A Transformative Dialogue on Race and Identity in America: Acclaimed Journalist Michele Norris Talks with All Sides host Anna Staver!
Join one of our most important chroniclers of American life, Michele Norris, author of Our Hidden Conversations: What Americans Really Think about Race and Identity. Norris will be in conversation with All Sides Host Anna Staver about this transformative dialogue on race and identity in America, unearthed through the author’s decade-long work at The Race Card Project.
Registration is on Eventbrite. The ticket is $40.00, which includes the book plus tax.
THE KING ARTS COMPLEX and WOSU PUBLIC MEDIA are Gramercy’s Community Partners for this exclusive program.
“A stunning book and a gift to our nation. Anchored by more than a decade of research and engagement with Americans across the country, Michele Norris takes us on a journey into the heart of this country’s painful, complex, and unrelenting battle with the salience and significance of race in our lives.”— Sherrilyn Ifill, Howard Law School, and former President & Director-Counsel NAACP Legal Defense Fund
The prompt seemed simple: Race. Your Story. Six Words. Please Send.
The answers, though, have been challenging and complicated. In the twelve years since award-winning journalist Michele Norris first posed that question, over half a million people have submitted their stories to The Race Card Project inbox. The stories are shocking in their depth and candor, spanning the full spectrum of race, ethnicity, identity, and class. Even at just six words, the micro-essays can pack quite a punch, revealing, fear, pain, triumph, and sometimes humor. Responses such as: You’re Pretty for a Black girl. White privilege, enjoy it, earned it. Lady, I don’t want your purse. My ancestors massacred Indians near here. Urban living has made me racist. I’m only Asian when it’s convenient.
Many go even further than just six words, submitting backstories, photos, and heirlooms: a collection much like a scrapbook of American candor you rarely get to see. Our Hidden Conversations is a unique compilation of stories, richly reported essays, and photographs providing a window into America during a tumultuous era. This powerful book offers an honest, if sometimes uncomfortable, conversation about race and identity, permitting us to eavesdrop on deep-seated thoughts, private discussions, and long submerged memories.
The breadth of this work came as a surprise to Norris. For most of the twelve years she has collected these stories, many were submitted by white respondents. This unexpected panorama provides a rare 360-degree view of how Americans see themselves and one another. Our Hidden Conversations reminds us that even during times of great division, honesty, grace, and a willing ear can provide a bridge toward empathy and maybe even understanding.
Michele Norris is one of America’s most trusted voices in journalism, earning several honors over a long career, including Peabody, Emmy, Dupont, and Goldsmith awards. She is a columnist for The Washington Post Opinion Section and from 2002 to 2012 she was a cohost of NPR’s All Things Considered. Norris is also the founding director of The Race Card Project, a Peabody Award–winning narrative archive where people around the world share their reflections on identity—in just six words. Her first book, The Grace of Silence, was named one of the best books of the year by the San Francisco Chronicle, The Christian Science Monitor, and The Kansas City Star. Before joining NPR, Norris spent almost ten years as a reporter for ABC News covering politics, policy, and the dynamics of social change. Early in her career, she also worked as a staff writer for The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, and the Los Angeles Times.
Anna Staver is the host and executive producer of All Sides, a two-hour, daily public affairs talk show broadcast on 89.7 NPR News that covers salient issues and events shaping life in central Ohio. Staver came from The Columbus Dispatch, where she covered state politics, writing daily and in-depth stories about the Ohio Statehouse on a range of topics including school finance, gun control, budgets, public pensions and legislative races. Previously, Staver worked at The Denver Post, 9NEWS in Colorado, The Statesman Journal and The Idaho Press Tribune. She is the winner of a Heartland Emmy for best politics/government reporting and a best writing award from the Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association and has a certificate in school finance from Georgetown University.