Our Hidden Conversations: What Americans Really Think About Race and Identity

by Michele Norris

Peabody Award–winning journalist Michele Norris offers a transformative dialogue on race and identity in America, unearthed through her decade-long work at The Race Card Project.

The prompt seemed Race. Your Thoughts. 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 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 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.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Race, Politics, Audiobook, Sociology, Social Justice

488 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 16, 2024

About the author

Photo Credit: Mary Noble Ours

Michele Norris is one of the most trusted voices in American Journalism. Her voice informs, engages and enlightens listeners with thoughtful interviews and in depth reporting as one of the hosts of NPR’s flagship afternoon broadcast, All Things Considered. Michele uses an approachable interviewing style that is at once relaxed and rigorous. She’s interviewed world leaders, nobel laureates, oscar winners, American Presidents, military leaders, influential newsmakers and even astronauts traveling in outer space.

In her first book she turns her formidable interviewing and investigative skills on her own background to unearth long hidden family secrets that raise questions about her racial legacy and shed new light on America’s complicated racial history.

Before joining NPR in 2002, Michele spent almost ten years as a reporter for ABC News in the Washington Bureau. She has also worked as a staff writer for the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times.

Michele has received numerous awards for her work. In 2009, she was named “Journalist of the Year” by the National Association of Black Journalists. NABJ recognized Norris for her body of work, in addition to her coverage of the 2008 presidential campaign — when she co-hosted NPR’s Democratic presidential candidates debate, covered both conventions, anchored multi-hour election and inauguration live broadcasts and moderated a series of candid conversations with voters on the intersection of race and politics. That series earned Michele and Morning Edition Host Steve Inskeep an Alfred I. Dupont -Columbia University Award for excellence in broadcasting. A four-time Pulitzer Price entrant, Norris has also been honored with NABJ’s 2006 Salute to Excellence Award, for her coverage of Hurricane Katrina; the University of Minnesota’s Outstanding Achievement Award; and the 1990 Livingston Award for a series about a six-year-old who lived in a crack house. That series was reprinted in the book, Ourselves Among Others, along with essays by Vaclav Havel, Nelson Mandela, Annie Dillard and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. She was named one of Essence Magazine’s 25 Most Influential Black Americans in 2009; elected to Ebony Magazine’s Power 150 list in 2009; and honored with Ebony’s 8th Outstanding Women in Marketing & Communications Award, in 2007.

Norris also earned both an Emmy Award and Peabody Award for her contribution to ABC News’ coverage of 9/11. She is on the judging committee for both the John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism, and the Livingston Awards. Norris is also a frequent guest on Meet the Press and The Chris Matthews Show on NBC.

She attended the University of Wisconsin, where she majored in electrical engineering and graduated from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, where she studied journalism. She lives in Washington D.C. with her husband Broderick Johnson, an attorney with their two young children and an adult step-son.

The Grace of Silence: A Memoir is Michele’s first book.

Reviews

[Sharon Orlopp · Rating 5 out of 5]

Our Hidden Conversations: What Americans Really Think About Race and Identity is a must-read book.

Michelle Norris started The Race Card Project over 14 years ago by asking people to submit six words about race. Submissions were originally on postcards and then became virtual submissions. Later, people with submissions were asked to share their backstory regarding their six word choice.

The six word phrases and personal stories are poignant, tragic, mesmerizing, thought provoking, gut punching, and memorable.

Some of the six word phrases include:
* Hate's passed down like family heirlooms
* He's my dad, not the gardener
* Black boyfriend visited. Nana called police.
* Will my son get shot too?
* International adoptee. Parents praised. Children unwelcome.
* If found hung, not a suicide.
* I'm not your damn China virus
* I grew up scared of myself
* I think I am becoming racist
* DNA testing changed who I am
* Good Asian girls don't get raped
* I'm only Jewish when it's safe
* Mixed baby coming soon, in-laws afraid
* Mom's secret children, my mixed-race siblings
* I think grandma had a secret
* Lady, I don't want your purse
* Race, is someone expected to win?

