Black Dance and Dancer and the White Public

I found Dixon's article to be very thought- provoking. There seemed to be a fundamental tension in her writing because she wanted to avoid dividing and classifying black dance, but at the same time, she thought black dance should be categorized so that proper recognition could be given to the artists. Dixon recognizes the difficulty of defining black dance as there is so much fusion between black and white cultures, black and white dance (ie. tap, jazz dance). I thought it was very interesting then, given the acknowledged difficulty of defining black dance, that Dixon would say that she considered some of Ailey and Mitchell's work not to be black dance.
What I took away from Dixon's article was that to understand black dance, one needs knowledge about the culture that it sprang from. There is a need to step outside of our individual frame of reference to see the dance for what it truly is. Reading this article made me wonder, however- how, if at all, has the situation changed in the almost two decades since this article was written. Does white culture still see black dance and black dancers as synonymous? I would like to believe that black dance has become less pigeon-holed and marginalized, but I am unsure.

Martin
Dance 163 A