Columbia University Libraries Journals
Not a member yet
6467 research outputs found
Sort by
Racial Disparities in Maternal Health in the U.S.
No full textBlack birth givers are 3 times more likely to die from pregnancy than their white counterparts (Center for Disease Control, 2022). While global maternal mortalities have been declining since the early 2000’s, U.S. deaths have increased drastically, more than doubling between 2000 and 2014. Black mothers are dying at the highest rates of maternal mortality than any other racial group in America (Patterson et al., 2022).
Amid the reversal of Roe vs. Wade this year, access to quality healthcare continues to be under attack, impacting the livelihoods of birthing people across the nation. Now more than ever, failures in the American health system require critical attention. The disparities in maternal health outcomes are a direct result of medical racism which was born out of chattel enslavement in the U.S. The repercussions of slavery have enacted and continue to enact violence against Black mothers. It is crucial to address the historical roots of maternal health inequities in order to find solutions. This paper will examine the legacies of enslavement in America and its role in shaping modern racial disparities in maternal mortality rates in the US today. Additionally, it will explore Black women led alternatives to healthcare in order to find methods for mitigation. The research will address public health specialists and policymakers in order to emphasize the gravity of this issue and the need for action to address these disparities
The Ethical Duty of Residency Programs to Support the Social Well-being of International Medical Graduates
Full text linkPhoto ID 171204020 © Chormail | Dreamstime.com
Abstract
Residency programs have a responsibility for supporting the holistic well-being of the international medical graduates (IMGs) who have matched with their program. A holistic approach should include support not only in their clinical development, but also in their social and emotional growth. IMGs, especially new interns, often must navigate complex personal, professional, and cultural transitions. This paper explores how the lack of social networks outside the clinical setting impacts IMGs’ well-being, resilience, and clinical performance, with implications for patient care. Drawing on existing literature, ethical frameworks, the thematic analysis of eight IMG narrative articles, and a reflexive narrative by the author, this paper outlines key questions to guide future research. I will also offer recommendations for residency program directors to better support IMG residents through their transition into graduate medical education.
Introduction
As a patient with a complex medical history, I had a lot of time on my hands after being unable to work or walk without the need for intense and ongoing physical therapy for nearly three years. During those years of care, I interacted with several medical students and residents. I became curious about who physicians are as people, and the brief responses provided by my orthopedic surgeon were not enough due to time constraints. Even then, I knew that the scope of our appointments was to discuss progress after surgeries. He had no obligation to satisfy my curiosity, so I began turning to residents instead. I started meeting with residents outside of my healthcare system to hear their stories. At that time, I did not know the term “International Medical Graduate,” but I found that residents from other countries were the ones most willing to speak with me.
International Medical Graduates (IMGs) make up about a quarter of US residency trainees, and more than 325,000 IMGs are practicing physicians, filling critical gaps in underserved areas.[1] The contributions that IMGs make to the US Healthcare system are laudable, but they come at a great cost. IMGs face significant personal and professional challenges throughout their career, often beginning in residency. During their first post-graduate year, they relocate to a new country while simultaneously balancing the intense demands of residency. IMGs can face challenges with cultural adjustment, language barriers, and social isolation. The loss of familiar social networks and cultural understanding increases their risk for emotional distress and burnout, which in turn can weaken their clinical performance.
Residency programs have a responsibility to support IMGs beyond their clinical development. While formal mentorship within the hospital is important, the role of social networks outside the clinical setting, including peer relationships, social integration into the community, and gaining familiarity with public places, is often overlooked. This paper argues that residency programs have an ethical obligation to actively foster these social supports to reduce isolation, improve well-being, and strengthen IMGs’ professional development.[2]
The challenges IMGs face are not simply individual struggles; they are institutional issues. The absence of local social connections leaves many susceptible to loneliness and additional stress. These issues conflict with their need for stability. Although technology helps maintain long-distance social networks, it is not a substitute for meaningful in-person connections that build belonging.[3]
Ultimately, supporting IMGs means moving beyond clinical mentorship to intentionally help them with cultivating relationships outside the clinical environment. Doing so is not optional; it is essential to uphold the ethical standards of medical education. Providing opportunities for IMGs to build social networks outside the healthcare system in which they work supports IMGs’ well-being and ensures high-quality patient care. This paper examines the responsibilities to support IMGs comprehensively through an ethical frame and proposes practical recommendations for residency program directors.
The Role of Social Support
Social support is a soft landing in high-stress environments. Peer and supervisor support can lower burnout and increase overall well-being.[4] Physicians with strong social networks report fewer mental health concerns and demonstrate higher clinical performance.[5]
For IMGs, support from residency programs is especially critical. When residency programs offer mentorship, peer networks, and IMG-focused support, residents report less emotional fatigue and greater job satisfaction.[6] This aligns with research linking loneliness to burnout in healthcare.[7] However, while professional support is necessary and beneficial, it does not fill the social-emotional needs in the same way that peer and other nonclinical networks can. The lack of informal, personal connections outside of work leaves IMGs vulnerable to social isolation, which professional mentorship alone cannot resolve.[8] This persistent gap highlights the need for residency programs to foster both professional and personal social networks to truly support IMGs’ well-being.
