Publications
Rather than counting how frequently racism occurs or focusing on general emotional states, The Enduring Shadow of Racism examines the trauma-like symptoms that emerge from experiencing racial discrimination. While political science often measures feelings like anger or fear as short-term reactions to specific events, social issues, or candidates, this book instead uses clinical indicators of trauma to assess the lasting psychological effects of racism, including intrusion, avoidance, and hypervigilance. This distinction highlights the difference between fleeting emotional responses and enduring trauma symptoms, revealing racism’s deeper psychological impact on individuals. In doing so, the book introduces a trauma-based framework for understanding the psychological consequences of racism, specifically the ways race-based trauma shapes political beliefs and behavior.
March 2027
Jas M. Sullivan
October 2023
Jas M. Sullivan & Moriah Harman
Inspired by the John Henryism hypothesis and, more broadly, the research on John Henryism, African American Coping in the Political Sphere explores the influence coping has on African Americans' political attitudes and behaviors. Jas M. Sullivan and Moriah Harman reveal that coping plays a role in political outcomes just as it does in social, economic, psychological, and health outcomes. Consequently, coping offers insight into why some individuals believe and behave in the ways that they do in the political sphere.
Rather than claim it is possible to conceptualize and measure every iteration of blackness, modern social theorists such as Robert Sellers and William Cross Jr. contend that one should systematically "sample" the unmanageable range of different identity frames found among blacks. In Dimensions of Blackness, the authors suggest there is no single, solitary way to express black racial identity. They move away from blackness as binary and instead reveal what happens when black racial identity is conceptualized with "difference of opinion." Using a multidimensional perspective this book explores whether black racial identity differences among blacks influence political attitudes and behavior.
October 2018
Jas M. Sullivan, Jonathan Winburn, & William E. Cross Jr.
Jas M. Sullivan & Ashraf M. Esmail
October 2016
Jas M. Sullivan & William E. Cross Jr.
Focusing on the broad range of attitudes Black people employ to make sense of their Blackness, this volume offers the latest research on racial identity. Grounded in psychology, the research presented here makes the case for understanding Black identity as wide ranging in content, subject to multiple interpretations, and linked to both positive mental health as well as varied forms of internalized racism.
Jas M. Sullivan and Ashraf M. Esmail’s African American Identity: Racial and Cultural Dimensions of the Black Experience is a collection which makes use of multiple perspectives across the social sciences to address complex issues of race and identity. The contributors tackle questions about what African American racial identity means, how we may go about quantifying it, what the factors are in shaping identity development, and what effects racial identity has on psychological, political, educational, and health-related behavior.
June 2012
December 2011
Jas M. Sullivan & Jonathan Wilburn
Since the creation of the Louisiana Legislative Black Caucus in 1977, the number of black lawmakers in the Louisiana legislature has increased; however, many of the socioeconomic indicators show that the condition of their constituents has failed to improve. In The Louisiana Legislative Black Caucus, Jas M. Sullivan and Jonathan Winburn analyze the evolution of the LLBC and raise critical questions as to the effectiveness and limitations of this body of minority legislators.
For a full list of publications, see my CV: