4 Black People Receive the MacArthur ‘Genius’ Grant

By Diana Ozemebhoya Eromosele, theRoot.com

Four black Americans will be among those receiving a no-strings-attached, $625,000 stipend—paid out in installments over the next five years—to keep doing what they do best: being geniuses.

MacArthur 2014 “genius” grant recipients Jennifer Eberhardt, Terrance Hayes, Steve Coleman and Rick Lowe
COURTESY OF THE JOHN D. AND CATHERINE T. MACARTHUR FOUNDATION

That’s right, the MacArthur Foundation named 21 “extraordinarily creative people” as the 2014 recipients of its annual MacArthur Fellows Program—widely referred to as the “genius” grants. Four African Americans are among this year’s consortium. These individuals were nominated by an anonymous and esteemed group of people who are experts in their fields. The fellows had to demonstrate not only that they are brilliant self-starters in their respective professions but also that they are pushing the limits on future work that has “the potential for the fellowship to facilitate subsequent creative work,” the foundation’s site reads.

Here are the four black recipients:

Jennifer Eberhardt, a social psychologist investigating the subtle, unconscious ways that people racially code and categorize others, with a particular focus on how race and visual perceptions of people affect policing and criminal sentencing.