It's Thanksgiving week, so we wanted to give y'all a question to fight about: How much context should you have to give when talking about race and culture? Is it better to explain every reference, or let people go along for the ride? Comedian Hari Kondabolu joins us to hash it out. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
Nov 27, 2019•29 min
Sometimes, in order to understand yourself, you fumble through a tough conversation with your mom. Other times, you roll up to a sex club with your best friend. In his new fiction podcast "Moonface," producer James Kim explores all the messy, scandalous, cringe-worthy ways that different parts of our identities collide. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
Nov 20, 2019•55 min
Nearly 9 million people in the U.S. are part of a "mixed-status" family: some may be U.S. citizens; some may have green cards; others may face the constant specter of deportation. As the Supreme Court gets ready to decide the fate of DACA — a program that protects some undocumented people from being removed from the country — we check in with three siblings who all have different statuses, and whose fates may hinge on the outcome of this case. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastcho...
Nov 13, 2019•26 min
In 1965, a white minister and civil rights organizer, James Reeb, was killed by a group of white men in Selma, Ala. Reeb's death drew national outrage, but no one was ever held accountable. We spoke to two reporters — white Southerners of a younger generation — about the lies that kept this murder from being solved. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
Nov 06, 2019•25 min
It's Halloween, and people are leaning into all things scary. But sometimes those celebrations of the macabre hit a little too close to home, brushing up against our country's very dark past. So how do you navigate fake-horror in the midst of so much that's actually terrifying? Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
Oct 30, 2019•29 min
Eighty-five years ago, a crowd of several thousand white people gathered in Jackson County, Florida, to participate in the lynching of a man named Claude Neal. The poet L. Lamar Wilson grew up there, but didn't learn about Claude Neal until he was working on a research paper in high school. When he heard the story, he knew he had to do something. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
Oct 23, 2019•25 min
The President's Twitter feed has become the White House's primary mechanism for communicating with the world. Ayesha Rascoe of NPR Politics took a deep dive into Trump's combative social media universe and found that he does not go after all of the objects of his ire in the same way. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
Oct 16, 2019•30 min
On this episode, we look closer at hit songs that have taken on broader resonances: from a wistful ode to Puerto Rico to a disco classic about outlasting and thriving to an enduring bop about pushy, unfortunate men — i.e., scrubs. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
Oct 09, 2019•35 min
In "Prison City," Wisconsin, white elected officials are representing voting districts made up mostly of prisoners. Those prisoners are disproportionately black and brown. Oh, and they can't actually vote. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
Oct 02, 2019•29 min
How is it that the party of Lincoln became anathema to black voters? It's a messy story, exemplified in the doomed friendship between Richard Nixon and his fellow Republican, Jackie Robinson. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
Sep 25, 2019•35 min
Black Republicans are basically unicorns — they might just be the biggest outliers in American two-party politics. So who are these folks who've found a home in the GOP's lily-white big tent? And what can they teach us about the ways we all cast our ballots? Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
Sep 18, 2019•1 hr
In many parts of the U.S., public school districts are just minutes apart, but have vastly different racial demographics — and receive vastly different funding. That's in part due to Milliken v. Bradley, a 1974 Supreme Court case that limited a powerful tool for school integration. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
Sep 11, 2019•29 min
In August of 1619, a British ship landed near Jamestown, Virginia with dozens of enslaved Africans — the first black people in the colonies that would be come the United States. Four hundred years later, some African Americans are still looking to Jamestown in search of home and a lost history. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
Aug 28, 2019•36 min
It's a widely accepted truth: reading Shakespeare is good for you. But what should we do with all of the bigoted themes in his work? We talk to a group of high schoolers who put on the Merchant Of Venice as a way to interrogate anti-Semitism, and then we ask an expert if that's a good idea. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
Aug 21, 2019•31 min
Nickelodeon's Dora The Explorer helped usher in a wave of multicultural children's programming in the U.S. Our friends at Latino USA tell the story of how the show pushed back against anti-immigrant rhetoric — and why Dora's character still matters. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
Aug 14, 2019•38 min
Five years ago, the death of an unarmed black teenager brought the town of Ferguson, Mo. to the center of a national conversation about policing in black communities. Since then, what's changed, if anything, in Ferguson? Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
Aug 07, 2019•27 min
It took less than two weeks for Puerto Ricans to topple their governor following the publication of unsavory private text messages. We tell the story of how small protests evolved into a political uprising unlike anything the island had ever seen. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
Jul 31, 2019•25 min
Almost exactly 100 years ago, race riots broke out all across the United States. The Red Summer, as it came to be known, occurred in more than two dozen cities across the nation, including Chicago, where black soldiers returning home from World War I refused to be treated as second class citizens. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
Jul 24, 2019•19 min
This week, an argument about what to call President Trump's rhetoric. NPR editors Mark Memmott and Keith Woods offer different ideas for how news organizations should try to stay credible. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
Jul 17, 2019•25 min
In the 19th century it was mainstream science to believe in a racial hierarchy. But after WWII, the scientific world turned its back on eugenics and the study of racial difference. We speak to author Angela Saini, who says that race science is back. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
Jul 10, 2019•22 min
There's a debate over what to call the facilities holding migrant asylum seekers at the southern border. We revisit an earlier controversy to help make sense of it. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
Jul 03, 2019•27 min
Fifty years after the Stonewall Uprising, queer and trans folks are uncovering hidden parts of LGBTQ+ history. A new exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, "Nobody Promised You Tomorrow: Art 50 Years After Stonewall," features works from from queer artists of color who were born in the years after Stonewall. We talked to four of them. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
Jun 26, 2019•27 min
Our listeners suggestions include American history, compelling fiction, a few memoirs—and Jane Austen, re-imagined with brown people. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
Jun 19, 2019•26 min
Every two weeks a language dies with its last speaker. That was the fate of Hawaiian, until a group of second-language learners put up a fight and declared, "E Ola Ka 'Olelo Hawai'i" (The Hawaiian Language Shall Live!!!) Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
Jun 12, 2019•26 min
It's a pernicious stereotype, but it was coined in reference to a real woman named Linda Taylor. But her misdeeds were far more numerous and darker than welfare fraud. This week: how politicians used one outlier's story to turn the public against government programs for the poor. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
Jun 05, 2019•31 min
Samin Nosrat is an award-winning chef, cookbook author, and star of the Netflix series Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. She's also an Iranian American woman trying to represent two cultures that are often perceived as being at odds with each other. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
May 29, 2019•24 min
In middle school and high school, we're figuring out how to fit in and realizing that there are things about ourselves that we can't change — whether or not we want to. This week, we're turning the mic over to student podcasters, who told us about the big issues shaping their nascent identities. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
May 22, 2019•30 min
A Sapphire isn't only a jewel—it's also cultural shorthand for an angry black woman. In this episode, we look at where Sapphire was born, and how the stereotype continues to haunt black women, even successful, powerful ones. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
May 15, 2019•19 min
France is the place where for decades you weren't supposed to talk about someone's blackness, unless you said it in English. Today, we're going to meet the people who took a very French approach to change that. (Note: This story contains strong language in English and French.) Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
May 08, 2019•44 min
When members of the nation's oldest Mexican-American student organization voted to change its name, it revealed generational tensions around the past, present, and future of the Chicano movement. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
May 01, 2019•21 min