The Social Network Theory reinforces the need for both close personal ("bonding") and broader institutional ("bridging") ties.[9] Bonding ties refer to strong, emotionally supportive relationships, such as close friendships or familial-like connections. These types of connections provide a sense of belonging and psychological safety. Bridging ties, on the other hand, connect individuals to broader networks that offer access to resources, opportunities, and professional growth. It takes time and effort to build both kinds of networks. Residency programs need to create opportunities where IMGs feel seen, included intentionally, and supported both socially and professionally. The responsibility falls not just on the individuals to adjust and make these kinds of social networks happen, but on institutions to foster the conditions under which meaningful connections can take place.[10]
Challenges of Geographical Relocation
Geographical relocation for residency disrupts an IMG’s established social network by physically removing them from the people, places, and culture that provide emotional support and stability. This displacement means leaving social networks that have been built over time or embedded since birth. Their sudden absence removes elements such as practical help, encouragement, and a sense of belonging that are essential during the stressful transition into residency.[11]
After relocation, IMGs find themselves in entirely new social and cultural contexts where their usual modes of communication, social norms, and familiar community settings are no longer available. Regularly frequented local establishments such as cafés, libraries, or gyms keep people grounded, help to establish a routine, and maintain a sense of familiarity. Human beings thrive in familiar surroundings because familiarity fosters a sense of comfort and resilience. This is especially true during major life transitions.[12]
Physical spaces that improve our well-being include informal gathering spots outside of home and work that foster social connection, belonging, and a sense of community.[13] For IMGs, they have the potential to fill a vital gap by providing an informal way to interact with others and begin building local social networks. They offer routine and unstructured opportunities for connection that don't require cultural or professional fluency to participate. These communal spaces support emotional well-being, particularly in individuals navigating transition or isolation.[14] Without opportunities to engage with such spaces, IMGs miss a powerful pathway to social reintegration and emotional stability during training.
The Paradox of Technology: Connected and Disconnected
Access to video calls and social media helps IMGs stay connected to family and friends. However, digital communication provides only temporary relief, and overuse of digital communication may even intensify feelings of isolation when used as a substitute for in-person social interactions. Overreliance on digital forms of communication, particularly social media, is associated with increased feelings of isolation among healthcare workers.[15] Although digital tools provide a means to keep in touch with social networks abroad, technology keeps IMGs in a paradox of being connected but still lonely.
Everyday interactions like shared meals, warm embraces, and enjoying quality time together are experiences. They cannot be recreated virtually. IMGs are often expected to perform at the highest clinical level while quietly enduring emotional disconnection, with little to no institutional recognition of how deeply it impacts their well-being.[16]
The Effects of Loneliness
Chronic loneliness is more than just a sad feeling; it alters the mind and body by raising stress levels, disrupting sleep, weakening the immune system, and increasing the risk of heart disease and cognitive decline.[17] The loneliness and isolation IMGs face due to losing their trusted support system could rival the premature death rate of smoking daily.[18]
Intersections of Social Networks, Well-being, and Patient Care
Social isolation has measurable effects on professional performance. It disrupts the ability to think, make sound choices, communicate, and collaborate effectively.[19] Some residents who feel unsupported hesitate to ask for help or raise concerns, which can lead to clinical errors, missed learning opportunities, and poor evaluations. Social distress is not just a personal burden—it is an institutional risk.
The lack of social networks contributes to emotional exhaustion, cognitive fatigue, and a reduced sense of self-efficacy. Over time, this not only harms the physician but also compromises patient safety and quality of care. Emotional well-being is not separate from clinical competence, but rather, it sustains it. A residency culture that fails to prioritize emotional care risks both physicians and patients.[20]
The Impact of Social Networks on Identity
The clinical setting often defines success by patient outcomes, efficiency, and productivity. It measures physicians by what they do rather than who they are. In this kind of environment, medical providers need reminders that they are human beings, not just human doings. All physicians need relationships and identities outside their clinical roles to sustain emotional health.[21] For IMGs, rebuilding a sense of self in a new country is difficult but essential. Outside the hospital, meaningful relationships provide emotional grounding. These ties remind IMGs that they are more than their clinical productivity or board scores. They offer space for connection, humor, and vulnerability. These elements of humanity often take a back seat in the lives of those who practice medicine.[22]
Physicians who lack personal relationships outside of work report higher levels of depersonalization, emotional exhaustion, and a diminished sense of personal accomplishment.[23] Without spaces where they are known beyond the role of doctor, IMGs risk losing connection to their identity.
Systemic Barriers to Building Local Networks
IMGs face significant barriers when it comes to forming social networks outside the hospital. These challenges are not simply about individual adjustment or personality—they are embedded in the structure of medical training. Long work hours, fatigue, and the demands of clinical performance leave little time or energy for personal connection. While all residents experience this to some extent, IMGs face additional burdens that widen the gap between them and meaningful social integration.
The structure of residency itself is a major limiting factor. Residents regularly work extended shifts, often with inadequate sleep and limited time for recovery. This level of workload is linked to burnout, reduced empathy, and poorer health outcomes for physicians.[24] Time outside the hospital, which could be spent resting or forming personal connections, is often consumed by responsibilities unique to IMGs.
Visa maintenance is one of the pressing issues that non-IMG residents do not have to face. IMGs on visas must manage a complex system of legal requirements that include maintaining status, renewing documents, attending consulate visits, and navigating immigration policy changes. These tasks are time-consuming, high-stakes, and mentally exhausting. Failure to comply, even unintentionally, can jeopardize their residency position or legal status.[25] Unlike their American peers, IMGs often spend what little free time they have preparing documentation, traveling long distances for embassy appointments, or consulting with immigration lawyers.
This constant administrative burden limits IMGs’ ability to engage in social life. Even when time is technically available, emotional and mental fatigue make it difficult to invest in building new relationships. The residency system, as it currently stands, gives IMGs little opportunity to practice self-care or form new social networks.
Learning from Narratives
Eight narrative articles written by IMGs and a reflexive narrative based on my interactions with an IMG neurosurgery resident provide insight into emotional, cultural, and institutional challenges frequently overlooked in mainstream graduate medical education research. The narratives are peer-reviewed, first-person accounts published in open-access academic journals.
From the narratives, the five themes below highlight how structural and cultural forces shape IMG experiences. These themes offer a meaningful framework for connecting personal stories to the ethical obligations of residency programs, particularly in supporting IMG well-being beyond the clinical setting:
Unseen and Unsupported
Stress Related to Visa Requirements
Cultural and Language Barriers
Impact of Meaningful Connections
Empowerment Provided by Narratives/Sharing Stories
In my experience meeting IMGs, the most profound conversation I had was with a neurosurgery resident from Southeast Asia. As we enjoyed the skyline view of Manhattan from the New Jersey side of the Hudson River, he looked at me and said, “I feel stupid.” Taken aback by this statement, I replied, “How is that even possible? You are literally training to be a brain surgeon. If you feel stupid, then there’s no hope for the rest of us.”