Norris' phenomenal writing style weaves together a collective narrative about exclusion. Some of the stories are about the impact of DNA testing and learning that there are relatives from different races and ethnicities.

Norris indicates that we need to widen our aperture because race is a shape shifter and the flame that threatens our well-being.

Highly, highly recommend!

Thanks to NetGalley for an ARC of this thought provoking book in exchange for an honest review.

[Cathrine ☯️ · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 ❤️ 🖤 💛 🤍 🤎
A book on race for us—by us.
Allow me the presumption of saying, everyone should read it, and maybe we can start talking, and more importantly, listening.
People like you and me from over 100 countries contributed their thoughts and it is chock full of wondrous, and yes, painful dialogue, possibly life-changing in the best possible way.

“In my experience, people would rather eat their toenails than participate in a no holds barred conversation about race.”

This is an opportunity to do it from the comfort of your own home.

[Betsy Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Our Hidden Conversations is an almost 3 lb., 9.5x7.75-inch, 471-page world of all of us. I didn’t believe I could finish it in the space of a library loan, so I posted an early review, which I’m replacing with this one now that I have indeed slurped it down well before its due date.

This is us. This is everybody—all races, genders, the whole mess.

The book is packed with remarkable stories, history, analysis, and real-people quotes. (It’s the perfect follow-up to Isabel Wilkerson's The Warmth of Other Suns , which I just reviewed.)

From a section by author Michele Norris:

"I find it deeply ironic that there is such a fierce battle to evade and erase historical teachings about slavery because, in the time of enslavement, there was such an assiduous effort to document and catalog every aspect of that institution, much in the way people now itemize, assess, and insure their valuables. The height, weight, skin color, teeth, hair texture, work habits, and scars that might help identify anyone who dared to flee were documented. The menstrual cycles of enslaved women and their windows of fertility—because producing more enslaved people produced more wealth—were entered like debits and credits in enslavers' ledgers." (178)

Michele Norris’s commentary is wise, compassionate, objective, and elucidating, and the effect of all these stories—they came out of Norris’s The Race Card Project which invited people to send postcards with 6-word thoughts on race—is to showcase how much we all have in common. Everybody is pained by being judged and put in boxes they don’t identify with, asked ignorant questions, insulted by others’ lack of understanding that they are even being insulting.

Everybody is in this book, and so that includes plenty of White people who tell their stories of difficulty and deprivation. There are first-person accounts of the struggles we have at other people’s assumptions, biases, and projections. Black, White, Native, Arab, Middle Eastern, Asian, mixed-race people and families, adoptees and adopters, gay people, people with disabilities, poor people, White men who are turned down because of being White men. Nobody is left out. And it seems that most of us believe that nobody but similar people with difficulties really understands what we face.

But the more I read, the more it came clear that if you are abled and White and from a marginalized place (poor, don’t speak the language without an accent, gay, uneducated, from extreme dysfunction and/or deprivation), you still have an option to change your situation that non-White and disabled people do not have. You can get an education, change your accent, learn a language, get therapy, change your ethnic name, work four jobs, learn what you don’t know. I’m not saying this is easy or fair, but still you do not face what disabled people and people who are not White face just because of their appearance.

Many of the people in this book, and many of us, seem to think hardship is a contest. This book puts that in perspective in a way that everybody will receive or not receive according to their openness.

It is hard not to quote large sections of this book, but suffice it to say that Norris’s essay about lynching (pp. 382-384) is a work of monstrous art. That this practice was legal for so many years, that the pride and display associated with doing it were common should turn all of our stomachs. (Personally, it hits me the same as the Nazis’ proud mass extermination of Jews, complete with saving relics and records of the acts.) This, too, is us, and to quote the last line of the essay: “If you are unwilling to do this work [acknowledge, face, and discuss this truth]—and it is work—then leave the word [lynching—and I would add: any comparison or debate about equivalent suffering or proclamation of innocence, which is totally moot and has zero to do with what should be a communal disgust at what did happen] alone. (384)” [I apologize for that long interrupted quote, but I’m steaming and am not going to edit it out.]

