Colorism 2.0: Insights from Psychology, Economics, and the Media

Michaela Angela Davis

Writer, Creative Director, Producer and Image Activist

Michaela Angela Davis is a writer, creative director, producer, and Headshot activist focusing on the intersections of gender, race, fashion, culture, beauty, and identity. She is the creator and executive producer of HULU’s The Hair Tales, a dynamic six part docu-series celebrating Black women’s identity, beauty, culture and humanity, uniquely expressed through the stories in hair featuring Ayanna Pressley, CHIKA, Marsai Martin, Chlöe Bailey and fellow executive producers Tracee Ellis Ross and Oprah Winfrey, recently nominated for two NAACP Headshot Awards. Davis collaborated with Mariah Carey on The Meaning of Mariah Carey, a memoir of her identity — an instant #1 New York Times Bestseller. She has spoken globally and has been a cultural contributor and writer for The Atlantic, Allure, CNN, MSNBC, and the BBC. Her most recent project is another collaboration with Mariah Carey — a children's book titled The Christmas Princess, which is available now everywhere books are sold.

Renée Blake

Associate Professor of Linguistics and Social and Cultural Analysis | New York University

Renée Blake is a Professor in the Departments of Linguistics and Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University (NYU) with affiliations in the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS) and the Department of Anthropology. She is a founding member of the Center for the Study of Africa and the African Diaspora (CSAAD). She has served as an Associate Producer, Producer, and contributor to the EMMY-winning film series, Talking Black in America. She currently serves as the Chair of the JEDI (Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion) Council in the College of Arts and Science at NYU, and is a Faculty Lead (Ghana) for NYU’s Presidential Honors Scholars for Sophomores and Juniors. Her research examines language contact, race, ethnicity, and class with a focus on African American English, Caribbean English  Creoles, and New York City English. Her quantitative and qualitative work has been published in several professional journals and books, and she regularly does public interfacing around language in society. She is the co-founder of United Solutions Consultancy Group, a firm specializing in diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB), and whose mission is to increase cultural competencies and capacities and bring people closer together through their humanity. She holds a Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics, a Master of Science in Linguistics, and a Bachelor of Sciences in Biology, all from Stanford University. She also studied at the Università per Stranieri di Perugia in Italy. She was a National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded scholar at the University of Amsterdam and a Fulbright Scholar at the University of the West Indies, Barbados. Dr. Blake is the recipient of numerous other awards and accolades.

Aurelie Dariel

Adjunct Associate Professor of Economics | NYU Abu Dhabi

Aurelie Dariel's research interests lie at the intersection of Behavioral and Labor Economics. She uses controlled experiments in the lab, the field, or online to explore how individuals' preferences and social networks affect choices and labor market outcomes. Aurelie has taught courses at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels on various topics. At present, she is teaching Economics of Gender at NYU Abu Dhabi. She has experience working for the French government as a Project Manager and consulting for the Abu Dhabi government. Aurelie is a Research Affiliate at the Center for Behavioral Institutional Design (C-BID), where she investigates race and gender inequalities in labor markets.

Rogaia M. Abusharaf

Professor of Anthropology | Georgetown University in Qatar

Rogaia Mustafa Abusharaf is a Professor of Anthropology at SFSQ-Georgetown University. She is the author of Wanderings (Cornell U. Press) and Transforming Displaced Women in the Sudan: Politics and the Body in a Squatter Settlement and Darfur Allegory, both from the University of Chicago Press. She is the founding Editor of Monsoon: Journal of the Indian Ocean Rim (Duke University Press). Her ethnographic work focuses on cultural anthropology and feminist ethnography, and her fieldwork encompasses Sudan, Zanzibar, and the Sultanate of Oman.

Sarah AlZaabi

Associate Director, Inclusion and Equity | NYU Abu Dhabi

Sarah AlZaabi is the Assistant Director for the Office of Inclusion and Equity and has been with NYUAD since October 2020. She completed her Masters of Art in Human Rights Studies from Columbia University

Sondos Eatamadi

Tomoh Graduate Fellow, Office of Inclusion and Equity | NYU Abu Dhabi

Sondos Eatamadi is a Tomoh Fellow who graduated from NYUAD with a degree in Psychology, and a master's in Work and Organizational Psychology from the University of Nottingham. Her research background explores the intersection between religious identity and well-being, focusing on how religious mechanisms promote mental health and workplace behaviors. She is committed to fostering a confident and thriving community for all.

Welcome Remarks and History | Fatiah Touray

The Work of Colorism 2.0 | Renée Blake

Colorism Around the World | Edward Telles

Together with Angela Dixon, we draw on an interdisciplinary and increasingly global literature concerning skin color and colorism, which are related to status throughout the world. The vast majority of research has investigated Western societies, where color and colorism have been closely related to race and racism. In Latin America, the focus of my research, the two sets of concepts have particularly overlapped. In the rest of the world, particularly in Asia, color and colorism have also been important but have evolved separately from the relatively new concepts of race and racism. In recent years, however, color consciousness and white supremacy appear to have been increasingly united, globalized, and commodified, as exemplified by the global multibillion-dollar skin-lightening industry. Finally, we document the growing methodological attention to measurements of skin color and social science data that incorporate skin color measures. I invite audience members to discuss this emerging topic, particularly to present hypotheses and fill in lacunae in countries or regions with little or no research on skin color and colorism.

Session 1: Quantifying Colorism

Global Evidence on Colorism | Nikos Nikiforakis

We provide global evidence of colorism using a newly collected dataset of incentivized beliefs from nationally representative samples in 70 countries (n = 65,000), covering 90% of the world’s population. We examine the relationship between skin tone and perceptions of relative honesty and intelligence, documenting substantial cross-country variation in colorist attitudes. We further investigate the factors that may explain this variation, including individual characteristics associated with colorist beliefs. By systematically measuring colorism on a global scale for the first time, our study offers new insights into its underlying drivers and societal implications.

The Muddy Margins: On Colorism, Race, and Quantitative Methods | Robert Reece

Quantitative methodology is essential to understanding racial stratification in the United States. They allow us to look past casual anecdotes to explore the true depths of inequality experienced by people of color. Nonetheless, the country's historically haphazard system of racial categorization classified people with vastly different phenotypes into the same racial groups. Specifically, one-drop rules forced all people with African ancestry into the category "black" despite some enjoying very dark skin tones and some sporting very light skin tones. Over the past few decades, researchers have continuously identified vast differences in the life chances of these dark and light black Americans, despite their mutual racial classification. Here, I explore how such skin tone stratification obscures the racial data we have come to rely so much on. I ask "how did we get here," "how deep is the problem," and "what can we do about it."