He said, “I feel stupid, and I don’t have a lot of friends here.”
“What about your colleagues?” I asked.
“I spend a lot of time in the hospital, so I don’t have time to make friends outside of that, and my colleagues don’t understand me. We spend hours performing surgery in the OR, and they make jokes I can’t understand. The humor is different in my culture, and I don’t want to laugh at something I don’t understand, so I don’t say anything. Then they get the wrong idea about me, and I don’t want to tell them it’s because I don’t understand. So, I feel stupid and alone. I don’t have friends at work, and I don’t have time to make friends outside of work. I rarely have a day off, and when I do, I just sleep.”
I offered to be his friend, but I lived six hours away from where I traveled to receive medical care, so naturally, we lost touch. The interaction was brief, about an hour and a half at most. Unfortunately, I never saw him again.
This conversation is a concrete example that further draws attention to social and emotional challenges faced by IMGs during residency.
The conversation I had with the neurosurgery resident reflects the same concerns raised in the literature and ethical framing of this paper. His feelings of isolation and disconnection from peers are not personal shortcomings. They point to larger structural issues in residency programs. Residency programs do not provide enough social or cultural support for IMGs. The neurosurgery IMG spoke about being in an environment where he did not feel like he could admit not understanding the jokes that were being told. He did not speak up for himself. He remained quiet instead of participating in the dialogue or asking for clarity. As a result, his colleagues misjudged him. He could not be fully himself at work. At the core of this experience is a lack of psychological safety, i.e., an inability to speak up, ask questions, or make mistakes without a fear of being judged or dismissed. It is foundational to learning, growth, and trust, especially in medicine, where the stakes are high and vulnerability is part of the process. Psychological safety is defined as a shared belief that a team environment allows for interpersonal risk-taking.[26] For IMGs, those risks are amplified by differences in culture, training background, and the constant pressure to prove that they belong and that they are capable as physicians.[27]
Institutional Responsibility
Without providing the necessary social support, residency programs violate two bioethical principles: beneficence and justice. To do good, residency programs and medical institutions have a duty to support the social and emotional needs of IMGs. This duty goes beyond teaching medical skills. It means creating environments where trainees feel included and supported as whole people. Institutions must recognize and address barriers like cultural differences and a lack of psychological safety that isolate IMGs and keep them from fully engaging in their training.[28] The duty of care includes attending to residents’ well-being because it directly affects their ability to learn and provide good patient care. When residents feel excluded or misunderstood, like the neurosurgery resident from Southeast Asia, they lack the support needed to succeed.[29] This is not just a personal problem; it shows a system that is not doing enough.
Justice also calls for institutions to treat people fairly ─ relational justice means creating an environment where residents are respected, included, and able to safely express themselves without fear of judgment.[30] Because institutions hold more power than any individual resident, they carry a responsibility to dismantle barriers that lead to exclusion and ensure equitable opportunities for belonging, growth, and success.
The ongoing absence of social support for IMGs is a serious problem. It harms IMG residents’ well-being and has adverse effects on patient care. Medical institutions must make social support a required part of residency training. This is essential not only for fairness, but because it’s an ethical obligation to both doctors and patients.[31]
Program Recommendations
1. Facilitate Local Community Engagement
Host informal gatherings in popular community spaces (e.g., cafés, bookstores, community centers) to help IMG residents build local connections outside the clinical environment. These relaxed settings foster relationships that enhance well-being and prevent social isolation.
2. Build Strategic Partnerships with Cultural and Faith-Based Organizations
Partner with community associations, places of worship, and immigrant resource centers. These partnerships can connect IMGs with cultural familiarity, mentorship, and a deeper sense of belonging—factors that reduce burnout and promote retention.
3. Develop a Host Family Program
Offer an opt-in host family initiative for first-year IMGs (and spouses, where applicable). Programs like this provide informal “family-like” ties and cultural guidance, easing the transition into residency and mitigating the emotional toll of geographic displacement.
4. Establish an International Medical Graduate Peer Mentor System
Pair incoming IMG interns with senior IMG residents or attendings from similar backgrounds who can provide culturally informed support and guidance. These near-peer relationships promote confidence, reduce errors from miscommunication, and reinforce psychological safety.
5. Create a Tailored IMG Orientation and Resource Guide
Develop a resource guide for intern IMG residents that outlines:
Local cultural norms specific to that state or region,
Community resources and local events, and
Tips for transitioning into a new culture.
6. Educate Leadership on Psychological Safety and Cross-Cultural Communication
Train chief residents on topics such as belonging, the effects of exclusion, and principles of psychological safety. This is critical to ensure IMGs can ask questions, admit uncertainty, and engage fully in the learning process, without the possibility of feeling unfairly judged or misunderstood.
Limitations
The narrative accounts included here cannot serve as a full representation of all IMGs in every situation. IMGs are often lumped together in research, without exploring specific demographic segments. IMGs have a broad spectrum of identities, experiences, backgrounds, and areas of clinical expertise. Additionally, this paper does not include perspectives from program directors or policymakers, who also contribute to systemic change. Their inclusion would strengthen the practical application and scope, as social support, networks, and inclusive activities vary greatly across institutions.
