An article co-authored by Assistant Professor of Government Gbemende Johnson was recently published in Research and Politics.
In “Race, Crime, and Emotions,” Johnson and her co-author, Camille D. Burge of Villanova University, explore the emotional and policy responses of African-Americans after exposure to interracial and intra-racial crime.
Using an original survey experiment of 900 African-American respondents, Burge and Johnson found that African-Americans experience an increase in anger after exposure to both “white on black” crime and “black on black” crime. They found that African-Americans also express an increased desire for harsher sentences in response to “white on black” crime.
Although African-American exhibit the highest levels of anger when exposed to “black on black” crime, “their desire for more punitive sentences decreases in the intra-racial crime context,” Johnson said.
