Dr. Yaba Blay Biography

Professor, producer, and publisher Dr. Yaba Blay utilizes personal and societal narratives as a researcher and ethnographer to challenge fundamental assumptions about cultures and identities. She utilizes pictures to enlighten awareness, stimulate discussion, and inspire people to action and transformation as a cultural worker and producer. Dr. Blay's general research interests include Africana cultural aesthetics and aesthetic practices, as well as global Black popular culture. Her particular research interests are global Black identification and the politics of physicality, with a focus on hair and skin color politics. Her 2007 dissertation, Yellow Fever: Skin Bleaching and the Politics of Skin Color in Ghana, uses African-centered and African feminist methodologies to investigate the social practice of skin bleaching in Ghana; and her anthropological case study of skin color and identification in New Orleans, “Pretty Color and Good Hair,” is included as a chapter in the anthology Blackberries and Redbones: Blackberries and Redbones: Blackberries and Redbones: Blackberries and Redbones: Blackberries and Redbones: Blackberries Dr. Yaba Blay is the writer of (1)ne Drop: Shifting the Lens on Race and the creative director of the (1)ne Drop project. She is one of today's leading voices on colorism and global skin color politics. She challenges limited notions of Blackness as both an identity and a lived reality in (1)ne Drop, which investigates the interwoven subtleties of skin color politics and Black racial identity. In 2012, she worked as a consultant for CNN Black in America's "Who is Black in America?" a television documentary inspired by her (1)ne Drop initiative. Dr. Blay is working on a transmedia film project about the global practice of skin bleaching in addition to her work for CNN (with director Terence Nance). Dr. Blay holds a BA in Psychology (Cum Laude) from Salisbury State University, an M.Ed. in Counseling Psychology from the University of New Orleans, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in African American Studies with a Graduate Certificate in Women's Studies from Temple University. She is now the co-Director of Africana Studies at Drexel University and an Assistant Teaching Professor. BLACKprint Press's publisher and editor-in-chief are Dr. Blay.

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