I have certainly heard many of the stories in this book from individuals, but there is something incomparably powerful about having them gathered here together, along with color plates and commentary from every kind of person. And what comes into the sharpest focus is the necessity to know everybody’s story, know true history, and thereby empathize rather than defend or compete to have had a worse or equivalent hardship.

I think everybody could benefit from reading this book. I certainly did.

[Lori Tatar · Rating 5 out of 5]

I literally cannot recommend this enough and have already begun ordering copies for loved ones. Our Hidden Conversations: What Americans Really Think About Race and Identity by Michele Norris is the easiest five-star rating I have given.

What are your six words?

[Holly R W · Rating 5 out of 5]

NPR journalist Michele Norris spearheaded a project for over the past fourteen years that she named "The Race Card Project." This giant-sized book is the compilation of the conversations, essays and photographs it has generated. Intrigued? I certainly was, when I recently read a review of the book right here on Goodreads.

The phrase, "playing the race card," is a phrase that Norris finds repugnant. So, she flipped it on its side and used it in a more positive way. Norris first had printed two hundred black postcards, with the words: "Race. Your Thoughts. 6 Words. Please Send." The postcards were then placed in bookstores, restaurants, airports, etc. Norris did not know if people would respond, but they certainly did. In time, she added the words "Anything Else?" The response has been staggering. Over time, 500,000 people have participated, representing all races.

Here are some of the phrases that people wrote in their responses.

*I'm afraid to wear a hoodie.
*Don't fear me, I'm like you.
*Yes, I'm tobacco pickin white trash.
*I'm his mother, not the nanny.
*You're pretty... for a dark skinned girl.
*Can you speak Indian for me?

A doctor wrote in and then was interviewed by Norris. His words were: "55 MPH means you, black man." His discussion made a big impact on me. He is an Ivy League trained physician, but has experienced white patients walking out of the exam room when they meet him. He always drives the speed limit, for fear of the police stopping him. And, he keeps a copies of his driver's license and car registration in the upper visor of his car. This is so that if he is stopped, he does not have to reach down to find them.

**This is a book well worth looking at. I even think schools should use it as part of their curriculum.

[Carmel Hanes · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a fascinating project. What a fascinating and relatable assortment of answers Norris has catalogued.

A project that began in reaction to the offensive phrase "playing the race card", Norris distributed cards asking respondents to indicate their thoughts on race in six words. This book shares those answers, as well as the more complete personal experiences of many diverse individuals relating to how racial attitudes have affected their lives and sense of self. There are many angles represented by the answers given, which often are thought-provoking and enlightening. They show the continued need for dialogue and openness to bridge the gap between cultures and "races" (I use the word as a short-cut to indicate the arbitrary silos that still exist, despite no real differences between people).

This topic has become buried under the toxicity of fear and anger, to the point where open dialogue is difficult to have; real understanding difficult to obtain. A most striking anecdote near the end of the book discussed a sign seen with the word "them" with a red circle and slash over it. The interpretations of that symbol fell all over the map, and were likely very influenced by the person's personal history and the context operating around him/her. I was struck with how often our assumptions get in the way of our perspective, our beliefs, our feelings, our actions. We assume far too much, and we are all worse off because of it. Books like this, opportunities for sharing offered by projects like this are the only hope we have for building the necessary bridges to develop trust, understanding, true justice, and to change as a society.

While a bit repetitive, the varied perspectives offer a rich opportunity for enlightenment. 4.5 rounded up.

[Donna · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was a difficult but important read for me. And I can't honestly say that I "really liked" it. It's entirely centered on racism and how it shapes identity, outlook, and action. At times it was uncomforable and it brought back memories I hadn't thought about in decades. But I think that is what made this feel successful.

