when i was a small child i realized there were not a lot of black ballet dancers, and it was not like they did not exist, its just i have never met one. Being a black ballet dancer and to continue this art is something way harder then what people may think. In my situation, I took ballet classes in predominantly white dance schools, where it was important to have this particular body size. My school emphasized that you had to have a long torso, long legs, the arch in the foot, small boobs, no BUTT...NO HIPS....the looks that i did not have.
But I knew other professional black dancers had it worst, and they had the body type. Raven Wilkinson was the first black american dancer hired in the 1950s by a major ballet company in america. The obstacles that she faced was ridiculous. She was kicked out of a hotel because someone realized that she was black, and hunted down by a mob of Ku Klux Klan because they did not want a black female dancing in the performance hall. But one thing that Raven received from her colleges, that I never received as a dancer, was support. The dancers that she worked with were always by her side, and tried to snitch on her because she was a passing negro. But if I had half of her talent, maybe my fellow dancing classmates would not give me a hard time.