Additionally, many IMGs have positive training experiences, and it should be noted that there are many benefits for IMGs to train in US residency programs. The intent here is not to undermine the high professional value of these programs but rather to facilitate a discussion regarding graduate medical education. Graduate medical education should consider ways that IMGs can grow both personally and professionally, and deem social connection and support outside the clinical environment an important part of an IMG’s ability to th
Co-Adaptation in an Ecosystem of Human–Machine Dyadic Interaction: Introduction to the Forum
No full textIn August 2025, The Washington Post published a headline that captured widespread public attention: “It’s happening: People are starting to talk like ChatGPT” (Aleksic, 2025). Reporting on findings by Juzek and Ward (2025), the article described how lexical items overrepresented in ChatGPT’s output such as delve were appearing with increasing frequency in human speech. Striking as this discovery may be, it is not entirely surprising. Artificial intelligence (AI) systems have rapidly permeated everyday life, and large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT are now used by millions for writing, learning, planning, and problem-solving. Many users engage with these systems not once, but repeatedly over time
Gate(s) Keeping or Scot(t) Free? The Legal Environment of Marital Surname Use, Post-Divorce
No full textIn virtually all states, individuals who adopt their spouse’s surname in marriage do not have clear statutory guidance on the right to use that surname following marital dissolution. Because of the ongoing, pervasive practice of surname-taking in marriage, society has long placed the burden on women, not men, to make a choice upon divorce—one at the core of identity—to decide again on a name. The overwhelming majority of state statutes provide women the option to readopt a surname used before marriage; some even allow the adoption of any new surname. But what if a divorced woman wishes to continue using her marital surname? What if she contributed to the value of that surname during the marriage? What if her personal and social identity came to align with the marital surname? Should she not be able to continue using it on firm legal grounds, beyond mere custom? In a purely legal sense, is the name hers?
This Article seeks to establish a firm legal foundation for a divorced individual’s use of their former spouse’s surname following marital dissolution. Part I presents a brief history of surnames, the genesis of hereditary surnames, and the development of patriarchal institutions, such as coverture, that shape a woman’s naming rights. This account includes a history of marital surname usage in the United States, which borrowed from the English common law up to the advent of ostensibly egalitarian protection in a series of 1970s court decisions. Part II examines the social factors driving women to continue using a marital surname and discusses how these matters have shaped the current legal framework of surname usage during a marriage. Part III turns to the law of surname options at the time of divorce and thereafter, detailing the vast differences in the state law governing the area, particularly: what naming options are available in state statutes, when the name change must happen, and who may raise the issue. This section also addresses the legacy of gendered language in these statutes. Part IV proposes a model law on marital surname use post-divorce, establishing guidance and predictability in this area. The model law would allow divorced individuals the statutory ability to confirm their rights in a marital surname for all purposes under a clear, explicit framework
Columbia’s African Student Association Deep in Diaspora War
Full text linkMy friends and I walked into ASA (African Student Association) late, like usual. The room was filled with lively chatter, and the attendees were scattered across the room, split into discussion groups. That day, the club was discussing “hot takes and hot topics,” a discussion inspired by the once popular YouTube series “BK Chat London.” We settled on the couch and quickly got comfortable, chatting and joking about each topic that appeared on the screen. A topic about African parent stereotypes came up, and my group of friends, the comedians they are, made me laugh until I shed tears. After the group discussion ended, we watched the club come together and discuss the topic, nodding our heads and snapping. It was a productive discussion. Then, a topic concerning HBCUs vs. PWIs—Historically Black Colleges and Universities vs. Predominantly White Institutions—came up, and my group quickly veered off-topic. One of the African American members of my group made a very hot take about the n-word, and, when the group discussion concluded, they were pushed to share it with the club. As they spoke, the atmosphere in the room shifted instantly. Heads whipped up from phones. Faces twisted into frowns and grimaces. Strange laughter and confused chatter bounced around the lounge until a board member led the room to a hush. The evening progressed, and the room remained tense as more African Americans expressed their opinions, one of them being that there was no space for African Americans on campus, and that admissions were intentionally accepting more Africans than African Americans to top schools in an effort to promote African American erasure.
When the club meeting ended, we walked out of the room, tension sparking amongst the group like electricity. Once we reached John Jay lounge, we hurriedly took out our folders and laptops and LitHum readings to do homework. But, instead of moving our pencils across paper, we looked up at each other, tugged at the tension hung taut in the air, and moved our mouths instead. In the time that chatter prevailed over homework, some African American students made a few inflammatory comments concerning Africans, and, by the end of the conversation, my African friend had angrily blocked one of them.
As I witnessed this play out from behind my computer screen—the eyerolls, the pointed comments, the side-eyes, and private messages sent to my phone—a mixture of sadness and slight irritation settled in the pit of my stomach. I wanted to flee, to leave and go to my dorm, the bathroom, anywhere but there. I couldn’t stand witnessing this sudden divide between friends, but, more importantly, I couldn’t stand watching this divide within Columbia’s small Black community. It made me—makes me—sick. Even now, as I write this, I am frustrated. I ask myself now as I did then: why? Why do we argue and point fingers? Why does this conflict and hostility arise between African Americans and Black Africans in higher education when, after all is said and done, we’re all Black students attempting to achieve the same feat?
This divide, whether it be between Black students at Columbia’s African Student Association, or between members of the Black community within America, exists because of how ideas of white supremacy have manifested themselves within these two groups—African Americans and Black Africans. As a result, these groups see each other with differing levels of humanity. This is the reason behind the frowns and pointed comments, behind the tension in the air at Columbia’s ASA. Those frowning eyes were seeing through a lens clouded by white, reducing their Black peers to a single dimension of ethnicity or, rather, a perceived notion of what that ethnicity represents, stripping us of mutual understanding and dividing us in a room that was meant to unite.