I knew this was going to be difficult to get through. But in the prologue, the author quotes Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr and even though I wasn't gung-ho, I knew at that moment, I would see it through. "A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions." I believe that statement and I also know we need to stretch out of our comfort zones.

The collection of voices and personal experiences felt inspired as they described racism and ignorance......what it looks like, what it feels like, etc. Promoting dialogue is essential.

We are all shaped by our experiences and that was reflected in these stories. What people do with their own individual take-aways from those experiences, is the thing that differs vastly from person to person.

Overall, I appreciated how this book gives a voice to stories that often go unheard. The candor, the pain, and the anxiety was raw and real. It made me think not just about what divides us, but also about what it might take to bridge those divides. Hopefully this book will help create space for refelction and dialogue. So yes like I mentioned earlier, I didn't like every part of this, but I still recognized its impact. So 4 stars.

[Lauren Oertel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was tough to read. It felt longer than it needed to be, it could have benefited some additional editing, and it included an overwhelming amount of commentary from white people showing how they believe themselves to be the biggest victims of racism. Of course, I knew many people felt this way, but to see so many pieces from that perspective alongside ones from those who are harmed the most by racism and white supremacy felt insulting. However, I do still find this book to be important and worthwhile. I learned some new information, gained insight into various experiences, and appreciated the pieces from white people who do recognize the injustice and want to do better. There were a few stories that will stick with me: powerful accounts of how racism has affected different individuals and families. It is important to witness their experiences and think about how we can do better. I commend the author for the incredible amount of time and emotional labor that went into this project and book to better understand how countries like the U.S. are fraught with injustice/inequality, and how we can work together toward change.

[K.C. Norton · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is such an interesting read. It’s not academic in the sense I was expecting; instead, it addresses issues of race and intersectionality in an almost exclusively anecdotal way.

One huge note: this book is NOT designed to be read digitally (which is how I read it 😅). It’s heavy on images and formatting, and to miss out on that would be to miss a huge aspect of what makes it so interesting. I had to read it on two devices and trust me, while it was worth the effort, this would be better as a physical read, if possible.

I guarantee that there is something in this book that will be eye-opening to you, regardless of your experience. One thing I found so compelling is that many of the cards and their explanations are presented without commentary. The reader is left to decide how they feel about the messages. The longer passages go a bit more in-depth, but this isn’t some dense treatise on race. It’s an assortment of personal stories arranged in such a way that they present an incredibly nuanced picture of what race, ethnicity, and heritage mean in the US. This is the kind of book I’d love to discuss with a group. It’s the sort of book that will spark conversations. I’ve been reading a lot more nonfiction lately, and most of the books I’ve been reading have an obvious focus. A clear message or call to action. When talking about race and history on a grand scale, it’s necessary to make certain generalizations. Our Hidden Conversations, on the other hand, asks us to take a step back and consider that movements and events are the collective experience of many *individuals.* I hope that it will allow people to think about how to move forward *as individuals* interacting with each other as we work toward a future that will require active changes and course corrections.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for allowing me to read this book as an ARC.

[Kelley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Please, please listen to this book.

Please listen to the six-word statements thousands of people have sent to The Race Card Project, capsulizing feelings of hope, despair, anger, ignorance, confidence and confusion.

Please listen to them explain the complex histories and experiences that stoked their feelings.

Please listen as Norris, a former NPR host with the amazing voice that job demands, sifts through the cards, organizing them, contrasting them, unpacking their truths.

It’s one of the most expansive and valuable conversations about race in America that I’ve encountered, in both its breadth and its pinpoint expressions of the issues in individuals’ lives.

Norris was promoting another book when she started asking people to write down their thoughts about race in just six words.

Her postcards said: “Race. Identity. Your thoughts. 6-words. Please send.” She wanted to turn the tables on the expression “playing the race card.”

“It’s usually a proxy for, ‘You’re making me uncomfortable, so please stop talking.’ Or it’s a diversionary tactic used to avoid having to speak about race with any kind of precision or specificity.”

