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About Lessie
Branch's research examines the gulf between Black optimism about group process and the actual data on continuing disparities and potentially speaks to wider questions of social knowledge, social beliefs, and relative group position; even to questions of "consciousness." She is a Racial Policy Scholar and a Fulbright Specialist in Race, Ethnicity, and Religion in Politics and Senior Research Fellow at the Dubois Bunche Center for Public Policy at Medgar Evers College. She is the Associate Dean at Metropolitan College of New York in their School for Business.
Contributions
Social Knowledge, the Rhetoric of Public Policy, and Black Progress in America
In the News
Publications
Discusses colorblindness as an epidemic in America.
Explains the paradox of Obama era black optimism despite continued black socioeconomic stagnation. Engages in clarification of an evolution from a "linked-fate" political discourse to a "post-racial/bootstrap" frame that focuses on individualism to achieve racial parity.
Discusses Black Lives Matter and Hasselbeck's question for why the group was not labeled a hate group.
Examines the paradox between increased optimism among Black Americans and continued socioeconomic stagnation among the same group.