The Hidden Toll: Personal vs. Vicarious Color Discrimination and Self-Rated Health in Latin America | Angela Dixon

An extensive literature has established that perceiving racial/color discrimination is linked with adverse health outcomes. Yet, puzzlingly, studies throughout Latin America find an inconsistent association between self-reported racial/color discrimination and adverse health, suggesting a diminished importance of color discrimination in these societies. These findings are situated within a second paradox: the tendency for Latin Americans to report high levels of witnessing racial/color discrimination against another person (vicarious discrimination), but low levels of individuals reporting experiencing discrimination against themselves (personal discrimination). Using cross-sectional survey data from the Project on Ethnicity and Race in Latin America (n = 4736), I investigate the relationship between personal and vicarious color discrimination and poor health in four Latin American countries with the largest indigenous and Afrodescendant populations (Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, and Peru). While personal color discrimination is not associated with poor health, vicarious color discrimination is associated with increased odds of poor health. These findings suggest color discrimination may play a more important role in shaping health outcomes in this region than previously understood and underscore the need for further investigation of both the direct and spill-over effects of color discrimination.

“Tenderheaded” Memoir Reading | Michaela Angela Davis

Session 2: The Politics of Colorism

Geopolitics and Liberal Racism in South Africa | Richard Pithouse

Liberalism claims a unique moral authority. However, both its founding texts and its historical record show it to have been a philosophy that never intended to extend rights for all. It has also been constitutively tied to racism, and to what Du Bois famously called the ‘color line’.

In South Africa, a set of liberal think tanks and media projects stridently assume the absolute moral superiority of liberalism while simultaneously taking positions on geopolitics that are patently racist. Moreover, it is evident that liberal reason runs out of road when it is asked to confront this apparent contradiction and often collapses into paranoia and conspiracy theory.
The proposed paper will begin by noting the racism inherent in the works of liberal philosophers such as John Locke and John Stuart Mill. It will then show that liberalism was, historically, profoundly entangled with racism. It will explore this in the context of Du Bois’s idea of the ‘color line’. Moving into the present, it will note the racial double standards in Western geopolitical positions, with regard to evident double standards on many issues, arguing that there is a clear racialised variance in the value ascribed to human lives.

The paper will then examine how white liberalism has taken this up in South Africa, with a particular focus on the Brenthurst Foundation and the Daily Maverick. It will show that these kinds of liberal ideas are patently hostile to African sovereignty and the very idea of equality between all people.

Resisting the Colour Line: South Asian Workers and Racialized Labor Politics in the 20th Century Gulf | Hessa Alnuaimi

This presentation examines the intersections of race, labour, and colonial capitalism by centering the mobilisation of South Asian migrant workers in the 20th-century Gulf. Drawing on archival research, particularly the accounts of South Asian migrants themselves, it challenges dominant Gulf historiography that erases their political agency and depoliticises their struggles. Rather than merely seeking labour reforms, South Asian workers engaged in broader anti-colonial and anti-capitalist resistance, perceiving their struggles as intertwined with Gulf Arabs and wider decolonisation movements across the Global South. The racialisation of South Asians in the Gulf — as essential yet deportable labour — mirrors colonial hierarchies theorised by W.E.B. Du Bois and Frantz Fanon. Du Bois’ “global colour line” is evident in the Gulf’s labour system, where South Asians were positioned as exploitable yet politically silenced. Fanon’s critique of colonial racial alienation further informs how these migrants, despite their deep entanglement in the Gulf’s economy, were denied political agency and reduced to economic instruments. By engaging with Global South thinkers and subaltern narratives, this presentation situates South Asian mobilisation within the broader structures of colourism and racial capitalism, demonstrating how colonial racial hierarchies persisted in the postcolonial Gulf. It contributes to discussions on colourism by showing how skin colour and racialised labour regimes continue to shape migration and economic exploitation. In doing so, it seeks to decolonise Gulf historiography and reaffirm the role of South Asian workers in the region’s political and social history.

Arap as in Black: A Pre-History of Colorism & Racialized Difference Making in West Asia | Mostafa Minawi

The late 19th and early 20th centuries were times of competitive imperialism, usually associated exclusively with French, British, and Italian expansionist logic in Africa and Asia. The Ottoman Empire, which stretched across Southeast Europe, West Asia, and Northeast Africa, maintained an expansionist posture, with its multi-cultural ruling elites adopting some of the logic of global imperialism, including the racializing of non-Ottoman and Ottoman subjects alike. Those who hailed from Arabic-speaking majority provinces, though a traditional part of the ruling elites in Istanbul, were increasingly the target of racialization along the dichotomous color rubric of White and Black, with the latter carrying with it connotations of inferiority. The word Arap had the double meaning of “Arab” as an ethnic market and “Black,” describing a racialized notion of an assumed darker skin tone associated with the Southern reaches of the empire, including Arabic-speaking parts of the Levant and Arabia. My intervention explicates how the language of color-based racialization, though not new, took on a different meaning in the context of the late 19th century and the increasingly globalized understanding of racial characteristics and the justification of colonialism across an imagined North-South divide. I argue that a close examination of some of the debates within the elites of the empire shows that a color-based racialization — White/Black, Türk/Arap — was reflected in elite urban societies of Ottoman West Asia and Northeast Africa, from Istanbul to Khartoum, well before the arrival of direct European colonial rule. This history of racialization along the color of skin (often assumed rather than observed) is a vital precursor to the later manifestation of colorism in Northeast Africa and West Asia.

DEI – Its Connection to Racism and Colorism in U.S. Higher Education | Adah Ward Randolph

Since the US 47th President won the election in November of 2024, I have continued to limit my exposure to the media, and in particular, the local news in the RED state of Ohio is hard to take at times. Yet, the other day, I had the television on, and this was what I heard from the recently elected Senator Bernie Moreno, who was endorsed by #47, “DEI is institutionalized racism.”  He went on to speak of his “Hispanic” origins.  What?  First, I was upset because he had never spoken of it before now that I knew of; besides he looked “WHITE.” But here is the double-edged sword; he as a “Hispanic” was supporting the oppression of others who may not be as WHITE looking as he who are of Latinx descent, particularly if they are Afro-Latin. It bubbled up in my consciousness that DEI is linked to RACISM, but it is also linked to COLORISM. How does this play out in US institutions of higher education such as the one I have been a member of for many years known for its global stance. This presentation addresses racism/colorism in higher education and how it plays out in the life of this one Black American woman with albinism. What does COLORISM look like to me? Why is a clear understanding of it important in the media? How do you be successful despite COLORISM/RACISM in a global world? These questions frame this intersectional qualitative study.