The cards themselves are powerful, as are the conversations they’ve prompted, the fuller stories they’ve unleashed.

Norris doesn’t think that simply listening will change the course of American history. But she does “put stock” in what Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. said: “A mind stretched by a new idea or sensation never fully shrinks back to its former dimension.”

I made so many notes, bookmarked so many people’s six words. But I can’t do justice by giving you a few of them.

Please listen to this book. You will find yourself somewhere in it. You will find the things you worry about and the things you wish for. Someone has expressed what you feel, whatever it is you feel. Many others have shared experiences that will upend your comfortable ignorance.

Norris’s six words, years into the project, are: “Still more work to be done.” You can start by just listening.

[Valarie Graham · Rating 5 out of 5]

Difficult conversations are prompted with a six-word sentence. When the author asks if there is anything else they would like to say, the words flow.

I love the format of this book. I read it as an e-copy on my phone but I can imagine this as an amazing coffee table book. There are provocative quotes written in a variety of colors, sizes, and fonts, beautiful pictures, and stories that range from a few sentences to several pages long. It is clear that the American people have definitive views of race. The stories will affirm some views and negate some others. There are heartwarming stories and heartbreaking ones. There are some that are shocking. Without a doubt, the collective is fascinating. Thank you Michele Norris for expanding awareness of how race plays out in the lives of people across the country. Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an advance copy of this title. I highly recommend it.

[AnnieM · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a revelation -- it surfaces the unspoken thoughts and feelings about race, feeling different, feeling unseen and unheard and highlights the importance of giving space for people to tell their stories. This book is based on a project called "The Race Card" where the author wanted to flip the idea of "playing the race card" on its head so she printed 200 blank postcards and left them around public spaces. On the card it simply said "Race. Your thoughts. 6 words. Please Send." The response was overwhelming and has since expanded to include a website where people can submit their stories and 6 words. In many cases, the author uses the 6 words as a departure point and follows up with individuals to hear their story. This is a profound and beautiful book and addresses race, class, immigration. I hope this book will spark conversations and uncover the deep truth that there is still a lot of work to be done. But if we all have the courage to listen and learn from each other, I have hope we can make the world a much more inclusive place.

Thank you to Netgalley and Simon & Schuster for an ARC and I voluntarily left this review.

[Kathy (Bermudaonion) · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 2010, Michele Norris started distributing postcards and asking people to write a six word sentence to describe their thoughts on racism and mail the postcards to her. The response was overwhelming. Today people can submit their thoughts online and even expound on them. Norris shares many of the responses and people’s stories in OUR HIDDEN CONVERSATIONS.

I found this book both hopeful and frustrating. It seems some people are working hard to rid themselves of their prejudices while others are mired in theirs. Sadly, I wasn’t shocked by the latter. I think this is an important book that could spark some great discussions. I enjoyed reading it but did find it repetitive at times.

[Carolyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thought provoking and important, this book held my interest and compelled me to pick it up frequently, even though it is the type of nonfiction coffee table book that one could read sporadically with no loss of impact. It’s over 460 pages, but they flew by (when I was home to read it….too big to lug on all my recent travel adventures). Everyone should read it. Eye-opening.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating telling of Michele Norris' project "The Race Card". Have loved inviting Ms Norris in my home via NPR. Nice to have her on my bookshelf, too. Will look for her earlier memoir based on her family.

[Lori · Rating 5 out of 5]

Definitely adding to my list of most favorite books - one that will stay with me. I have been a fan of Michele Norris for a long time, for her journalism since her NPR days, having seen her speak in 2010 around the time of her book “The Grace of Silence” I think. I would read anything she’s written, her essays some of the best, her sentences perfectly crafted, and her analyses of any current thing well worth the time and always to make you think. So I bought this book when it came out but then 2024 was too broken up with work travel so did not get to it for a year. February seemed to make sense for Black History month. This book is a 5-star in so many ways. It is beautiful, the photos and the design and the stories, complemented by Michele Norris’ writing. The Race Card Project itself is amazing and important, and Michele Norris pulls entries together into themes that respect and honor the submitters and educate and expand understanding for the rest of us. The extent she has followed up with some of the submitters/entries - over years even - is impressive. A depth you don’t often find. Highly recommend this book to everyone. I know I will return to it. And yet it won’t remain static but the work will continue to grow through the website. Which I hope I have more skill to read and seek to understand more deeply.

