An African/Nigerian-American Studying Black-White Couples in Los Angeles and Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

I moved to Los Angeles from Chicago in order to work with Edward Telles in the Sociology department at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). I knew that I wanted to study race relations in Brazil and would probably do research on affirmative action policies that had recently been implemented there targeting the poor as well as people of African descent. I had never been to Brazil, but was interested in the African diaspora in Latin America for a long time and had studied Portuguese for a semester at Harvard. I spent my first year at UCLA fulfilling Sociology department requirements as well as using my fluency in Spanish to learn Portuguese.