Session 3: Borders and Boundaries

Not by "Ocular Inspection Alone": Race, Colorism and Syrian Naturalization Cases in the United States | Sarah Gualtieri

This presentation focuses on references to color and complexion in a series of Syrian naturalization cases that were litigated in US courts in the early 20th century. Faced with the prospect that their Asian origins would make them ineligible for US citizenship (which was available, according to the statute, only to ""aliens being free white persons or to persons of African nativity or descent), Syrian immigrants went to court to claim their whiteness. While judges argued that race was not to be determined by ""ocular inspection alone,"" it is clear from the cases that color mattered. When, for example, Judge Smith denied  applicant Faras Shahid naturalization in a South Carolina district court in 1913, he noted that Shahid was "somewhat darker than is the usual mulatto of one-half mixed blood between the white and negro races." Drawing on court documents, oral histories, newspaper articles, and other sources, this presentation probes the significance of color in the determination of Syrian racial eligibility for citizenship; and it addresses the legacies of the naturalization cases for Arab American racialization in the United States.

Crossing the Color Line: The Rewards of Contemporary Passing | Ann Morning

“Passing” is a form of racial transformation that arises in societies that are stratified by race. To a large extent, it plays on variations in skin color that signify distinct racial statuses. While passing is broadly understood as an attempt to enjoy the privileges of a relatively advantageous racial status, in times and places where racial hierarchies become less rigid, it is not so clear who is likely to pass for what.

In the United States, the archetypical passer is a black person who presents him- or herself as white. In reality, historical passing was more complex, since passers were generally people of largely European ancestry, and sometimes they passed as something other than white: as South Asian, for example, or American Indian. But the 21st century has added yet another important dimension to passing: the rise of white people who present themselves as black, as Latinx, as North African, and more.

This presentation examines a series of case studies of modern-day passers in the United States, with special attention to their methods and their motives. The alteration of skin color plays a key role among other strategies for changing physical appearance. And an important departure from historical passing is that psychological motives for race change seem to be at least as important as economic incentives. In short, a notion of passing rooted in the 19th and 20th centuries is inadequate for understanding today’s attempts at race change, or the broader cultural hierarchies of color that inspire them.

Colorism and Racial Grammar in Morocco | Majid Hannoum

Race studies is a recent field in Maghrebi studies that was brought to the fore by the ongoing sub-Saharan African migration. Since the 1990s, this new pattern of migration has brought the issue of race and racism not only to Maghrebi societies but also to an international level. Anti-black racism in the region reverberated not only in Africa but also beyond, given the importance of blackness in the world. This paper looks at the example of Morocco, where large numbers of sub-Saharan Africans try to cross into Europe and often get stuck. The paper examines how the new migrants, due to their blackness, are perceived within an old category of modern blackness already entrenched in Moroccan imagination. However, the paper argues that the new perception of blackness can be understood within what I term racial grammar, which involves examining the racial differences that have marked Moroccan society since colonial rule. The notion of racial grammar suggests a framework for understanding how racial categories and hierarchies are constructed and maintained over time. Colonialism introduced whiteness as the criterion against which different ethnic Moroccans situate themselves, thereby positioning blackness lower in the racial hierarchy because of its opposition to whiteness. The paper will examine the meaning of these categories, along with the variety of racial shades that influence one's positioning within this racial grammar.

Not White But Still White-Collar: How Non-Western Expatriates do Boundary Work in the UAE | Anju Mary Paul

There is a growing population of non-Western and non-white, highly skilled migrants working in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Despite being white-collar migrants, they may still face marginalization and discrimination because racially, they are not white. Drawing upon interviews with 48 non-white multinational migrants originally from South Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, working as white-collar professionals in the UAE, we find that our interviewees engaged in various types of “boundary work” to try to limit their exposure to discrimination and improve their social standing in UAE society. They engaged in boundary crossing and blurring — well-established forms of individual-level boundary work — but we also observed them engaging in “boundary switching.” This form of boundary work involves migrants who are positioned lower in the hierarchy on a particular dimension (such as race/nationality), attempting to emphasize their higher status on a completely different dimension (particularly class). Boundary switching is an important mechanism for gaining better treatment in complex social settings where multiple identity dimensions are simultaneously at play and where individuals are positioned at higher or lower points on different hierarchies. Our findings thus offer a useful vocabulary for understanding how migrants agentically respond to the plural hierarchies they encounter in new destinations.

“Color Me” Poem Recital | Nathalie Handal
The Whites of Our Eyes: Film Screening and Discussion | Yaba Blay

Session 4: Measures of Colorism and Race

The Whites of Our Eyes: Film Screening and Discussion | Yaba Blay

Join us for a screening of The Whites of Our Eyes, a short documentary film that follows Dr. Yaba Blay on her journey to Ghana to explore the complex relationships between beauty, bodies, and b/Blackness. The film delves into the lingering impact of colonialism and the worship of whiteness, capturing powerful moments such as the recreation of the Clark Doll Test with school children and the story of a young hustler who bleaches his skin in preparation for his community's annual harvest festival. This thought-provoking documentary raises critical questions about contemporary ideals of beauty in Ghana. Following the screening, Dr. Yaba Blay will engage in a moderated discussion and audience Q&A session to further explore the themes presented in the film. We invite you to join us for an engaging and insightful conversation.

Skin Color and Socioeconomic Inequality: The Persistence of Colorism Among Jamaica's Black Population | Monique Kelly

Colorism, or skin color stratification, despite its historical antecedents, colorism remains a persistent hierarchical structure in previously colonialized societies. Moreover, it is an important determiner of life outcomes among Black people. Yet, we know little about how it impacts the socioeconomic conditions of Black-identified people outside the United States. Accordingly, this study expands the existing literature on intraracial stratification using Jamaica as a case example. Drawing on data from the 2010 and 2023 waves of the Americas Barometer social survey in Jamaica, I examine the impacts of colorism on two key indicators of socioeconomic status: educational attainment and household amenities. Although colorism is often regulated as a “public secret,” findings reveal that it is a significant determinant of socioeconomic outcomes in both years. And while the penalty of skin color has lessened in 2023 for tertiary education and household amenities, it remains for incomplete primary education. Findings thus, (1) provide empirical evidence of the continued social significance of colorism within Jamaica, (2) expand the extant literature of color stratification among Black peoples, and (3) highlight the need for the consideration of “racial” inequality in fostering equity, even in majority African-descended nations.

Presenting the Everyday Colourism Scale-Adolescents and Exploring its Suitability for Black and South Asian Adolescents Living in the UK | Nadia Craddock

Colourism is receiving growing attention in the social sciences. However, there is a lack of psychometric tools to capture people’s experiences of the prejudice, particularly ones designed for young people. This paper presents the Everyday Colourism Scale-Adolescents (ECS-A), an adaptation of the Everyday Colourism Scale for teenagers. Following a pilot and consultancy phase, Study 1 presents the exploratory factor analysis based on 550 Black and South Asian adolescents aged 13-19. The 17-item scale was unidimensional with a good model fit and good internal consistency. The scale also showed concurrent and increment validity with associations between experiences of colourism and body image and self-esteem. Study 2 details confirmatory factor analysis and test re-test reliability with a second sample of Black and South Asian adolescents aged 13-19. Taken together, results indicate that the ECS- A is suitable for Black and South Asian adolescents living in the UK. Future work should test the psychometric properties with other racialised minority groups. The scale will allow researchers to explore additional associations between experiences of colourism other psychological factors such as feelings of belonging and behaviours such as skin lightening practices among adolescents both cross-sectionally and longitudinally.

