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Lessie Branch

Adjunct Assistant Professor of Urban Studies, Queens College, City University of New York
Associate Dean, School for Business, Metropolitan College of New York
Chapter Member: New York City SSN, New York State SSN
Areas of Expertise:
  • Race & Ethnicity
  • Public Health
  • Cities & Regions
  • Religion & Values

Connect with Lessie

(914) 274-0861

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 | No Jargon Podcast | In the News | Publications

Contributions

Social Knowledge, the Rhetoric of Public Policy, and Black Progress in America

SSN Key Findings Brief,

In the News

Guest to discuss the widening wealth gap and the Black community on The Sanders Report, Lessie Branch, January 31, 2017.
Guest to discuss the legacy of President Obama's race rhetoric on You are Here from WERS, Lessie Branch, November 2, 2016.
Guest to discuss Paradoxical Ebullience, a contradiction in the purported ebullient view that Blacks hold regarding their economic position relative to the reality of their economic progress on Tedx Talks, Lessie Branch, March 30, 2016.

Publications

"Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Fox, and "Hate Group" Labels" Racism Review (2015).

Discusses Black Lives Matter and Hasselbeck's question for why the group was not labeled a hate group.

"Race and the Ghost of Jim Crow" Racism Review (2015).

Discusses the re-emergence of Jim Crow.

"Reexamining the "Obama Effect": How Barack Obama's Rhetoric Spread Optimistic Colorblindness in an Age of Inequality" Journal of Contemporary Rhetoric 6, no. 3 (2016): 99-111.

Examines the paradox between increased optimism among Black Americans and continued socioeconomic stagnation among the same group.

"The Epidemic of Colorblindness" Racism Review (2015).

Discusses colorblindness as an epidemic in America.

Optimism at All Costs: Black Attitudes, Activism and Advancement in Obama's America (University of Massachusetts Press, 2018).

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.