Code Switch

This week marks the one year anniversary of a deadly shooting spree in Atlanta, where eight people were killed. Six of those people were Asian American. That violence came after Asian American organizers had been trying, for months, to sound the alarm over a dramatic spike in reports of anti-Asian racism.

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Gene Demby and comedian Hari Kondabolu are both new fathers, and they're both learning to raise kids who will have very different identities and upbringings than their own. It's left both of them reflecting on some big questions: How will they teach their children about race? What are the elements of their childhoods that they want to pass on? And what, exactly, is a father anyway?

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Figure skating has always been about flair and drama. But what happens on the ice is nothing compared to what goes on behind the scenes. This week, with the help of our friends at the Blind Landing podcast, we're telling the story of Mabel Fairbanks. Fairbanks was a Black and Seminole figure skater who spent her career training figure skaters of color — while navigating the complicated racial and social dynamics that characterized the sport.

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At the height of his career, Bill Cosby was one of the most famous men in the United States. He was the biggest and highest paid star in the country, and with his image plastered on billboards, advertisements and television, many people felt like they knew him. Of course, few people really knew Bill Cosby. And many of the people who had seen who he was up close would be traumatized for the rest of their lives.

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In 2020, nearly 20% of Americans turned to therapy. Many of those people were looking for a space to process some of the big, painful events they were living through, including the pandemic, a contentious election cycle, and of course, the summer's racial reckoning. But that had us wondering: What exactly can therapy accomplish? Can it mitigate the effects of racism? Help us undo how we internalize racial trauma? Today, we're sharing the stories of two Latinx people who tried to use therapy as a means to understand and combat anti-Blackness in their own lives.

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Live from your computer screens, it's Code Switch! Guest hosts Ayesha Rascoe and Denice Frohman joined us to talk poetry and humor with special guests Paul Tran and Hari Kondabolu. Then, Ayesha and Denice answered your questions about race and love.

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In Canada, tensions between indigenous fishermen and commercial fishermen have been simmering for decades. On today's bonus episode, from our friends at NPR's Planet Money team, we travel to Nova Scotia to figure out how a group of Mi'kmaw fishermen asserted their rights to fish and what happened when commercial lobsterman struck back hard.

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It's Black History Month, which is likely to bring boundless stories of Black Excellence and Black Firsts. So today on the show, we're talking about Constance Baker Motley — a trailblazing civil rights judge who paved the way for many to come after her (including, perhaps, the next Supreme Court justice?) But, as we learned, Motley's life was full of contradictions, and her many achievements also came with many costs.

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We hear the phrase "unapologetically Black" thrown around a lot. But what does it actually mean? In this bonus episode from our newest play cousins at NPR's The Limits podcast, actress, businessperson, and author Gabrielle Union talks about what it meant for her to stop paying so much attention to what white people wanted from her.

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People lie about being Native American all the time – on college applications, on job applications, in casual conversation. But how do "Pretendians" hurt real Indigenous people and communities? And what does all that mean for people who aren't quite sure if they're claiming or reclaiming?

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Since he died this week, André Leon Talley has been described over and over again as "larger than life." But on this episode, brought to us by our friends at NPR's It's Been a Minute podcast, three queer Black men talk about the smaller, more personal moments that made Talley such an icon in the fashion world — and in the broader culture.

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We use words related to color to describe different racial categories all the time — Black, white, brown. But how much of race and identity actually has to do with the color of your skin? What if what appears to be "whiteness" is only skin deep? Today we're sharing stories from people of color with albinism whose experiences challenge what many people think they know about race.

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It's now been more than a year since the so-called "racial reckoning" that marked the summer of 2020. The country, some said confidently, was having the biggest racial reckoning since the civil rights movement. But since then, the Code Switch team has been wondering...what was actually being reckoned with? And by whom? And what would the backlash be?

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What stories do we learn about the history of the United States? Who dreamed up those stories? And what happens when we challenge them? This week on the pod, our play cousins at NPR's Throughline podcast talk to journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones about the historical argument she tried to make with the 1619 project.

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This time of year, folks are being inundated with messages about how to become more beautiful. But beauty is an ever-changing goalpost that has everything do with race, class and power.

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Y'all, 2021 brought us a lot of TV. Some of it was even good! So this week, we're talking about the shows that had something interesting to say about race, from We Are Lady Parts to Reservation Dogs to City of Ghosts.

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Our play cousins at NPR's It's Been a Minute podcast reexamine the so-called "Latin explosion" of the late '90s: What it was supposed to be for audiences across the U.S., and what it actually came to represent.

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The term 'Latin Music' can encompass everything from Celia Cruz to Bad Bunny to Selena Gomez to Los Tigres del Norte. It's rock, pop, hip hop, salsa, bachata, reggaeton, and so much more. So...what exactly is the connective tissue? Language? The ethnicity of the artist? Pure vibes? Or is it something else entirely?

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How do race and class affect the way we eat? What makes dollar store junk food different from organic junk food? And when did Whole Foods become such a polarizing grocery store? We're getting into all those questions and more with Priya Fielding-Singh, author of the new book, How the Other Half Eats.

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When Derecka Purnell was growing up, the police were a regular presence in her life. Years later, the lawyer, activist, and author of the new book, Becoming Abolitionists, realized that her vision of a just society was radically different from the world in which she'd been socialized.

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