This white-supremacy-promoting division is highlighted in Onoso Imoagene’s “Broken Bridges,” a study about the exchange of slurs between second-generation Nigerians and African Americans, and its subsequent impact on identity formation. The findings of this study highlight white supremacy’s influence on the identity-formation process. Imoagene writes that “America operates a racialized system that categorizes people by race and slots these races into a racial hierarchy that has whites at the top and blacks at the bottom,” and, as a result, “ethnic diversity among black people is often underplayed” (176-7). In the eyes of white America, Black people are a “monolithic group” (177). But there is great ethnic diversity within the Black community at Columbia, and the same applies for ASA; we have members from Togo, Kenya, Cameroon, Ghana, Ethiopia, America, and more. Yet, when the acknowledgment of this diversity starts to disappear, as it did in that ASA meeting, “boundar[ies]” are drawn (181). An “us-versus-them divide” arises “between African Americans and Africans” (181). In Imoagene’s study, this divide was drawn by slurs. African respondents to the interview reported being called “African booty scratcher because African Americans saw themselves as more civilized and superior to Africans” (181). To be an African booty scratcher, one must be “too dark complexioned” and “black as night”; one must be “an uncivilized person from the African jungle” and “ugly” with “a . . . (flat and broad) nose, and thick lips” (181). These African booty scratcher qualities clearly stem from white supremacy, a system where skin that’s “black as night” “communicates one’s position . . . within the dominant power structure” as “inferior” (Blay 37). In turn, to call Africans African booty scratchers is to dehumanize them, to solidify the position of the African as below the African American, to perpetuate the system of white supremacy that created the slur, widening the divide. In Imoagene's study, African American respondents recall hearing “Akata,” a Yoruba word meaning “a wild cat or a wandering cat without a home” (182). This is a slur that has formed “ethnic boundaries between Nigerians and African Americans,” for, to be an Akata, one must be “wild, rude, impetuous, aggressive, and uncultured” (182). Again, we find white supremacy at work, feeding these narratives and “negative stereotypes” to Africans through “media’s portrayal of African Americans” (183). Now, during the ASA meeting, there were no slurs said aloud. Rather, this “us-versus-them divide” was created through reactionary facial expressions and tones of voice. To egg on an African American to share their controversial opinion on the n-word, and to proceed to allow the entire club to laugh and snicker at them after they’ve built the courage to share it, is just as dehumanizing as calling them an Akata. Imoagene writes of a divide that needs biting words, but, at Columbia, the divide was present with or without words. That system of white supremacy—the urge for one group to be or feel superior to the other, to inch closer to the “whites at the top” within our “racial hierarchy,” whether that be through mocking laughter or turned, frowning faces—shaped the divide at ASA and laid the foundation for the slurs in Imoagene’s study.
The day of that club meeting, the Malcolm X Lounge, a space created for the congregation of Black students, became a space for a more exclusive group: Black Africans—and it was treated as such. The questions asked and discussions facilitated were all pointed to the first- and second-generation African experience. Yet, during this meeting in particular, the space was also shared by a few African Americans, students who couldn’t contribute to the discussion of strict African parenting, who don’t know enough afrobeats to choose the best song of the semester. This African American minority among the Black students within the lounge that night reflects the population of African American students among Black students at Columbia. One of the African American attendees said it themselves: “There is a lack of space for us on campus.” And, throughout my short time on campus, I’ve heard that statement said in many different ways. Upon introducing myself to other Black students, their response is often “Why is everybody here Nigerian?” followed by a series of awkward laughs. That familiar tension rises again.
Dr. Chrystal A. George Mwangi approaches this rift in her article, “Complicating Blackness,” questioning “why there is an overrepresentation of Black immigrants in higher education,” (7) bringing forth the “historical context” (10) of both ethnicities within the United States and, in turn, their “racial positioning” (3). Throughout her paper, George Mwangi constantly highlights how “the arrival of new [African] immigrants has added another level of complexity regarding how race is considered” (10-11), especially in “programs/policies initially developed for historically marginalized populations” (15) like affirmative action. George Mwangi considers the argument that, within an “historical context . . . Black immigrants’ race should not be positioned in the same manner as African Americans in higher education because Black immigrants are not a historically marginalized group in the United States and often arrive with high levels of . . . capital” (11). She parallels this “historical” argument with that of “racialization” (14); despite “Black immigrants’ ethnic difference . . . eventually the system of racial stratification in the United States imposes a Black racial identity” (14). As a result, “Black immigrants [become] susceptible to racial marginalization and injustices that can negatively impact their educational pursuits” (16). This conflict between arguments, this divide, is the same divide that occurred at ASA. Although, in George Mwangi’s terms, the divide that occurred in ASA was less of a divide of physical groups—African Americans and Black Africans—but more so a divide of understanding. To some of the African Americans present at the meeting, race was more historical. Rather than merely a present condition, it was an accumulation of pasts, of generations, or, as Michelle Alexander describes it in The New Jim Crow, Blackness was bearing the “continuing legacy of slavery and Jim Crow” (3) and suffering “legalized discrimination . . . just as [one’s] parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents once were” (1-2). It’s safe to assume that this is why one of the African Americans at the meeting was so firm in their idea that non-African Americans shouldn’t be saying the n-word. As Imoagene states, “slurs can become a critical part of the identity formation process” (177), and, to them, first- and second-generation Africans didn’t fit into the historical context of their Black identity—many aren’t products of the generations of society-inflicted trauma that Alexander illustrates in her essay. In response to the claim about the n-word, and after the snickering and sounds of confusion died down, a Kenyan in the club spoke up in response. They respectfully disagreed, explaining that if any of the Africans in the room were taken and placed in the Antebellum South, they too would be called and treated as the “n-word,” and if any of the Africans had an encounter with the police today, they would also face the same set of risks and fears as an African American. Their response was a resounding echo of George Mwangi’s “racialization.”
