Why build a fantasy world that still has racism? B.A. Parker moderates a discussion on Black science fiction and fantasy with authors Tochi Onyebuchi and Leslye Penelope at the National Book Festival. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
NPR's Alt.Latino gets a reboot, and for its first episode, they speak with R&B darling Omar Apollo. Apollo shares what it's been like being a role model for queer Latinx kids and the pressure of having to watch what he says now that he's famous. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
Dungeons & Dragons is one of the most popular tabletop role-playing games of all time. But it has also helped cement some ideas about how we create and define race in fantasy — and in the tangible world. We take a deep dive into that game, and what we find about racial stereotypes and colonialist supremacy is illuminating. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
Recently, Republican governors have been sending migrants from the southern border to cities they deem more liberal under false pretenses. The political stunt echoes what segregationists 1962 called Reverse Freedom Rides. This episode originally aired in December 2019. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
Nearly 20% of Americans turned to therapy in 2020. That had us wondering: What exactly can therapy accomplish? Today, we're sharing the stories of two Latinx people who tried to use therapy to understand and combat anti-Blackness in their own lives. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
The cost of college has been on everyone's minds, especially with student debt cancellation. Pell Grants are one way many low income students have managed to pay for college. And they exist in large part because of one Black woman who often goes unmentioned. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
In Baynard Woods' new memoir, Inheritance: An Autobiography of Whiteness , Woods reflects on how growing up white in South Carolina impacted his life. He argues that it is crucial for white people in the U.S. to reckon with their personal histories. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
When a comedian of color makes a joke, is it always about race, even if it's not about race? In part two of our comedians episodes, Code Switch talks to comedians Aparna Nancherla, Brian Bahe and Maz Jobrani about how and why race makes an appearance in their jokes. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
What makes a great joke about race? In the first of two episodes, Code Switch talks to comedians Ziwe, Anjelah Johnson-Reyes and Joel Kim Booster about their favorite race joke they tell: What's its origin story? Why is it so funny? And what does it say about race in America? Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
The Starz hit show P-Valley takes audiences to a strip club in a fictional town in the Mississippi Delta. Part soap opera, part Southern Gothic, the show focuses on the interior lives of the Black women who work at the club — and the complex social dynamics that shape their lives. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
Today on the show, we're bringing you the stories of two families grappling with how best to communicate across linguistic differences. In the first story, a young man sorts through how to talk to his parents about gender in Chinese, where the words for "he" and "she" sound exactly the same. Then, we follow a family who was advised to stop speaking their heritage language, Japanese, based on some outdated and incomplete research. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adcho...
Fam: We finally have a new co-host of the Code Switch podcast! And we're just a *tiny bit* excited. So today on the show, we're introducing you to B.A. Parker. Gene chats with Parker about who she is, what drew her to the race beat, and how her encyclopedic knowledge of Oscars trivia will be an asset to Code Switch listeners. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
In 1866, the Cherokee Nation promised citizenship for Black "freedmen" and their descendants. But more than a century later, the descendants of the freedman are calling foul on that promise being fulfilled. This episode, from our friends at The Experiment podcast (produced by WNYC and the Atlantic) gets into the messy history and fraught present. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
Over the course of this season, we've explored a rich history and complicated present, but what about the future? In the final episode, we catch up with parents who became activated on both sides of the debate over the diversity plan. And, since the diversity plan never came to fruition, we ask...what now? Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
This week, we're talking about the podcasts that podcasters listen to. These are the shows that members of the Code Switch team cannot tear our ears away from. We think they'd be great for a long car ride, plane ride, or just regular day of vegging out. They get into everything from old people to food to the human body to Oprah. And — surprise, surprise — they all have a whole lot to do with race and identity. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Pol...