[Drew Bozard · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Peabody Award–winning journalist Michele Norris offers a transformative dialogue on race and identity in America, unearthed through her decade-long work at The Race Card Project…The prompt seemed simple: Race. Your Thoughts. Six Words. Please Send…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.”

This is such an important book. Michele Norris’s Race Card Project has drawn responses from people from a myriad of races and cultures. Not only did people send their six word stories, they sent backstories, pictures, and more.

Some of the perspectives are ones I cannot claim to understand, and some I wouldn’t want to. A lot of white people who don’t understand privilege and don’t believe there’s any way they could be racist. But then when you dig into their backstories, it’s clear they are in dire need of some education.

I also learned a lot about the struggles of different cultural groups I did not know a lot about. This book is very eye-opening and informative and definitely highlights one thing—there is still a lot of work to do.

[Hannah Oh · Rating 5 out of 5]

EVERYONE. 👏 NEEDS. 👏 TO. 👏 READ. 👏 THIS. 👏 BOOK. 👏

This goes beyond racial theories and is a compilation of and commentary on the stories and views submitted by people all over America (and some around the world). It shows how deeply complex the topics of race and prejudice are, and how there are patterns, but that every experience is different and nuanced.

Michele has a clear point of view, but she always makes sure to include voices that disagree with her, usually without directly addressing them, allowing them to be their own voice in the conversation.

This book so important for everyone, regardless of background and political views. Go into this ready to feel things, to cry, to get angry, and, most of all, to feel uncomfortable. This book WILL make you uncomfortable —and that’s the point.

I recommend the audiobook, which is wonderfully produced, and let’s face it, Michele Norris was an NPR host for a reason. 🤷‍♀️

[DC_Shellz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I need help unpacking myself

Without a doubt this is a ton to digest. It took several months to complete as I had to put it down and often, to refuel, replenish, internalize, or get over incredulous notes.
Everyone very far very valid, very real.
If these conversations were had and received 100 years ago...
There are 2_things I said... Conversation, and received.

They are so intertwined into each bother that anyone everyone is afraid to pull the string, when you do, your do tender that you can not receive, or feel that others are receptive.
Its everyone's fault... Then we have a felonious verbal thug running things right now that 70++ that support , rather drown in his words of no wisdom who won't even receive the message of human dignity. He, the thug continues to fuel me v you, us vs. them, and GRT FEAR

Not a light hearted read and if like me you need time, a little wine, some tissues, some stress balls, a comic relief, and a pet.

[Shana · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had heard of course many of these stories shared via the radio over the last decade or two. But having these stories brought together in themed chapters by Michele Norris really gave a lot of food for thought. I kept checking it out over the library and listened to it maybe over the last year. The conversation will continue. There is more work to be done. Listening to each other is key however and this would be a valuable read or listen for anyone who wants to understand America better who wants to understand Americans better. I listened to most of this on audiobook, partly because again I knew it first as a radio thing but I have to say also that the cast is incredible and really brings to life the words of their letter writers. Bravo and thank you to everyone who worked on this immense project. Please continue sharing with us who we are

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Liked the book overall. I didn’t agree with a fair amount of Norris’s comments, but she’s a good writer and I feel her heart’s in the right place. But I really liked the massive collection of little statements from hundreds of sort-of random people from all around the US on the subject of race and related topics. Some only used 6 words to express themselves, others much more. Frequently there were photos. That part of the book really appealed to me, and I got a lot out of it.