“You laugh at it as a joke, but it’s not funny:” Young People’s Experiences of Colourist Banter | Aisha Phoenix

Colourism is a form of prejudice that penalises people the darker their skin is and the further their features are from those associated with whiteness. This paper explores how young people in the UK use jokes and banter to perpetuate colourism, particularly targeting those with dark and very dark skin. Drawing on reflexive thematic analysis of interviews with minoritised ethnic students aged 13-18 years in London and Bristol, we argue that colourist jokes and banter are often presented as harmless fun, however, they reproduce racist and colourist tropes, which can be dehumanising. For example, Black students with dark skin are sometimes likened to primates, which is animalistic dehumanisation. We argue that colourist jokes were used to mark and test the boundaries of friendships. Students of different ethnicities said that it was often Black students with dark skin who made colourist jokes at the expense of their peers, who were often their friends. Some suggested that this was due to the belief that a pre-emptive strike would protect them from being targeted. We argue that colourist banter and humour work to maintain racialised hierarchies, and while students often laugh off colourist jokes, they can harm those with dark skin. Furthermore, the fact that students with dark skin themselves, and particularly Black boys, also perpetuate colourism may suggest that the prejudice is being internalised in concerning ways.

How are colorism and racism related? Preliminary quantitative evidence from around the world | Andrew Francis-Tan

It is widely assumed that colorism (discrimination based on skin color) and racism (discrimination based on racial or ethnic group) are closely linked. However, previous research barely explores their potential connections. In this presentation, I briefly outline the ways in which colorism and racism may potentially be related. Then, I offer some preliminary evidence using data from Project Implicit.

Hall’s Q Sort Mathematical Equation (∑(A+B) ÷ (1.1) =Q): Colorism in Evolution of a Social Science | Ronald Hall

The study of skin color/colorism is a constantly evolving, evidence-based endeavor. Investigators who attempt the explanation of colorism by race disserve prudent scientific research. Hall’s Q sort mathematical equation in genesis is a descriptive empirical mathematical tool that enables an incremental step by the social science academy at-large toward scientific exactness. Absent Q sort, as a mathematical tool of social science, well-respected critics have commenced to denigrate social science as a soft science in the absence of a mathematically grounded methodology. Any failed challenge to the accusations of social science being a soft science may be enabled by Q sort exactness per the introduction of its technical expertise originally devised by Dr. Ronald E. Hall. Said exactness is enabled by the construction of a Q sort mathematical equation that when applied, will yield descriptive ratio data that may broaden to the qualitative. Extending from this construction, Hall’s Q sort mathematical equation is original in the social science field. Its scientific exactness moves the discipline ever so slightly forward where accusations of being a soft science by critics may be overcome and eventually cease to exist.

Session 5: Colorism in Art

Music, Women and Secrecy Transformation | Aisha Bilkhair

Ever since its inception, music contributed to shape and influenced the experience and development of humankind. The spiritual interaction between human beings and sound can be detected in many aspects of life. Music can bring back memories, celebrate sentiments, imitate nature, set the rhythm of work as well as stimulate creativity, love, sleep, nostalgia, patriotism, and euphoria. We will explore aspects of how secrecy is maintained by members of these musical groups and how such secrets are enigmatically circulated, and how they are sometimes trivialized for purposes known only to the group.

There is a brief discussion related to the role of women in utilizing musical forms to orally circulate knowledge, worldviews, and life concepts from one generation to the next. Women are highly regarded in these musical groups’ hierarchy as they are called ‘mama’ and all other members are their children. The reconstruction of social settings and the elevation of mothers contributed to the empowerment of these women who became social and mentally tough especially in maintaining these musical traditions.

This presentation is concerned with the legacy on the musical expressions of African origin, which have survived to the present. It encompasses the period before and after the discovery of oil, and it investigates the travel of these musical genres from Africa, its transformation to sustain its existence, and its impact of different forms of music on the UAE socio-cultural landscape. At the same time, it seeks to understand the impact and function of musical traditions on those who imported it; and on their descendants, who continued to perform the music of their ancestors’ under a strikingly different socio-economy and evolving identity.

A Different Kind of African-Indian Imagination: Media, Performances, and Constructing Blackness | Neelima Jeychandran

This paper aims to understand how race and Blackness get reimagined, adapted, and visualized in India through films and expressive cultures. With three distinct examples — a Malayalam language film, Sudani from Nigeria, performed historiographies of African-Indian saints through Dhammal dance, and the touristic commodification of Dhammal performance by the Siddis — I want to discuss how diverse media and mediations socially construct race and color and simultaneously complicate our understanding of Indian Ocean migrant history. In particular, I discuss how the African descent community in India constructs Blackness and Africanness through stories of migration of Black saints, rituals, and Dhammal performances. In other words, I ask, how do regular people, through an array of media, produce a complex and, at times, competing discourse on race, class, caste, and color? How do racial assumptions and different outlooks on Afro-Indian connections need to be reviewed in the Black histories of the Indian Ocean?

Colourism, Creolization, and the Case of the Chagos Islands | Cóilín Parsons

In two novels from the past two decades — Shenaz Patel’s The Silence of the Chagos and Natasha Soobramanien and Luke Williams’ Diego Garcia — the plight of the Chagos islanders is brought to a global novel-reading audience. Removed from their archipelagic home in the 1960s, the islanders’ dispossession, settlement in (primarily) Mauritius, and long fight for return are the subject of two novels which take widely different approaches to narrating this loss. Patels’ realist prose, with some temporal disjunction, takes a journalistic line on the dispossession and life in Mauritius, documenting displacement and subsequent discrimination. Soobramanien and Williams’ highly fragmented, bricoleur novels with shifting narrative standpoints and intoxicated prose, set in the UK, is a more complex investigation of the politics of solidarity and activism in the fight for return. In both, we find an attention to colourism in both Mauritius and the UK that complicates quite substantially Francoise Lionnet’s study of creolization in Mauritian literature. The presence of the islanders, in both Mauritius and the UK, forces a re-consideration of even the dynamic processes of creolization, as we consider the secondary colonization of the islanders in and by Mauritius, and the way that the islanders become re-coloured in the creole society of Mauritius. As Mauritius, thanks to the work of Lionnet (working with Shu-Mei Shih and developing Glissant), is one of the proving grounds of theories of creolization, the paper argues that paying new attention to the colourism that the Chagos islanders have faced since the 1960s complicates our understanding of the processes of creolization in the Indian Ocean.

