For Black women, hope about race relations predicts costlier political action

A recent study explores how feelings like fear, anger, and hope shape the political actions of Black women outside the voting booth. Researchers found that the type of emotion and the topic triggering it dictate whether individuals engage in low-effort tasks like signing petitions or high-effort activities like protesting. The findings, published in The Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics, show that Black women are mobilized by a wide range of emotions that go far beyond superficial stereotypes.

Political scientists frequently study how emotions predict voter behavior. Most of this research historically focused on white Americans, assuming the results applied equally to the rest of the public. When minority groups are studied, researchers typically look at race or gender in isolation.

Lead researcher Jamil S. Scott-Cummings from Georgetown University and coauthor Kenicia Wright from Arizona State University wanted to detail the unique experiences of Black women. To do this, they used an intersectional approach. Intersectionality is a framework that looks at how a person’s various social identities, such as race and gender, combine to affect their lived experiences and the inequality they face.

The researchers noted that Black women have long navigated strict societal pressures to suppress their emotions. Stereotypes mapping them as perpetually angry or boundlessly strong often ignore their actual emotional depth. Because Black women are highly engaged in American politics, the researchers wanted to see how a full spectrum of feelings influences their civic involvement.

Throughout history, the social and political contexts in the United States have sometimes made it dangerous for Black women to express a full range of emotions. Controlling images regarding their behavior remain racialized today. The persistent idea of the strong Black woman can actually contribute to emotional distress and frustration.

Scott-Cummings and Wright categorized political actions by their personal cost. Low-cost activities require little time or risk. These include signing an online petition, wearing a campaign button, boycotting a product, or sharing a political post.

High-cost activities require more resources or carry a higher degree of personal risk. These actions include donating money, contacting a public official, volunteering for a campaign, or attending a protest. The researchers recognized that being subject to multiple layers of disadvantage might mean the stakes involved with these costly acts are much higher for Black women than for other groups.

To test their ideas, the researchers analyzed data from the Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey from 2016 and 2020. This survey purposefully oversampled marginalized populations. Relying on this data allowed the authors to study thousands of Black women without the sample size limitations that standard surveys often face.

They examined how participants felt about three specific topics: race relations, personal finances, and recent elections. For each topic, individuals reported their levels of anger, fear, and hope on a standardized scale. The researchers then used statistical models to see how these feelings aligned with different types of political participation.

The team also accounted for a wide range of other factors that influence political engagement. They included demographic variables such as age, education, and income. They also controlled for aspects like religious involvement, community engagement, and ideological leaning. The models even measured concepts like linked fate, which is the belief that an individual’s personal success is tied to the success of their broader racial group.

When asked about race relations, both negative and positive emotions correlated with political action. Anger and fear about race relations predicted higher engagement in low-cost activities. The researchers suggest that for many Black women, the consequences of abstaining from politics are simply too grave to ignore.

While anger and fear might not push these women to take on high-cost activities regarding race relations, these emotions do prompt them to engage in tasks that use their political power without demanding excessive time. Hope about race relations, on the other hand, was linked to high-cost participation.

This aligns with the idea that hope drives the determination required to invest heavy time and energy into political change. Black women are often credited as the backbone of the Democratic Party due to their high levels of mobilization. The survey data suggest that feeling hopeful makes them more willing to engage in the most demanding political tasks.

The researchers also noticed other trends. For example, Black women who were more willing to engage in low-cost political acts regarding race relations often felt that the government was not responsive to their racial group. This suggests that low-cost political activity does not require the same level of trust or buy-in with the political system that high-cost acts demand.

The results shifted when the researchers looked at personal finances. Black women experience specific economic burdens in the United States. They often outpace other groups in educational attainment while facing persistent wage gaps and high rates of student loan debt.

In this context, anger about personal finances predicted high-cost political participation. Feelings of hope or fear regarding money were not statistically significant predictors of either low-cost or high-cost political acts. The relationship between financial emotions and political engagement proved distinctly different from responses about racial issues.

If the researchers had not separated low-cost and high-cost activities, this detail would have been lost. The survey shows that how Black women feel about their financial constraints motivates some specific avenues of their political engagement. Anger serves as the primary financial emotional driver for taking on high-risk political tasks.

The 2016 survey data, which asked about election outcomes, revealed yet another pattern. Anger about the election was associated with low-cost participation. Fear about the election was linked to high-cost participation.

This last finding deviates from existing political science literature. Previous studies generally suggest that fear prompts people to seek out information rather than take direct action. Finding that fear drives Black women to engage in demanding political activities represents a new understanding of how negative emotions can mobilize specific populations.

The researchers noted a few boundaries to their study. The survey data captures associations at a specific point in time. Because the information is observational, the researchers cannot definitively prove that a specific emotion caused a specific action. The results simply show that certain feelings and actions frequently appear together.

Additionally, the surveys did not ask about every possible form of political participation. Black women have a long history of organizing through social clubs, historically Black sororities, and specialized civic groups. Activity within these specific spaces was not measured in the survey questions.

Future research could expand on exactly why fear motivates Black women to take high-cost political action. Scott-Cummings and Wright also suggest looking at the emotional drivers of other minority women. Understanding these varied emotional responses provides a much more accurate picture of what fuels political engagement in a diverse society.

The study, “The (Not So) Angry Black Woman: How Emotions Influence Political Participation of Black Women,” was authored by Jamil S. Scott-Cummings and Kenicia Wright.