Karma Frierson
Former Assistant Professor of African and African-American Studies
Professor Frierson ethnographically researches how locals in Veracruz, Mexico, grapple with the inclusion of blackness within the Mexican identity. Through engagement with music and dance communities who identify with blackness without necessarily identifying as Black, she analyzes the uptake of top-down discursive shifts in collective identity processes in order to better understand the consequences of the late 20th century multiculturalist turn toward the inclusion of Afro-descendant peoples and heritage in national identity.