Black Interiority Visualized: Slavery and Black Cinemas | Robert Patterson

Black cinematic narratives of slavery, especially those that emphasize nuanced and complicated Black perspectives, aim to show the brutality of slavery as an institution; the cruelty of enslavers; the psychological grip that slavery holds on the enslaved and their descendants; the various forms of resistance the enslaved enacted; the ways that the enslaved formed community and family; the epistemologies of race and white supremacy that the enslaved shared; and the sustained efforts the enslaved took to live beyond slavery’s limitations (sometimes even understanding that limitations that would exist after Emancipation). While not exhaustive, this list details the perspectives and themes that emerge prominently in Black cinematic narratives of slavery that, even if not always produced by Black people, still work intentionally to counter dominant narratives of slavery to create narratives that do not espouse these principles. In some ways, cinematic narratives of slavery complement and visualize post-civil rights narratives of slavery and autobiographical narratives of slavery in particular. They also extend narratives of slavery to audiences who primarily consume knowledge through visual media. The adaptation of written texts to cinematic ones further evidence this claim.

Dr. Adah Ward Randolph is a Professor of Educational Research and Evaluation (EDRE) at Ohio University in the Patton College of Education. She specializes in qualitative methodology, cultural studies, and the history of education. She received her Ph.D. from The Ohio State University in Educational Policy and Leadership with specializations in African American and Women’s education history, urban education policy, race, class and gender studies, curriculum, and qualitative methodology. Her primary research has focused on African American teachers and principals in urban communities in the 19th and 20th century urban North and South. Additionally, she has examined the constructs of intersectionality in the lives of African American women including autoethnographically framed research.

Dr. Randolph has over fifty publications in Tier I journals including Qualitative Inquiry, The Journal of African American History, Urban Education, Educational Studies, Journal of School Leadership, and History of Education Quarterly. Her most recent publications are “Black Joy: Love, Intimacy and Sexuality Amongst Black Intellectuals in the Academy,” in the Journal of Black Sexuality and Relationships; “What Color Are You?” A Critical Autoethographical Treatise about Race and  Color,” in The Routledge International Handbook of Colorism; and “Black Teachers on Teaching, Aging, and Retirement: The Girst Generation to Retire,” in Pedagogica Historica (forthcoming). Dr. Randolph is committed to the advancement of all people across all their intersectional positionalities. She is a member of many professional organizations and served in leadership roles including the Presidency of the History of Education Society.

Aisha Bilkhair PhD is a Research Advisor at the National Library and Archives. A Fulbright Post-Doctoral Fellow at Harvard University, she holds a bachelor’s degree in filmmaking from the San Francisco Art Institute (USA), a master’s degree in Ethnic Studies from San Francisco State University (USA) and a PhD in Arab Gulf Studies from the University of Exeter (UK). She is a member of several associations and committees such as the African Diaspora in Asia, Heads the Tolerance Committee and the Young Historian Award committee, among others. Recognized as an expert in oral history, ethnographic studies, and the African Diaspora, her chief research interests are cross-cultural studies, women, youth, and the transformation of identity. 

Dr. Bilkhair is a bi-weekly newspaper columnist who lectures and writes extensively on these topics, with published articles ranging from cross-cultural dialogue to the evolution of women’seducation in the country. She is appointed member to the UAE National committee for Folk Music and the UAE representative in the International Council for Traditional Music & Dance (ICTMD) and the International Oral History Association (IOHA). Dr. Bilkhair is a graduate of the Government Leadership Program, Executive Leaders. She was recognized as one of the Most Influential People of African Decent (MIPAD) Creatives Edition in 2022 and many other awards since. In 2024 Dr Aisha was awarded the UAE Medal for Culture and Creativity in the 'Giving Class' Cultural Heritage and National Identity, presented during the 2024 UAE Government Annual Meeting.

Dr Aisha Phoenix is a Social Justice lecturer at the School of Education, Communication and Society at King’s College London. She is a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow and Principal Investigator of the Understanding Colourism Among Young People in the UK research project. She conducted the first major sociological study that explores colourism in the UK with Dr Nadia Craddock and has discussed colourism on various BBC programs, LBC, Deutsche Welle, and podcasts. Her publications include: ‘Colourism and the Politics of Beauty’ (Feminist Review) and ‘Colourism — how shade bias perpetuates prejudice against people with dark skin’ (The Conversation). With Dr Craddock she co-authored the chapter “Complicating the Idea of Light-Skin Privilege in the UK”, published in Hall and Mishra’s The Routledge International Handbook of Colorism, and journal articles exploring the Everyday Colourism Scale, how Black men experience colourism, how colourism operates in the family and how it affects relationships between women of different skin shades.

Andrew Francis-Tan is a senior lecturer and assistant dean at the LKY School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. Previously, he was an associate professor of economics at Emory University. He received his PhD in economics at the University of Chicago. Professor Francis-Tan engages in quantitative research in the fields of education, labor, and demography. His current research aims to understand patterns of inequality, public policies intended to empower vulnerable populations, and factors that influence social identities like race, gender, and religion.

Angela Dixon is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Emory University. Her research examines patterns of inequality, with a particular focus on how conceptualizations of race, ethnicity, skin color, and discrimination shape patterns of stratification across societies. Building on these interests, Dr. Dixon also investigates the lives of the bereaved after loss. Specifically, she explores the negative health and socioeconomic impacts of bereavement, with a focus on the implications of Black-White disparities in mortality.

Dr. Dixon’s research has been supported by various funders including the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIH K01 Career Development Award), the Spencer Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, and the American Sociological Association. Prior to joining the faculty at Emory, Dr. Dixon was a David E. Bell Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Population and Development Studies at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She earned her PhD in Sociology and Social Policy with a concentration in Demography from Princeton University and her BA in Psychology with a second major in Political Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Anju Mary Paul is Professor of Social Research and Public Policy at New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD). She holds a Bachelor's in Business Administration (First Class Honors) from the National University of Singapore, a Master's in Journalism from New York University, and a PhD in Sociology and Public Policy from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Anju is an international migration scholar with research interests that include emergent migration patterns, particularly to, from, and within Asia and the Middle East, gender and labor, globalization, domestic work, and care policy. She is the award-winning author of Multinational Maids: Stepwise Migration in a Global Labor Market (Cambridge University Press 2017) and Asian Scientists on the Move: Changing Science in a Changing Asia (Cambridge University Press 2021). She is also the editor of Local Encounters in a Global City (Ethos Books 2017). Her research has also been published in top journals in sociology and migration studies. She created the Global Care Policy Index, which quantitatively scores countries on the degree of social and labor policy protections they provide unpaid family caregivers and paid domestic workers.

