My primary interests lie in examining how White Americans justify and promote racism. Specifically, my work lately has examined how White Americans ignore, dismiss, and distort historical truths in ways that promote white supremacy. In my work, I take seriously historical context, and have worked to provide a framework for thinking about historical context in psychological science (Trawalter, Higginbotham, & Henderson, 2022; Brannon, Taylor, Higginbotham, & Henderson, 2017).

In one line of work, I am interested in how we teach and learn the history of racism in the U.S. context. In collaboration with Katie Kinzler, Tania Dhaliwal, and Kaila Scott-Charles, I am investigating how children learn about racism. Which factors of a history lesson are encoded? What is the impact of these lessons? In another project in collaboration with Katie Kinzler, Vanessa Lazaro, and Kaila Scott-Charles, we are examining how parents teach their children the history of racism. When tasked with teaching their child this history, what aspects of the history do parents chose to leave out? Which aspects are emphasized? And why might we see differences between teaching about racism in the real world and in a fictional world?

In another line of work, in collaboration with Sophie Trawalter, I explore an avenue in which White Americans might distort historical truths, by distorting historical time. In this work, we give participants 8 historical events (4 race-related and 4 race-unrelated) and ask them to place the events on a timeline. We hypothesized that White Americans would distort historical time when it pertains to racist history where their ingroup was the perpetrator by placing race-related events furthest in the past, despite when the events actually happened. We find this to be the case. When an event is race-related, it is perceived as happening further in the past than it actually happened. The next steps for this work are to examine the explanation for this distorting of time and to explore the potential consequences of this distortion. 

In another line of work, I consider when White Americans’ ignore historical truths. To examine this, my work first seeks to interrogate the “heritage, not hate” claim by examining the history of Confederate memorializations through the relationship between these memorializations and lynching and by examining contemporary support for the Confederate flag (Henderson et al., 2021, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences; Henderson & Trawalter, in prep). My colleagues and I found that lynchings are significantly related to Confederate memorializations. By statistically linking lynching, a recognized form of racial oppression, with Confederate memorializations, these findings provide concrete evidence that Confederate memorializations are historically associated with hate. Further, my work finds that today, both Southern pride and racist beliefs are significant predictors of support for the Confederate flag. As such, White people seem to ignore historical truths to maintain support for a racist symbol.

In a final line of work, my colleagues and I consider how White Americans–in particular, White conservatives– use and misuse historical truths to ignore and dismiss systemic racism. In this line of work, we consider the conditions under which White people will support policies aimed at redressing systemic change. We draw from Critical Race Theory and, specifically, its central tenet of Interest Convergence, the idea that Black people will achieve benefits and even rights, but only when their interests converge with those of White people. We find quantitative support for interest convergence in the context of COVID- 19 vaccination. When benefits of Black frontline workers as opposed to costs are highlighted, we see a shift in White people protecting White interests. Further, participants that read a detailed, historically grounded account of how COVID-19 disparities are systemic did not change their support for policies benefiting Black people. Though these are null findings, they suggest that knowledge about systemic racism alone is not enough to shift White Americans opinions.