Current Projects

We examine how physical spaces (e.g., houses, neighborhoods, geographic regions) become imbued with racial meaning and how this meaning can maintain racial inequality. 

Ongoing Projects

• Undoing racially biased placemaking

• Polluting Black Schools

• Stereotyping Black areas as polluted dampens protection for Black residents' health

• Racialized Physical Space Exemplars

• Is Your Neighborhood a Lost Cause? Resource Investment and Lay Theories of Places

Working Papers

• Motivation to Control Prejudice Moderates Environmental Discrimination

Relevant Publications

*James, D., Bonam, C. M., & Taylor, V. J. (2023) "Crime" in Context: Racialized Physical Space Shifts Person Perception. Race and Social Problems, 15(2), 140-153. DOI: 10.1007/s12552-022-09361-8

*Yantis, C. & Bonam, C. M. (2021). Inconceivable middle-class Black space: The architecture and consequences of space-focused stereotype content at the race-class nexus. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 47(7), 1101-1118. DOI:10.1177/0146167220960270

†Bonam, C. M., †*Yantis, C. A., & Taylor, V. J. (2018). Invisible middle-class Black space: Asymmetrical person and space stereotyping at the race-class nexus. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 1-24. DOI: 10.1177/1368430218784189 †Indicates shared first authorship. 

Bonam, C. M., Taylor, V. J., & *Yantis, C. A. (2017). Racialized physical space as cultural product. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 11(9), DOI: 10.1111/spc3.12340

Dotson, E., Bonam, C. M., & Jagers, J. (2017). Redefining race as a process: Implications for healthcare leadership. Journal of Health Administration Education, 34 (2), Spring, 295-318.

Bonam, C. M., Bergsieker, H. B., & Eberhardt, J. L. (2016). Polluting Black space. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. DOI: 10.1037/xge0000226

How can critical race education help people understand that race is a social construct and that racism is a systemic problem? This work also examines how such shifts in understanding of race and racism may reduce stereotyping, raise critical consciousness, motivate antiracist social action, and increase support for race-conscious social policy.   

Ongoing Projects 

• Mapping racism is acknowledging racism: An organizational antiracism intervention to boost systemic racism perceptions among educational technology professionals

• Mapping racism is acknowledging racism: An organizational antiracism intervention to boost systemic racism perceptions among environmental scientists

• Place-based critical history reduces space-focused racial stereotype application

Working Papers

• Racial Equity Lessons Learned as a Mother-Scholar-Activist

• White antiracist education as decolonial pedagogy

• Cultural Violence in News Coverage of the George Floyd Murder: Exploring Media Depictions of Police Brutality toward Black Americans

• Perceptions and Denials of Voter Suppression as Racist: Testing the Marley Hypothesis and a Brief Educational Intervention

Relevant Publications

• *Coleman, B. R., Collins, C. R., & Bonam, C. M. (2021). Interrogating Whiteness in community research and action. American Journal of Community Psychology, 67, or 486-504. DOI: 10.1002/ajcp.12473

• *Coleman, B., Bonam, C. M., & *Yantis, C. (2019). "I thought ghettos just happened": White Americans' responses to learning about place-based critical history. In S. Mukherjee & P. Salter (Eds.), History and Collective Memory from the Margins: A Global Perspective. Nova Science Publishers.

• Bonam, C. M., *Das, V. N., *Coleman, B. R. & Salter, P. S. (2018). Ignoring history, denying racism: Mounting evidence for the Marley Hypothesis and epistemologies of ignorance. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 1-9. DOI:10.1177/1948550617751583

With this line of work, we examine experiences and perceptions of multiracial people to illuminate both the flexible nature of race, and how stereotypes about multiracial people can be constraining.  We are interested in how these stereotyping processes contribute to racial inequality, and how supporting multiracial community can be an effective intervention. 

Ongoing Projects

• Racial Identity Choice Matters: Opportunity Consequences for White-identified Black/White Biracial People

• What are you? How multiracial people experience and cope with social identity threat.

• Mixed Race Representations, Co-opting Multiracial identity, and Support for Race-conscious Social Policy

Working Papers

• Racial Identity Choice Matters: Divergent evaluations of Black, Biracial, and White identified Biracial people

• How Genetic Race Conceptions Relate to Beliefs about the "Naturalness" of Black-White Racial Health and Socioeconomic Disparities

Relevant Publications

*James, D. & Bonam, C. M. (2023). Biogeographic ancestry information facilitates genetic racial essentialism: Consequences for race-based judgments. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 53, 631-661. DOI:10.1111/jasp.12932

Taylor, V. J., *Yantis, C., Bonam, C. M., & Hart, A. (2021). What to do? Predicting coping strategies following ungroup members’ stereotyping behaviors in interracial interactions. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 47(7), 1084-110. DOI: 10.1177/0146167220960269

Sanchez, D., & Bonam, C. M. (2009). To disclose or not to disclose Biracial identity: The effect of Biracial disclosure on perceiver evaluations and target responses. Journal of Social Issues, 65, 129-149.DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-4560.2008.01591.x

Bonam, C. M.& Shih, M. J. (2009). Exploring Multiracial individuals’ comfort with intimate interracial relationships. Journal of Social Issues, 65, 87-103.DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-4560.2008.01589.x

Shih, M. J., Bonam, C. M., Sanchez, D., & Peck, C. (2007). The social construction of race: Biracial identity and susceptibility to stereotypes. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, 13, 125-133.DOI: 10.1037/1099-9809.13.2.125