Scholars@Duke
Candis Watts Smith

Candis Watts Smith

Professor of Political Science
Political Science
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Selected Publications

The Making of a Mantra: Americans' Racial Ideologies in the Era of Black, Blue, and All Lives Matter

Journal Article Journal of Race, Ethnicity and Politics · November 25, 2023 In any racialized social system, a dominant racial ideology will emerge to uphold it, but it is always contested by and in dialog with others. This article leverages conversations around Black Lives Matter, All Lives Matter, and Blue Lives Matter as a site ... Full text Cite

The effect of the affordable care act and racial dynamics on federal Medicaid transfers

Journal Article Journal of Public Policy · September 13, 2023 The Affordable Care Act (ACA) was intended to reduce inequalities in access to healthcare resources. However, a 2012 Supreme Court decision allowed states to opt out of a key component of the policy, leading to even greater variation in Medicaid's implemen ... Full text Cite

Entering the “foxhole”: Partisan media priming and the application of racial justice in America

Journal Article Research and Politics · October 1, 2022 Can accessing a partisan media environment—irrespective of its content—change how Americans interpret and assess news? We examine this question by focusing on one of the most fraught issues in American society: racial justice. Although studies suggest that ... Full text Cite

Fifty shades of deservingness: an analysis of state-level variation and effect of social constructions on policy outcomes

Journal Article Journal of Public Policy · September 28, 2022 A patchwork of policies exists across the United States. While citizens' policy preferences in domains such as the criminal legal system, gun regulations/rights, immigration, and welfare are informed by their political predispositions, they are also shaped ... Full text Cite

Contraception Deserts: The Effects of Title X Rule Changes on Access to Reproductive Health Care Resources

Journal Article Politics and Gender · September 1, 2022 Historically, access to contraception has been supported in a bipartisan way, best exemplified by consistent congressional funding of Title X-the only federal program specifically focused on providing affordable reproductive health care to American residen ... Full text Cite

Negotiating professional identity formation in medicine as an ‘outsider’: The experience of professionalization for minoritized medical students

Journal Article SSM - Qualitative Research in Health · December 1, 2021 Introduction: While the U.S. general population is increasingly diverse, less than 15% of medical school matriculants are from minoritized backgrounds. Unfortunately, early evidence suggests that the process of professional identity formation (PIF) for min ... Full text Cite

Fear, Institutionalized Racism, and Empathy: The Underlying Dimensions of Whites’ Racial Attitudes

Journal Article PS: Political Science & Politics · October 2020 ABSTRACTFor nearly 75 years, scholars of American public opinion have sought to measure whites’ attitudes toward blacks: social scientists have invented and revised ways to measure what we could refer to as “racial prejudic ... Full text Cite

From Suffragists to Pink Pussyhats: In Search of Intersectional Solidarity

Journal Article PS: Political Science & Politics · July 2020 The 100th anniversary of the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment is an opportunity to reflect on the role of women in American politics. The tools of intersectionality allow scholars to pinpoint the progress and pitfalls produced by ongoing mo ... Full text Cite

The Dynamics of Racial Resentment across the 50 US States

Journal Article Perspectives on Politics · June 2020 Although many scholars who study the role of racial animus in Americans’ political attitudes and policy preferences do so to help us understand national-level politics, (racialized) policy is largely shaped at the state level. States are laboratori ... Full text Cite