Reexamining how ideas of white supremacy have manifested within African Americans and Black Africans with George Mwangi’s argument in mind offers a more nuanced view. Rather than these groups seeing each other with differing levels of humanity, it seems that they see themselves with differing levels of humanity. Through the lens of white supremacy or, rather, through the eyes of white people, there is no difference between African Americans and Black Africans. The Africans within Columbia’s ASA believe their own identities, their own humanity, is perceived this way. So, they act and think accordingly. As a result, they are left with two separate yet intertwining identities. This is what Dialika Sall demonstrates in her article “Convergent Identifications, Divergent Meanings: The Racial and Ethnic Identities of Second-Generation West African Youth.” “[S]econd-generation Black immigrant youth,” like the members of Columbia’s ASA, “no longer choose between a Black racial identity and an ethnic identity” (Sall 137). Rather, they “identify simultaneously as both Black and with their nationality-based ethnicities” (137). At first glance, it seems that this idea of simultaneous identities and my developed claim of white supremacy causing groups to view themselves with a different level of humanity does not fit with the concept of historical and racialized identity perception. However, a focus on Africans, or African students in particular, puts the pieces together. Because this group sees itself as (monolithically) Black through both racialization and the lens of white supremacy, it ends up working to distance itself from that identity while simultaneously holding on to it, creating a push-and-pull that attempts to dodge this internal conflict. Like Sall, Tamar Becker affirms this in the article “Black Africans and Black Americans on an American Campus: The African View.” In an exploration of relations between “Africans and [B]lack Americans on the UCLA campus” (168), Becker writes that, by “emphasizing their special [African] identity,” Africans are able to “take on the role of the detached observer of racial strife [or Blackness] in the United States” (179), which “softens the impact of unpleasant experiences they are bound to encounter due to their race” (172).
With Becker’s and Sall’s words in mind, let’s turn back to that ASA meeting. There was a moment in the meeting when African American students spent some time voicing concerns about the lack of space for them on campus. In response, one of the ASA members offered BSO (Black Student Organization) as an example of a space for African Americans. They didn’t find that answer adequate. They then spoke about how Columbia’s BSO played a few afrobeats during a cookout event, rather than prioritizing more traditional cookout songs. Members of the board quickly agreed and provided them with resources to address their concerns, and the room swiftly slipped into silence. That silence spoke volumes. It echoed the ideas of Sall and Becker, for the first- and second-generation African members of ASA, like myself, hold simultaneous identities of African and Black-in-America. In the same way Black Africans and African Americans conflict with one another, those identities conflict as well. That conflict resulted in the resounding silence that settled in the room when African American students expressed that they had no space for them—we occupied two spaces where, seemingly, they occupied none. We could not relate to their grievances.
The African Student Association was one of my favorite clubs at Columbia, and it still is. At first, the knowledge that the club I’d dedicated my Monday nights to wasn’t as flawless as I originally envisioned had saddened me. This white-supremacy-fueled divide, whether it be between African American and Black African students, or between the Black and African identities within oneself, is a roadblock that I, as a second-generation African, find difficult to overcome. Yet, through careful examination of various studies and articles, an understanding of this divide has been developed, and with this newfound knowledge we can work to create a space where African American and Black African students can thrive in harmony. Most of the African American students who attended the ASA meeting detailed here haven’t appeared at another meeting since. Perhaps we could start by inviting them once more and facilitating a discussion where we can all feel welcome.
WORKS CITED
Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. Revised ed., The New Press, 2012.
Becker, Tamar. “Black Africans and Black Americans on an American Campus: The African View.” Sociology and Social Research, vol. 57, no. 2, Jan. 1973, pp. 168-181.
Blay, Yaba Amgborale. “Skin Bleaching and Global White Supremacy: By Way of Introduction.” The Journal of Pan African Studies, vol. 4, no. 4, June 2011, pp. 4-46. ProQuest, http://ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/skin-bleaching-global-white-supremacy-way/docview/868922591/se-2?accountid=10226.
George Mwangi, Chrystal A. “Complicating Blackness: Black Immigrants & Racial Positioning in U.S. Higher Education.” Journal of Critical Thought and Praxis, vol. 3, no. 2, 2014, pp. 1-29, https://doi.org/10.31274/jctp-180810-41.
Imoagene, Onoso. “Broken Bridges: An Exchange of Slurs between African Americans and Second Generation Nigerians and the Impact on Identity Formation among the Second Generation.” Language Sciences, vol. 52, 2015, pp. 176-186, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2015.03.010.
Sall, Dialika. “Convergent Identifications, Divergent Meanings: The Racial and Ethnic Identities of Second-Generation West African Youth.” African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal, vol. 12, no. 2, Jan. 2019, pp. 137-155. https://doi.org/10.1080/17528631.2018.1559785
Verdi's Got to Be Real: Reckoning with Opera in Paris is Burning
Full text linkOpera. That word that, when dropped in conversation, lowers the room’s temperature, heightens the gravitas of dialogue, and, for some, provokes the irresistible urge to seek the nearest exit. Opera. Yes, let it melt over the tongue; roll it around your palate. Op-er-a. Taste the mustiness, the distinct tang of haute culture, that delightful hint of aged dust. It’s an acquired flavor, one that Western societal consciousness has traditionally believed is only able to be enjoyed by its wealthier white hegemony. The edifice of opera has been constructed in popular thought to be impenetrable; its gates only open to the privileged, the prosperous, the powerful. Why, then, in Jennie Livingston’s Paris is Burning, a film exploring the Black queer community in New York City during the late 1980s, while the ball scene raged, does 120-year-old opera music feature prominently?
Halfway through the film, the “Triumphal March” from Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Aida soars over a clip of two Black drag queens dressed in sailors’ suits and drinking champagne during a ball (Paris 00:41:50). These balls are stages where the queer community seeks “realness,” the attempt to attain, through performance, “everybody’s dream and ambition as a minority—to live, and look, as well as a white person is pictured as being in America” (Paris 00:42:26–38). However, Verdi’s composition continues to play even as these ball scenes cut away, the operatic theme recursively defined as it cycles through chordal space, inexorably tying these balls—and the gay Black men who participate in them—to scenes of upper-class white America. Verdi’s score permeates both worlds. I—a classical musician who has played clarinet for over a decade—must ask: why Verdi, here? After all, the dead Italian’s music is situated in the same cinematic breath as disco tunes like Cheryl Lynn’s “Got to Be Real,” seemingly more appropriate to the time and place on which Paris is Burning focuses.
