Mixed Race Studies

Misty Copeland, Brooklyn Mack coming to Columbia

The State
Columbia, South Carolina
2016-01-19

Erin Shaw

Misty Copeland

The principal ballerina and former Columbia dancer to speak at ballet fundraiser

Misty Copeland, one of the most famous ballerinas in the country, will appear in Columbia with professional ballet dancer and South Carolina native Brooklyn Mack for a fundraiser benefitting two of the city’s ballet companies.

Columbia Classical Ballet and Columbia City Ballet are jointly organizing a March 15 luncheon, for which costs and profits will be split evenly among both companies.

Copeland and Mack will speak about the arts at the ticketed event, which will have seating available for the public.

…Copeland has danced for American Ballet Theatre — one of the top companies in the country — since 2000, when she was the only African American woman in a company of 80 dancers.

In June 2015, she was promoted to principal dancer, making her the first African American woman to ever be promoted to the position in the company’s 75-year history…

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What Happened in Missouri Puts the Nation on Notice

Time
2015-11-10

Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., William S. Tod Professor of Religion and African-American Studies
Princeton University

Imagine what could happen at Ohio State or UCLA or any other major university. The activists already have.

What happened at the University of Missouri has sent shockwaves throughout this country: A startling coalition of students and faculty just forced the top leadership of the University to resign. The students had had enough. A swastika drawn with human feces on a residential dorm was the latest incident in a long list of ugly incidents, which made it clear that some people believed that black students did not belong at the University of Missouri. The image and the medium spoke volumes about those who composed it.

President Wolfe’s tepid response sealed his fate, but as with every other issue involving race in America, change is never given; it must always be won. And the student protests, Jonathan Butler’s hunger strike, the faculty’s threat of a walk out, and the strike among black football students announced that a new wave of campus activism has arrived, armed with the power to bring real change. The nation has been put on notice.

We have seen something like this before. In 1968 and 1969, black students organized protests across some two hundred campuses in the United States. These were among the first significant wave of black students on predominantly white campuses, and they brought with them the energy and expectation of the black freedom movement—particularly the militancy of Black Power. They pushed for the hiring of black faculty, argued for an increase in financial aid for African American students, and pressed administrators to support black living spaces. In short, they challenge the whiteness of American universities and colleges…

…What we saw in Columbia, Missouri, was something different. There was nothing nostalgic about it. The protests were decidedly of this moment. These students are shaped by the startling contrast of the nation’s first black president and the black lives matter movement. They have seen the viral videos of police brutality, and many have watched family and friends struggle to recover from the economic devastation that has left their lives in shambles. They have witnessed, some even participated in, the convulsions of Ferguson and Baltimore…

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The Color Of Health: Skin Color, Ethnoracial Classification, And Discrimination In The Health Of Latin Americans

Social Science & Medicine
Available online: 2014-06-01
DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2014.05.054

Krista M. Perreira, Professor of Public Policy and Associate Dean Office for Undergraduate Research
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Edward E. Telles, Professor of Sociology
Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey

Highlights

• Uses newly collected data on 4921 adults from Brazil, Columbia, Mexico, and Peru
• Examines multiple measures of race/ethnicity and their associations with health
• Finds significant skin-color gradients in self-reported health.
• Finds significant skin-color gradients in class-based discrimination and low SES.
• SES and class-based discrimination largely account for disparities in health by skin color.

Latin America is one of the most ethnoracially heterogeneous regions of the world. Despite this, health disparities research in Latin America tends to focus on gender, class and regional health differences while downplaying ethnoracial differences. Few scholars have conducted studies of ethnoracial identification and health disparities in Latin America. Research that examines multiple measures of ethnoracial identification is rarer still. Official data on race/ethnicity in Latin America are based on self-identification which can differ from interviewer-ascribed or phenotypic classification based on skin color. We use data from Brazil, Columbia, Mexico, and Peru to examine associations of interviewer-ascribed skin color, interviewer-ascribed race/ethnicity, and self-reported race/ethnicity with self-rated health among Latin American adults (ages 18-65). We also examine associations of observer-ascribed skin color with three additional correlates of health – skin color discrimination, class discrimination, and socio-economic status. We find a significant gradient in self-rated health by skin color. Those with darker skin colors report poorer health. Darker skin color influences self-rated health primarily by increasing exposure to class discrimination and low socio-economic status.

Read or purchase the article here.