 Presidential election, and focusing on whether Americans were prioritizing abortion in selecting their 2024 Presidential candidate, analyses show that as Christian nationalism increases, Black and White Americans (even Strong Democrats) became less likely to view protecting abortion access as a priority. We also find evidence Black Republicans became more motivated in the opposite direction. Findings suggest Republican candidates can leverage Christian nationalist rhetoric around issues like abortion to promote “multiethnic coalitions of exclusion,” neutralizing Black Democrats and possibly mobilizing Black Republicans on religiously-coded “moral issues.”

ABSTRACT In this piece, I contend that Black sororities were instrumental in Kamala Harris’s run for Vice President in 2020 and her 2024 presidential campaign. I argue that although, as non-profit organizations, the sororities could not formally endorse Harris – they engaged in racial uplift as they created political action committees (PACs) for the Harris campaigns and pushed for members to take part in mobilizing voters in Black communities. Additionally, I assert that news sources covering the campaigns reveal that as Harris faced an onslaught of misogynoir from Donald Trump and the religious right – Black sororities responded through statements that reflected that they were not only arguing in defense of Harris, but also in defense of themselves.

ABSTRACT This essay analyses Donald Trump’s interview at the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ). We identify his responses to the Black women journalists at the NABJ panel as racist and sexist outrage rhetoric. Trump launches personal attacks to delegitimize the Black women journalists who challenge him, with the purpose of inspiring outrage in liberal circles while offering white conservatives amusement and comfort. This panel, beyond illustrating Trump’s political rhetoric, unearths a key challenge American journalism is currently facing: objectivity, as it is conceptualized and operationalized in traditional journalistic spaces, insists on dispassionate neutrality and civility. This standard is further pronounced when applied to marginalized journalists. We contend that Trump, in his deployment of outrage rhetoric, is taking advantage of the professional rules of objectivity in an increasingly polarized society; Black professionals in historically white professions have to remain “civil” to be considered legitimate in the profession, even as Trump responds to legitimate questions with anti-Black, sexist attacks.

ABSTRACT Here we examine the resurgence of far-right racial politics in the US through the lens of Donald Trump's “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) movement and its deep ties to systemic white racism. Drawing from historical white backlash patterns, our analysis places Trump's racialized rhetoric and policies within a broader reactionary framework fueled by white demographic anxieties and racial resentment. Trump's political ascendancy has solidified the Republican Party as a “white identity” party, deploying voter suppression, anti-immigrant policies, and right-wing language strategies to reinforce systemic racism while maintaining a façade of societal legitimacy. We examine Trump's impact on electoral politics, mobilization of white nationalism, and enduring threats to multiracial democracy. Despite these far-right political realities, historical and contemporary resistance movements demonstrate pathways of political hope for a truly inclusive and democratic U.S. society.

ABSTRACT All elections are emotional campaigns. In this paper, I turn to affective politics on the left and what “whiteness” means, why it is important in this election, and how it has been destabilized in recent years, particularly for white women who have been called out as “Karens”. Then, I examine three organizing calls that occurred in the weeks immediately following the announcement that Kamala Harris would be the nominee of the Democratic Party: (1) “White Women Against MAGA”, (2) “White Women for Kamala” and (3) “Not Another Bomb”. I use these organizing calls as case studies for examining the affective work of mobilizing white women and others on the left in the 2024 election. Finally, I consider what the “white stripe” strategy means for using the affective politics of whiteness to build a multi-racial, mass movement for collective liberation beyond the strictures of electoral politics.

ABSTRACT This paper uses Blumer’s model of “race prejudice” (racism) to explain how concerns about immigration and threats to whites’ social status were deployed by President Trump to secure his path to the presidency. Herbert Blumer explained that discriminatory and racist actions by the dominant group occur when the subordinate group is perceived as encroaching on the social and economic resources the dominant group believe is their property. The perception among many whites that immigrants are taking resources they believe whites were entitlement to, the demonization of immigrants by Trump that made immigrants a collective threat, and the promise that resources could be returned to whites led whites to vote for Trump en masse and set in motion what promises to be the enactment of numerous anti-immigrant initiatives and policies.

ABSTRACT Although former Republican President Donald Trump has been criticized for being xenophobic and racist, surveys and election results show that Latinos are increasingly shifting politically rightward. Such shifts contradict assumptions about race, ethnicity, and immigration politics, puzzling analysts and laypeople alike as to why non-White immigrant voters would support Trump. In this article, I draw upon 66 original interviews with US Latinos to break through scholarly and popular “puzzlement” about US Latino politics. To learn how Latinos navigate the cultural dynamics of political projects, we must talk to Latino voters and reconsider deep-seated, common, and flawed assumptions about this ethnoracial group. I find the following: (1) Latinos have come to directly and negatively associate Latino conservatism with Trumpism, (2) Latino Republican voters actively work to reconcile the perceived contradiction between being Latino and voting Republican, and (3) ethnoracial and political identities are contested within Latino families.

ABSTRACT The 2024 US presidential election results show that large portions of the white electorate continue to endorse the politics of nativism, anti-Blackness and misogyny. Yet what white people think and do in relation to white supremacy is neither uniform nor sedimented. My research examines how movement groups seek to organize white people away from white supremacy and towards racial justice. In this essay, I establish how a liberal, middle-class approach to antiracism has been insufficient to the political project of challenging white supremacy. I then draw on four years of field work and interviews with the largest US-based organization seeking to organize white communities towards intersectional racial and economic justice. I offer two examples from the field to show what politically strategic approaches to organizing white people for racial justice can entail. These include centering poor and working-class white people and situating antiracist learning in the service of collective action.