But why do I, a musician, feel the knee-jerk reaction to deem one cinematic appropriation of music “appropriate” and another not so? African-American feminist scholar bell hooks, author of the provocative analysis of Paris is Burning titled “Is Paris Burning?” posits that our shared social perceptions tend to skew towards binaries. We do not often think of opera as the native cultural language of the demographics illuminated in Paris is Burning. Rather, as hooks states, we see Black gay drag queens “worship[ping] at the throne of whiteness” (149) when Verdi’s music plays, in a perpetuation of the very colonialist narratives that attempt to strip Black Americans of their inherent self-worth and beauty. hooks forces us to question whether Paris is Burning is subversive to the status quo, or whether it maintains that very status quo whereby the white ruling class is comfortable and safe within its own power because the way they live and look is idolized by those they have historically oppressed.
Judith Butler, on the other hand, pushes back against this binary lens. In “Gender is Burning,” a critical response to hooks’s claims, Butler defines Livingston’s Paris is Burning as an entity that exists in-between: in-between a subversion and an acceptance of the socio-cultural beliefs of hegemonic power structures, in-between a parodying of dominant socio-cultural norms and a grounds for their displacement (386). They state that drag is the implication of the self in “the very regimes of power that one opposes” (384). This self-implication opens space for subversion while, at the same time, it engenders the risk of self-subsumption by and into a hegemonic heteronormative white culture. Perhaps, then, the “Triumphal March” scene in Paris is Burning shifts our perceptions of opera as a binary entity, one that has been closed up in the dusty lock-box of haute whiteness under the towering, imposing edifice of “high” western culture, into opera as an entity existing in-between—one that applies to and holds significance for both Black drag culture and the white upper-class with which it has been traditionally associated.
This in-betweenness, this socio-cultural transference of opera, forces us to ask whether we can think of the drag balls in Paris is Burning as a sort of operatic performance themselves. I say yes; the implication of the self that Butler describes in their work is central not only to opera but to how Paris is Burning utilizes an appropriation of Verdi’s music to subvert opera’s traditional social image as well. Opera is an art form parallel to drag wherein actors take on new identities through costume, makeup, acting, and music. Drag echoes with some familiarity to me—a heterosexual white male classical musician—because it might be thought of as a cultural permutation of opera. Yet the acrobatics of instinct which illuminate such a permutation are checked in their course; Verdi’s Aida focuses only on heterosexual relationships. It seems that the drag balls—foundationally homosexual—and the opera Aida are inverse images of the same cultural and artistic act. Butler claims that heterosexuality in dominant social culture is grounded in the repeated imitation of self-idealization, whereby the performativity of heterosexuality points toward the unachievable nature of its idealizations that destabilize heterosexuality’s claim to “naturalness and originality” (384). But, if Butler states that imitation lies at the root of the creation of a heterosexual norm, where “naturalness and originality” are no more natural or original than that which is performed onstage, what are we to make of hooks’s claims about the physical, tangible dangers of minorities attempting to emulate that norm through performance, whereby misogyny and colonialism are born and bred? This must point toward performances as cultural acts, yes, but with implications that travel beyond the hermetic venues where performances occur and influence, in their hermeneutics, the realities of the world. When society views opera as the performance of hegemonic norms that are themselves created through performance, thus having little claim to “naturalness or originality,” we are complicit contributors to the further detrimental idealization of those norms. This social re-idealization of hegemonic norms circularly influences the image of “realness” that the drag minority attempt to emulate through the ball scene. In Butler’s words, this only leads to further “disappointment and disidentification” (388) when the minority cannot assimilate into the idealized, socially crafted hegemonic norm, even with the most “real” drag performance.
As a classical musician, I often find myself ruminating on these personal, social, and cultural implications of performance, of an audience accepting music in one space and breaking hermetic seals to carry it into others. Paris is Burning forces everyone to consider this same question when the “Triumphal March” is carried across scenes from two different worlds. In the world of the ballroom, the opera score feels expatriated. An audio-visual repatriation occurs, perhaps, in our socially-molded psychology when scenes of “white America” are spliced in under the same music. However, the music seems to originate, diegetic, from the ballroom and is superimposed, post-editing, over the scenes of white America. Here, Paris is Burning forces the binaries of a viewer’s social preconceptions to fracture in confusion; preconceived notions about opera are supposed to be validated by its return to images of hegemonic, wealthy white America, yet it is in these very scenes that the music feels least organic, least like it belongs. In this way, Paris is Burning offers us performances of both the heteronormative hegemony and the oppressed minority, asking us to determine which presents as more “real.” The greatest performance is that which makes the audience suspend disbelief for its duration. And so, as the captive audience ourselves, of our question of disbelief we must ask: to whom is the victory wreath handed? Who triumphs? With our psychological tendencies laid bare, we hesitate, wreath in hand.
But this decision feels impossible to make. That group with which we traditionally associate opera, whose performance of claim on the art form we would normally not hesitate to name, has been made to appear ironically estranged from it. Instead, the drag queens of the New York City ballroom seem to take up opera as their own, twisting it free from its binaries to implicate the white hegemony in their own privilege in a new culturally regenerative manner. The threefold performance that maintains this scene’s structure—of drag, of hegemony, and of music—forces a perspective shift in the viewer, fundamentally altering deeply-ingrained socio-psychological preconceptions. Maybe we are not meant to choose a victor, lest triumph turn to tragedy. By choosing, we would enact a binary—either the drag queens of Paris is Burning “triumph” and are seen as attempting to transform into the idealized image of a norm they can never attain, or white America “triumphs,” and the hegemonic norms, destructive both to opera itself and to the minorities who participate in drag, are upheld without further thought. Instead, this scene shows that we would be remiss in choosing either option. It opens space for reflection and begs, from some region of the self usually unlit by a critical light, this question: have I been guilty of perceiving opera through such a binary lens? It is an admittance by a heterosexual white male classical musician that seems at once unsurprising yet feels deeply troubling. I do not want opera to die—I’ve grown to appreciate its taste. But, nonetheless, it is dying. Whether due to a failure to modernize, an aging-out of its traditional audience, or the social image of opera as exclusive in every socio-economic and cultural sense, opera draws breath on cultural life-support. And a society which views opera as binary will only hasten its untimely demise.
