Branch

Lessie Branch

Director of Programs Community Relations, Citizens Committee for New York City
Associate Dean, School for Business, Metropolitan College of New York
Chapter Member: New York City SSN
Areas of Expertise:

Connect with Lessie

(914) 274-0861

About Lessie

Dr. Branch is a Racial Policy Scholar, Fulbright Specialist in Race, Ethnicity & Religion in Politics, Director Programs Community Relations at Citizens Committee for New York City & Director of The Think Tank at The Thinkubator. Her work examines the gulf between Black optimism about group progress and the actual data on continuing disparities, questions of social knowledge, social beliefs and relative group position through the transformative application of rhetorical criticism to interrogate narratives that structure social practices in ways that privilege some and marginalize others. She has a Ph.D. in Public Policy from The New School.

Contributions | No Jargon Podcast | In the News | Publications

Contributions

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

Key Findings Brief,

In the News

Opinion: "Don’t miss your moment!," Lessie Branch, Op-Ed, Bronx Times, January 7, 2022.
Guest on BronxTalk, January 27, 2020.
Opinion: "Big Money and Its Impact on Candidates of Color in the 2020 Race," Lessie Branch, Blavity, January 21, 2020.
Guest on BronxTalk, October 14, 2019.
Guest on The Sanders Report, January 31, 2017.
Guest on You are Here from WERS, November 2, 2016.
Guest on Tedx Talks, 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.