Prior to joining NYUAD, Paul served as an inaugural faculty member at Yale-NUS College in Singapore. She has won numerous awards for her research, including the 2018 Thomas and Znaniecki Best Book Award from the International Migration Section of the American Sociological Association (ASA) and the 2018 Max Weber Award for Distinguished Scholarship from the Organizations, Occupations, and Work Section of the ASA.

Ann Morning is the Divisional Dean for Social Sciences, Vice Dean for Global and Strategic Initiatives, and James Weldon Johnson Professor of Sociology in New York University’s Faculty of Arts and Science. A member of NYU Abu Dhabi’s Affiliated Faculty, she served as Academic Director of 19 Washington Square North, NYUAD’s home in New York, from 2019 to 2022. Trained in demography, her research focuses on race, ethnicity, and the sociology of science, especially as they pertain to census classification worldwide and to individuals’ concepts of difference. She is the author of The Nature of Race: How Scientists Think and Teach about Human Difference (University of California Press 2011) and An Ugly Word: Rethinking Race in Italy and the United States (with Marcello Maneri, Russell Sage 2022).

Morning was a 2008-09 Fulbright Research Fellow at the University of Milan-Bicocca, a 2014-15 Visiting Scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation in New York, and a 2019 Visiting Professor at the Institut d’Études Politiques (Sciences Po) in Paris. She was a member of the U.S. Census Bureau’s National Advisory Committee on Racial, Ethnic and Other Populations from 2013 to 2019, and of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine 2022-23 Committee on the Use of Race, Ethnicity, and Ancestry as Population Descriptors in Genomics Research. Morning holds her BA in Economics and Political Science magna cum laude from Yale University, a Master’s of International Affairs from Columbia University, and her PhD in Sociology from Princeton University.

Cóilín Parsons is associate professor of English at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, where he also holds (along with Rogaia Abusharaf and Ananya Chakravarti) the Sonneborn Chair in Indian Ocean Studies. He writes about postcolonial and global south studies, global modernism, and questions of space and scale in literature. He is also associate editor of Monsoon: Journal of the Indian Ocean Rim.

Edward Telles is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine.  He received his PhD at the University of Texas at Austin and was formerly Professor at Princeton University, UCLA and the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research interests include skin color, race, ethnicity, and immigration. He has published widely in leading journals, including the American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, Annual Review of Sociology, Social Forces, and Demography. His first two books, Race in Another America: The Significance of Skin Color in Brazil (Princeton University Press, 2004) and Generations of Exclusion: Mexican Americans, Assimilation and Race (Russell Sage Foundation Press, 2008), won multiple awards. Recent books include Pigmentocracies: Ethnicity, Race and Color in Latin America (with the Project on Ethnicity and Race in Latin America; University of North Carolina Press 2014, Durable Ethnicity: Mexican Americans and the Ethnic Core (with Christina Sue, Oxford University Press, forthcoming) and The Trump Paradox: Migration, Trade and Racial Politics in U.S. Mexican Relations (ed. with Raul Hinojosa, University of California Press 2019). He directed an international effort on race, ethnicity, and skin color with a multidisciplinary team from throughout Latin America and is currently co-directing a project Rethinking Assimilation, based on a national survey of the United States. His work includes “Skin color and colorism: Global Research, concepts and measurement” (with Angela Dixon. Annual Review of Sociology 2017). In 2018, Telles was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Dr. Hessa Alnuaimi is an Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern politics and history at the University of Sharjah. Before joining Sharjah, she was an Associate Lecturer at the University of St Andrews, where she earned her PhD, which was awarded the APSA MENA Best Dissertation Prize. She also held a fellowship at Harvard University. Her research critically examines state formation in the Gulf through decolonial and critical race frameworks, exploring how the region’s integration into modernity and the global capitalist economy has shaped politics of legitimacy, authority, and migration.

Majid Hannoum is a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Kansas, USA. He is currently Ali Mazrui Senior Fellow at the Africa Institute in Sharjah. He earned a PhD in Arabic and Comparative Literature from Sorbonne University, France and a second PhD in History and Anthropology from Princeton University, USA. He is the editor of Practicing Sufism: Sufi Politics and Performance in Africa (2016) and the author of several books, including Secular Narrations and Transdisciplinary Knowledge (2023), The Invention of the Maghreb: Between Africa and the Middle East (2021), Living Tangier: Migration, Race, and Illegality in a Moroccan City (2020), Violent Modernity: France in Algeria (2010), and Colonial Histories, Postcolonial Memories: The Legend of the Kahina, a North African Heroine (2001).

He has held teaching positions at Princeton University, the College of New Jersey, the New School for Social Research in NYC, and Bard College. His research experience includes roles as a researcher at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, a fellow at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University, a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Anthropology at Columbia University, and a Senior Fulbright Fellow (twice). He has also served as a Senior Fellow at the Aga Khan Centre in London.

Michaela Angela Davis is a writer, creative director, producer and image activist focusing on the intersections of gender, race, fashion, culture, beauty, and identity. She is the creator and executive producer of HULU’s The Hair Tales, a dynamic six part docu-series celebrating Black women’s identity, beauty, culture and humanity, uniquely expressed through the stories in hair featuring Ayanna Pressley, CHIKA, Marsai Martin, Chlöe Bailey, and fellow executive producers Tracee Ellis Ross and Oprah Winfrey- nominated for two NAACP Image Awards. Davis collaborated with Mariah Carey on The Meaning of Mariah Carey a memoir of her identity — an instant #1 New York Times Bestseller.

She has spoken globally and has been a cultural contributor and writer for The Atlantic, Allure, CNN, MSNBC, and The BBC. Her most recent project is Something About Sumter, a short documentary film she directed and co-executive produced about the historic Clyburn's Beauty Salon. She is cofounder of the Sumter CROWN Act Coalition and GUCCI Changemaker councilmember. Davis is currently writing her memoirs in her maternal ancestral home Sumter, South Carolina.

Dr. Monique D. A. Kelly is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and core faculty in the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLAS) at Michigan State University. Her research primarily focuses on racial stratification and inequality, with a particular emphasis on the Anglophone Caribbean. Using primarily quantitative methods, her work examines how race — measured as multidimensional — shapes socioeconomic outcomes, specifically in relation to ideologies of racial mixing (or mestizaje/creolization). She investigates how these ideologies impact the recognition, explanations, and outcomes of social inequality. While traditional measures of inequality such as income (household or individual) and education are central to her work, she also considers alternative indicators like household amenities, homeownership, and household crowding. Dr. Kelly argues that these expense-based and unconventional economic measures provide a more reliable and insightful understanding of wealth attainment and standards of living in developing nations within the Anglophone Caribbean.