Pat Mitchell is the longtime principal of P.S. 48 – an elementary school in Jamaica, Queens. And while she cares deeply about her students and her work, she has struggled with the growing challenges faced by her school community. In this bonus episode, we look at the pandemic through the eyes of one elementary school principal, and how Covid-19 rocked education in the district – especially on the Southside. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
Many immigrants have described the feeling of being different people in different places. Maybe in one country, you're a little goofy, a little wild. In another, you're more serious — more of a planner. In this episode, which originally aired on Latino USA, Miguel Macias explores how his identity has been shaped by both Spain and the United States, leaving him in a state of limbo. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
When the District 28 diversity planning process came around, many Chinese parents had already been activated a year earlier by the fight to defend the Specialized High School Admissions Test. In this episode, we ask why gifted education gets so much attention, even though it affects relatively few students. How do we even define what it means to be "gifted"? And by focusing on these programs, whose needs do we overlook? Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR P...
Tens of thousands of children were adopted from other countries by parents in the U.S., only to discover as adults a quirk in federal law that meant they had never been guaranteed American citizenship. Much like the Dreamers, these adoptees are now fighting for legal status to ensure they can stay with the only homes and families they've ever known. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
In some ways, this entire season was prompted by the parents who organized against diversity planning in School District 28. So in this episode, we're going back to that one ugly meeting, where they unleashed their fear and anger into the rest of the community. So who are these parents, what do they believe and why? Moreover, why were they ready to fight so hard against a plan that didn't exist? Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
It's the second year that Juneteenth has been a federal holiday — which means it's getting the full summer holiday treatment: sales on appliances, branded merchandise, and for some, a day off of work. But on this episode, we're talking about the origin of the holiday — and the traditions that keep its history alive for Black folks around the country. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
Though a lot of parents and educators agree there needs to be some change in District 28, the question remains: what kind of change? When we asked around, more diversity wasn't necessarily at the top of everybody's list. In fact, from the north and south, we heard a lot of the same kind of thing: "leave our kids where they are and give all the schools what they need." We went to the Southside and asked parents and school leaders directly, what do the schools need? Learn more about sponsor messag...
A new book by Linda Villarosa looks at how racial bias in healthcare has costs for all Americans. Spoiler: Poverty counts — but not as much as you'd think. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
Code Switch's Kumari Devarajan found an unlikely demographic doppelganger in D'Lo, a comedian and playwright whose one-person show about growing up as a queer child of immigrants in the U.S. is reopening on a bigger theater stage. But when you share so much in common with a stranger who is putting their sometimes messy business on front street for the world to see, it can feel like they're also sharing your secrets, too. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR ...
Until recently, School District 28 in Queens, N.Y., was characterized by a white Northside, and a Black Southside. But today, the district, and Queens at large, has become what is considered to be one of the most diverse places on the planet. So how did District 28 go from being defined by this racial binary, to a place where people brag about how diverse it is? Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
In the wake of violence and tragedies, people are often left in search of ways to feel safe again. That almost inevitably to conversations about the role of police. On today's episode, we're talking to the author and sociologist Alex Vitale, who argues that many spaces in U.S. society over-rely on the police to prevent problems that are better addressed through other means. Doing so, he says, can prevent us from properly investing in resources and programs that could make the country safer in th...
So much of the present day conversation about District 28 hinges on the dynamic between the Northside and the Southside. But why were the North and the South wedged into the same school district to begin with? When we asked around, no one seemed to know. What we do know are the consequences. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
Millions of Syrians have been displaced by ongoing civil war. In her new book, Refuge , Heba Gowayed follows Syrians who have resettled in the U.S., Canada and Germany. She argues that finding their footing in their new homes is less about individual choice and more about governmental systems. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy...
In the early 1970s, Forest Hills, Queens, became a national symbol of white, middle class resistance to integration. Instead of public schools, this fight was over public housing. A fight that got so intense the press called it "The Battle of Forest Hills." How did a famously liberal neighborhood become a hotbed of reaction and backlash? And how did a small group of angry homeowners change housing policy for the entire country? Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoic...
Utang na loob is the Filipino concept of an eternal debt to others, be it family or friends, who do a favor for you. It goes back to pre-colonial times in the Philippines, and can pass from one generation to another. And some Filipino-Americans want to do away with utang all together, especially when it butts up against "American" values of independence and self-reliance. On this week's episode, we break down this "debt of the inner soul" — and discover a surprising side to this value. Learn mor...
