In the United States, it has been well-documented that some Black African and Caribbean immigrants may resist social assimilation into Black American communities. At the same time, theories of racialized politics note crystallized social norms that prescribe specific expectations of Black American political behavior. Does some Black immigrants’ resistance to social assimilation undermine racial political coalition building? My dissertation attempts to understand whether or not social assimilation is a pre-condition of Black immigrants’ political assimilation. This survey experiment considers Black Americans’ evaluations of hypothetical Black immigrant profiles to inform a developing theory of how perceptions of cultural similarity influence willingness to politically align with co-racial peers.