By situating Verdi’s music next to Cheryl Lynn’s 1978 hit “Got to Be Real,” Paris is Burning forces the viewer to consider the historical evolution of culture and reveals, through such artistic relativism, its capacity to act as an operatic life-preserver. Popular music of the late 20th century, while trending toward anarchic, is historically situated within a distinct artistic evolution. The music of Lynn is one artistic node in the western cultural timeline, inexorably connected to the operas of Verdi and his contemporaries. The musical breakthroughs of Verdi and other opera composers vaulted music forward into the modern day—phantom memories acting in all too tangible aural manners on the music of artists like Lynn. Here, again, the physical cultural impacts of performance are felt. In collapsing this temporal distance by positioning two seemingly estranged pieces of music next to each other, Paris is Burning creates space for the viewer to reckon with how the music of an artist like Lynn emerged from that of Verdi in the same way that drag culture must have emerged from a cultural evolutionary precedent based on the very hegemony from which it attempts to break away. Am I arguing that Paris is Burning is part of the legacy of opera? Yes. But Paris is Burning also provides us a space where—by reckoning with the socio-cultural ambiguities, transpositions, and inversions of the “Triumphal March” scene—we can move toward a redefinition of opera that can and should survive into the present day and beyond, rather than disappear into the past.
I was a young child, maybe five, when I tasted opera for the first time. I remember it sporadically, vividly—Tom and Jerry conducting the overture to Johann Strauss II’s Die Fledermaus operetta at the Hollywood Bowl. I consider this earliest memory of opera somehow an authentic and authenticating origin (to mis-present the words of Adam Phillips) in my evolution as a musician and like to think I owe my career in classical music at least partially to an opera overture conducted by a cat and a mouse. During Saturday morning cartoons, I fell in love with a vision of opera free from the gold chains with which society has shackled it, a vision I am convinced is worth saving. So do we tear down the edifice of opera-as-white, opera-as-privileged, opera-as-binary? Perhaps, but triumph stems not from destruction, which only serves to deepen the binary rifts that have sundered social groups. The destruction of one problematic norm simply opens space for another to replace it. Triumph will stem, rather, from “realness.” It seems fitting that we use the very criterion by which ball victories are won to begin a fundamental perspective shift, a social redefinition of opera. We’ve got to let opera be real for it to survive, to become the complex narrative tool of social commentary and individual revelation that we seem to forget lies at its core, cutting it free from its popular image and creating space for opera to hold meaning for more groups than solely the wealthy white hegemony. Let us remember: “Got to Be Real” has a taste of opera. Paris is Burning has a taste of opera.
Is that not enough for us to develop a new taste for opera?
WORKS CITED
Butler, Judith. “Gender is Burning: Questions of Appropriation and Subversion.” Dangerous Liaisons: Gender, Nation, and Postcolonial Perspectives, edited by Anne McClintock et al., U of Minnesota Press, 1997, pp. 381-95.
hooks, bell. “Is Paris Burning?” Black Looks: Race and Representation, 1992, Routledge, 2015, pp. 145-56.
Paris is Burning. Directed by Jennie Livingston, Academy Entertainment / Off White Productions, 1990
Teacher Resilience in the Aftermath of the 2022 Balochistan Floods: Coping Strategies and Educational Continuity in Primary Schools
Full text linkThis study analyzes teacher resilience in light of the 2022 floods in Balochistan, Pakistan, as teachers were displaced. It explores the challenges primary school teachers faced during this climate-induced displacement, how they coped, and the role of community and institutional support in continuing education. Using semi-structured interviews and focus groups (n=15), the study reveals how teachers adapted to teaching methodologies, negotiated emotional and psychological challenges, and utilized community resources to overcome the devastation brought about by floods. The findings show that teachers employed several adaptive strategies: remote teaching, collaborating with colleagues, and enacting personal resilience mechanisms such as emotional regulation and social support networks. The study revealed stark differences in how urban teachers experienced the floods compared to that of rural teachers, including hurdles imposed on teachers in rural areas due to a lack of resources, infrastructure, or both. The results are critical in guiding future educational policies and teacher development programs in disaster-prone areas in Pakistan, informing the operational needs of educators during post-disaster recovery, and urging a long-term approach to enhance the resilience of educational systems
“Constant Enemies of the Christian Name”: Tracing the Construction of the Ritual Murder Charge in The Life and Miracles of St. William of Norwich
Full text linkThis paper examines the construction of the blood libel myth in Thomas of Monmouth’s 12th-century manuscript, The Life and Miracles of St. William of Norwich. Building upon existing scholarship, it analyzes Life as both a martyrdom narrative and an anti-Jewish polemic. Drawing on Elizabeth Castelli’s theory of martyrdom and collective memory, this paper argues that the rhetorical construction of the Jew as a biblical, bloodthirsty enemy of Christ served to reinforce a dubious martyrdom narrative and consolidate a medieval Christian identity perceived as under threat. By deconstructing the rhetorical devices underpinning the account’s blood libel charge–literary foil, biblical metaphor, and the Christ-killer accusation– the paper highlights how Monmouth successfully transformed Jews from victims of conspiracy to perpetrators of violent crime. Monmouth’s use of a literary foil drew on prevailing ideas of Christian-Jewish difference to reinforce notions of Christian piety, while his invocations of biblical metaphor stabilized a tenuous assertion of Jewish guilt and Christian persecution. These anti-Jewish rhetorics culminate in Monmouth’s invocation of the Christ-killer myth. By likening medieval Jews to the biblical betrayers of Christ, Monmouth created a universal framework that rationalized and justified the violent persecution of Jews