Aisha A. Upton

Ph.D Candidate in Sociology
University of Minnesota

The Emmett Till Antilynching Act and the History of Anti-lynching Movements in the United States

by Aisha A. Upton-Azzam on Aug. 30, 2022 at TSP Specials
There has been a long road to the passage of an antilynching law,  paved by scores of scholars, activists, and politicians between 1882 until President Joe Biden signed the Emmett Till Antilynching Act – an act that establishes lynching as a federal hate crime – into law on March 29, 2022. The Act named after […]

AirBnb’s Anti-Black Problem

by Aisha Upton on Jan. 14, 2016 at There's Research on That
A recent working paper from Harvard found that hosts of the room/house renting service Airbnb discriminate against renters with Black-sounding names. The study revealed that “requests from guests with distinctly African-American names are roughly 16% less likely to be accepted than identical guests with distinctively White names.” Unfortunately, racial discrimination based on names is nothing […]

Best of 2015: Is #MasculinitySoFragile?

by Allison Nobles and Aisha Upton on Dec. 23, 2015 at There's Research on That
Let’s do this, Twitterers! RT if you want to see me fight @MechofJusticeWZ per his request #MasculinitySoFragile pic.twitter.com/uBihFlcA3P — Pia Glenn (@PiaGlenn) September 23, 2015 In September 2015, the hashtag #masculinitysofragile first swept across the greater twitter community—even gaining its own twitter account. Tweeters use the hashtag to point out how masculinity and expectations for […]

Segregation, North and South

by Aisha Upton on Nov. 24, 2015 at Discoveries
Angelina Grigoryeva and Martin Reuf, “The Historical Demography of Residential Segregation,” American Sociological Review, 2015 Gentrification is a hot-button issue. The renovation and rebuilding of homes and businesses provide cultural changes that socially separate wealthy whites who move into minority neighborhoods from current residents, even when the spacial distance between the groups is small or […]

Aisha is a Ph.D candidate in sociology at the University of Minnesota. Broadly, her research is historical in method and focuses on race and gender, social movements, organizations, and civil society/civic participation. Her dissertation examines the ways that mainstream organizations respond to radical movements through exploring the mechanisms through which Black Greek-Letter Organization sororities responded to the Black feminist movement from 1968-1980. In addition, Aisha addresses Black civic engagement in areas like Twitter and the Black Lives Matter movement. Aisha holds a BA in African American Studies and a MA in Sociology from Ohio University.