[Linda · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an important book. Enlightening. Disgusting. Educating.
Michele Norris, a former NPR All Things Considered host who put out a call in 2010 for people to write 6 words on a post card with their thoughts about race. Overwhelmed by the request, this book is a result.
The answers aren't always limited to race. Gender, sexuality, ableness, and nationality are also covered.
People can be so cruel.
People can be so resiliant.
People can be so adaptable.

[Aaron · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really fantastic book! I have really never read one like it that is such a good intertwining of hundreds of people’s comments with an author’s strong narrative. It was really well done, and that is just speaking towards the general structure of the book. The content of the book is excellent as well. At times stirring up a sense of resistance against what is being said, at other times appeasing that inner feeling of frustration, and many times delivering an insightful understanding of the people living all around us.

[Krystie Herndon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I discovered this book in the gift shop of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, in Washington DC. Hoping I could find it in one of the two big libraries in my town, I indeed did, and I give this book 5 stars because I dare anyone to find a book as comprehensive as this one, on what Americans, of all colors, really think about race. A-mazing.

[Suzette · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eye-opening, thought-provoking, heart-breaking, at times angering… Took me on my own personal journey through related memories and hurts.

[Saucee · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's long. A good read, especially if you want to know what people are thinking but never say.

[Madison D]

Treating this review like a memoir, no rating. The production of this audiobook was excellent. I would highly recommend this book. It was heavy, broadening, thoughtful, very worth listening to. Audio was a great way to get through.

[Cally Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book filled with personal stories about people’s life experience with race. Couldn’t recommend a better book. The audiobook was superb and is extremely eye opening.

[Nicole Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Listened to this one on the recommendation of my brother, Craig. Pretty cool project.

One of the ideas that resonated most with me was the concept of becoming / creating bridge builders:

• “If we can’t make the divide smaller, we need to build more bridges.”
• I applaud those who continue to bring people together to search for common ground, but I suggest we put more energy toward cultivating a generation of bridge builders who could help folks reach across differences to work toward better understanding and some framework for productivity. While Americans remain in antagonistic, political, ideological, social or generational silos, I lean towards this concept of bridge building because people rarely cross a bridge in one direction. You usually travel to a different place and return to your homebase informed, and maybe even in some way enriched by your experience in another realm.

I’m not sure what my six words would be, but it was powerful to hear other people’s - perhaps I should come up with mine.