Beyond socioeconomic well-being, Dr. Kelly also explores how ideologies of racial mixing affect racial self-identification, claims to nationhood, and racial attitudes within the Anglophone Caribbean. Her research has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including Race and Social Problems, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, and Ethnic and Racial Studies.

Mostafa Minawi is Professor of History at Cornell University. He is the author of The Ottoman Scramble for Africa: Empire and Diplomacy from the Sahara to the Hijaz (Stanford University Press, 2016) and the Albert Hourani Book Prize co-winner, Losing Istanbul: Arab-Ottoman Imperialists and the End of Empire (SUP, 2022) and a number of articles on international law, late 19th-century imperialism, and microhistory. Both his books have been translated into Turkish and Arabic. His work explores the intimacies of Global History by investigating Ottoman imperialism and inter-imperial competition in central and northeastern Africa, southwestern Asia, and southeastern Europe. He does that by focusing on archival documents from the Global South.

He has held several prestigious fellowships in Turkey, Lebanon, Germany, and the United States and has taught in the United States, South Korea, and Lebanon. He is currently working on his third monograph tentatively titled, The Global History of a Roof Top in Jerusalem at the Turn of the Twentieth Century: The Geopolitics of Imperialism from Palestine to the Horn of Africa. In addition to his research-based scholarship, he participates in Public History projects, such history documentaries, historical video games, TED.Ed animated videos on the history of the Ottoman Empire, and his Op-eds have appeared on Al-Jazeera and the Wall Street Journal amongst others. Currently, he is a fellow at the National Humanities Center in the United States.

Dr. Nadia Craddock, PhD is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Appearance Research, UWE Bristol and a Post-doctoral Research Fellow at Kings College London. Nadia specializes in body image and colourism research and has co-developed several body image interventions for children and young people. Together, with Dr. Aisha Phoenix, Nadia has conducted qualitative research examining how minoritised ethnic adults in the UK experience and understand colourism. Additionally, Nadia led the development of the Everyday Colourism Scale — a brief measure to assess people’s experiences of skin shade prejudice in daily life.

Nathalie Handal is described as a “contemporary Orpheus, and an urgent and singular voice in contemporary poetry.” She has lived in four continents, worked in over 20 theatrical productions, and is the author of 10 award winning books, translated into over 15 languages, including Life in a Country Album; and The Republics, winner of the Virginia Faulkner Award for Excellence in Writing and the Arab American Book Award. Among her many honors, Handal is the recipient of awards and fellowships from the National Endowment for The Arts, PEN Foundation, Lannan Foundation, Fondazione di Venezia, Centro Andaluz de las Letras, and Africa Institute. She is Professor of Literature and Creative Writing at New York University Abu Dhabi, and writes the column, “The City and the Writer” for Words without Borders.

Neelima Jeychandran is an Assistant Professor of African Visual Culture in the Department of Art History at Virginia Commonwealth University, Qatar. She is an ethnographer, editor, and scholar who works on oceanic circulations, trade objects, and material histories of West and East Africa and western India. She is co-editor of the book Reimagining Indian Ocean Worlds (Routledge, 2020) and the co-editor of the Verge journal issue on “Indian Ocean Studies, African-Asian Affinities” (2022), and the series co-editor of the Routledge Indian Ocean and Trans-Asia book series. She is the Co-PI of the GA: MA Lab (Global Asia: Mobilities and Arts), a research lab that aims to study cultures, arts, and people in transit in the African and Indian Ocean worlds. She has received several research grants and fellowships, including the Humanities Without Walls seed grant and the Africa Multiple Research Fellowship at the University of Bayreuth.

Nikos Nikiforakis is a Professor of Economics at New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD), a Global Network Professor at NYU, and Co-Director of the Center for Behavioral Institutional Design (C-BID). He previously held senior positions at the University of Melbourne, the Max Planck Institute, and the CNRS in France. A behavioral economist, Nikos studies social cohesion and justice, focusing on social norms, inequality, cooperation, stereotypes, and institutional design. His work integrates insights from sociology, political science, psychology, and philosophy, relying on experimental methods in lab, field, and online settings. His research has appeared in leading journals such as American Economic Review, Nature Communications, and PNAS, supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, Australian Research Council, and Economic and Social Research Council. He has extensive editorial experience, serving as Founding Co-Editor of the Journal of the Economic Science Association and Associate Editor at European Economic Review, and Journal of Economic Psychology.

Nikos actively engages with policymakers, applying behavioral science to inform policy. He has advised government entities in Australia and the UAE, including the Presidential Court and the Department of Community Development. He currently explores global patterns of colorism using the World Behaviors and Stereotypes Dataset, a unique dataset containing among others incentivized beliefs from 70 countries accounting for 90 percent of the world population.

Renée Blake is a Professor in the Departments of Linguistics and Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University (NYU) with affiliations in the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS) and the Department of Anthropology. She is a founding member of the Center for the Study of Africa and the African Diaspora (CSAAD). She has served as an Associate Producer, Producer, and contributor to the EMMY-winning film series, Talking Black in America. She currently serves as the Chair of the JEDI (Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion) Council in the College of Arts and Science at NYU, and is a Faculty Lead (Ghana) for NYU’s Presidential Honors Scholars for Sophomores and Juniors. Her research examines language contact, race, ethnicity, and class with a focus on African American English, Caribbean English  Creoles, and New York City English. Her quantitative and qualitative work has been published in several professional journals and books, and she regularly does public interfacing around language in society. She is the co-founder of United Solutions Consultancy Group, a firm specializing in diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB), and whose mission is to increase cultural competencies and capacities and bring people closer together through their humanity. She holds a Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics, a Master of Science in Linguistics, and a Bachelor of Sciences in Biology, all from Stanford University. She also studied at the Università per Stranieri di Perugia in Italy. She was a National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded scholar at the University of Amsterdam and a Fulbright Scholar at the University of the West Indies, Barbados. Dr. Blake is the recipient of numerous other awards and accolades.

Richard Pithouse is an academic, columnist, journalist, editor, and activist who has taught in politics, philosophy, and history departments. He also teaches in trade union and social movement education projects in South Africa and elsewhere. His academic work has included political theory, with a focus on Frantz Fanon, urban studies, social movement studies, international relations, and musicology.

Pithouse is currently an International Research Scholar at the University of Connecticut, Distinguished Research Fellow at the Global Centre for Advanced Studies, Professor at Large at the University of the Western Cape, a columnist with the Mail & Guardian, and the Africa Coordinator for the Progressive International.

He was the founding editor of New Frame, which Achille Mbembe described as “one of the most exciting political, intellectual and cultural projects to emerge in Africa” and “arguably the top intellectual media platform on our Continent.” He was also the founding head of Inkani Books, which published a Zulu translation of The Wretched of the Earth and a collection of Amílcar Cabral’s writings, among other books. Pithouse is also the founder of The Forge, a cultural centre, and The Commune, a radical bookshop, both based in Johannesburg. His bestselling book, Writing the Decline, was praised by Mbembe as "a very important book from one of our most talented historians of the present."

Robert L. Reece is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin where his research explores race and racialization in the United States through some of the mechanisms that create and complicate race. Specifically, he examines the origins and maintenance of colorism in black America, the historical role of body size in creating race in America, and the long-term impacts of chattel slavery on inequality in the American South. His work has been published in a wide variety of peer reviewed journals and media outlets. He is currently contracted to write two book manuscripts: the forthcoming The Shades of Black Folk, which analyzes colorism in black America, and Not Today, which explores violent resistance during chattel slavery. He also serves as an expert consultant for the Federal Public Defenders Office in Fort Worth, Texas where he assists with mitigation reports to reduce the length of incarceration for inmates borne into severe social circumstance. Relatedly, he serves as a fellow for the Diversity and Resiliency Institute of El Paso, where he creates educational content that they use for anti-racist trainings and continuing education credits for social workers. Dr. Reece received his PhD in Sociology from Duke University in 2017. He is from Leland, Mississippi, a small town in the heart of the Mississippi Delta.

Dr. Robert J. Patterson is a professor of African American Studies and served as the inaugural chair of the Department of African American Studies at Georgetown University. He is the author of Destructive Desires: Rhythm and Blues Culture and the Politics of Racial Equality and Exodus Politics: Civil Rights and Leadership in African American Literature and Culture, co-editor of The Psychic Hold of Slavery: Legacies in American Expressive Culture, and editor of the award-winning Black Cultural Production After Civil Rights. Currently, he is working on a book titled Black Equity, Black Equality: Reparation and Black Communities and recently completed African American Slave Narratives: A Very Short Introduction, which is under contract with Oxford University Press.

Rogaia Mustafa Abusharaf is a Professor of Anthropology at SFSQ-Georgetown University. She is the author of Wanderings (Cornell U. Press) and Transforming Displaced Women in the Sudan: Politics and the Body in a Squatter Settlement and Darfur Allegory, both from the University of Chicago Press. She is the founding Editor of Monsoon: Journal of the Indian Ocean Rim (Duke University Press). Her ethnographic work focuses on cultural anthropology and feminist ethnography, and her fieldwork encompasses Sudan, Zanzibar, and the Sultanate of Oman.

Dr. Ronald E. Hall has been studying colorism for approximately thirty years. In 1990 he testified as expert witness for American’s first African American colorism litigation Morrow vs. IRS Atlanta Federal District Court, Atlanta, GA. Convinced that colorism is not exclusive to African Americans, Dr. Hall spent the following twelve years traveling to world locations such as India, Japan, Europe, and Africa where he conducted surveys and focus groups on colorism to substantiate his work. He is currently the author of twenty books and over two-hundred academic papers including colorism. He has conferred with doctoral students at such institutions as University of Pennsylvania, Harvard, University of Cape Town and recent dissertation committee assignments at Clemson University.

Dr. Hall’s media consultations include interviews with U.S. Consulate General, BET Television, and appearance in Oprah Winfrey’s Light Girls documentary. Dr. Hall consulted for a member of the U.S. Congress U.S. Congressman Bobby Rush’s Lovin the Skin I’m in and reference to “Racism and Obama’s candidacy” in TIME Magazine. Dr. Hall’s most recent book 2024 co-edited with Dr. Neha Mishra The Routledge International Handbook of Colorism (1st ed.). His current work pertains to the study of reverse colorism.

Sarah Gualtieri is Professor of History and American Studies at Georgetown University-Qatar. Her research and teaching bridge several fields, notably Arab American Studies, Critical Ethnic Studies and Middle East Migration studies. Her work focuses on issues of race, gender, and history-making in migrant communities. She conducts research in English, Arabic, French, and Spanish.

Gualtieri’s publications include two books, numerous articles and works of public-facing scholarship. Her first book, Between Arab and White: Race and Ethnicity in the Early Syrian American Diaspora examines the history of Arab racial formation in the United States with a particular focus on the problematic of “whiteness.” It traces how Arabs came to be officially classified as white by the US government, and how different Arab groups interpreted, accepted, or contested this racial classification over the course of the 20th century.

Gualtieri's second book, Arab Routes: Pathways to Syrian California uncovers the stories of Syrian, Lebanese and Palestinian migrants in Southern California, focusing on connections to and through Latin America and the multiethnic solidarities that emerge from them. Arab Routes won the Arab American Book Award and the Alixa Naff Prize in Migration Studies.

Gualtieri has received numerous national fellowships, including those from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), and Social Science Research Council (SSRC). She is also the recipient of two undergraduate teaching awards.

Wilnelia Gutierrez is the associate vice president of strategy and operations within the Office of Global Inclusion. With over 25 years of experience at NYU, Wilnelia plays a pivotal role in shaping and executing OGI’s strategic initiatives, ensuring alignment with the University’s commitment to fostering global inclusion. In her role, she partners closely with senior leaders across NYU globally and provides operational and strategic leadership across key programs and administrative functions that support students, faculty, and staff.

Wilnelia began her career at NYU working with students and faculty in Liberal Studies and has since held key leadership roles in University Relations and Public Affairs, where she collaborated with university administration to strengthen institutional relations and community engagement. Her expertise spans organizational management, strategic planning, and program development, with a strong focus on building impactful, inclusive initiatives that support NYU's global mission.

A native of the Dominican Republic and long-time New Yorker, Wilnelia is deeply committed to advancing access and inclusion in education. Wilnelia holds a Bachelor of Arts in Politics from NYU’s College of Arts and Science and a Master of Public Administration specializing in Nonprofit Management from NYU’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Service.

Dr. Yaba Blay is an “Independent People’s Worker” who works in service of Black liberation every day. A scholar-activist, cultural worker, and storyteller, her practice centers Black experiences globally, especially those of Black women and girls. A maroon academic, her research and scholarship engages the Black body, with particular focus on beauty politics. 

A blooming visual artist, her film, The Whites of Our Eyes, won the 2024 BlackStar Film Festival Shine Award, given annually to a first-time filmmaker.  She created and directed the popular webseries, ‘Professional Black Girl,’ and in 2012, she served as a producer on Who is Black in America?, CNN's television documentary based largely on her research on Black racial identity.  

Dr. Blay’s commentary is featured in A Changing America: 1968 and Beyond, a permanent installation exhibited in the National Museum of African American History and Culture; and she is the author of the bestselling, award-winning book, One Drop: Shifting the Lens on Race.