Favorite Quotes:
• “They ask me to remember, but they want me to remember their memories, and I keep on remembering mine.” -Lucile Clifton
• Everyone was singing in their own octave, humming their own tune, speaking their own dialect, but doing it together. Sometimes harmonious, often discordant – silent no more.
• The people who spent time with the race card project might not find common ground, but they are exposed to new ideas and worlds beyond their realms.
• People who share their stories feel seen, heard – they don’t necessarily get validation or empathy or understanding – I found that few are looking for that, what they want is an onramp to discuss topics that are often portrayed as toxic or taboo. What they also get is an opportunity to learn about someone else’s journey.
• “It was exhausting to basically conform to others' perception of who you really are. You know, hold in uncomfortable emotions because it made others feel uneasy to be around you if you had to discuss those emotions. And then it was isolating.
• You just don’t know what goes on behind closed doors. You just don’t know what goes on inside someone’s head, or in their soul. But you get a better idea of someone’s anthems and aspirations, their anxieties, their triumphs, when you’re able to hear their stories.
• In many cases, the older people have not just stories, but secrets. The younger people have questions or judgements or an inkling that the kindly elders who hold such a treasured place in their hearts were once people they would barely recognize.
• Grandparents often have a different relationship with their grandchildren than with the children they raised. It’s more relaxed, more forgiving, more open.
• “I didn’t understand what she was saying, I could not make sense of that sentence. I was pretty dumbfounded and it was like she was speaking a foreign language to me.”
• “My experience has led me to believe that most everyone experiences the question in different ways. What we should all acknowledge is that it is almost impossible to be objective on this issue.”
• Learning about integration by considering court orders and judicial directives and old news archives is one thing. But learning about the end of legal segregation, and really almost anything, is all together different when you examine it through the prism of personal experience.
• “God does not make any mistakes. First embrace the beauty in your heart, then allow it to shine through your skin.”
• Trauma cuts both ways in times of war. Amnesia, however, tends to be more one sided.
• Americans are so often looking for ways to erase the mountain rather than scale it.
• Anyone who closes his eyes to the past is blind to the present.
• Truth is the most important ingredient, and it carries a special currency after America endured an administration that pedaled falsehoods without apology and its leaders who continued to use a series of big lies to justify a war on our democracy.
• Could we ever open our eyes here in the United States to confront the lies in our founding myths? Could we comprehend the strength that comes from learning the real story? Do we have the fortitude for a reckoning that goes so much deeper than placing a Black Lives Matter sign in the front yard or insisting that fidelity to the confederate flag is really about honoring southern heritage instead of an institution based in hatred? Can we hope to produce a generation of leaders who can speak and be heard, and perhaps even be embraced by people who occupied those opposing terraines. Our future as a united country of people ever more divided depends on it.
• I don’t find it productive to repeatedly have Socratic discussions about how to define racism unless there is the same degree of energy or enthusiasm directed towards trying to combat it.
• Stifling opportunities for some stifles our collective economy. Poisonous rhetoric in some quarters creates toxic eruptions that can undermine everyone's safety. Creating a false sense of superiority based on skin color might provide a jolt of instant satisfaction, but that temporary high carries a high price. As Booker T. Washington famously said, “It’s not possible for one man to hold another man down in the ditch without staying down there with him.”
• So, if I have to settle on a simple, bite-sized definition perhaps it’s this: racism is a shapeshifter, it is not the same thing today as it was yesterday, and it will not be the same thing tomorrow or ten years from now.
• Talking about something without using the word for that thing is a brilliant concept, and it is particularly useful when discussing a taboo subject like race or racism.
• This much I know, you can’t tackle or even spot racism unless you can learn how to define it for yourself. Go ahead, try it — describe racism without using the word or any of its closely related cousins like bias or prejudice.
• “If we can’t make the divide smaller, we need to build more bridges.”
• “Being color-blind, and ignoring the issues that race brings up, is thus the luxury of the privileged.”
• “When it comes to race, we need our eyes to hear and our ears to see.”
• “It’s understandable that most white people are blissfully ignorant of today's subtle, background form of racism since they don’t experience it. Yet, we take lots of things on faith without firsthand knowledge and this should be no different. White people need to believe that racism does still exist in this country, that white privilege is real and that, as far as America has come in repudiating its racist roots, it still has a long way to go.”
• Majority status, he said, sometimes comes with blinders.
• There’s no such thing as a doover as a parent, but there is always an opportunity to do the right thing in the moment.
• “Our brains are constantly making associations and categorizing information, and when something doesn’t fit we try to make sense of it, even if it means making a fool of ourselves by asking a white mother, a complete stranger, if her black children are adopted or not.”
• “It’s possible to grow up in a less diverse culture and still be aware of the greater world beyond you.”
• Beauty is not the same as beauty standards. Beauty is given upon birth to all who walk this earth, like a gift that can be nurtured, embraced or cherished just as easily as it can be twisted, extinguished or denied by forces that believe they wield the power to police someone’s worth.
• Just because you can see and name a poison cloud doesn’t mean you can always escape its fallout.
• “If I was me now, back then I would have replied, ‘American.’”
• “I wish more people could give a compliment without qualifying it.”
• Ask Tracy Heart what she does for a living and she will take a deep breath, because she needs a full gust of air in her lungs to get through all her titles and descriptors.
• “A price I pay for being able to fit in lots of different cultural situations is that I don’t feel fully that I sit in one. But that’s the price I pay for feeling like I can go here or there.”
• “I think of my innocence all those years ago and realize that one rarely recognizes one's own prejudices without the considerable benefit of hindsight.”
• “White doesn’t equal an easy life, but it does remove obstacles.”
• “We can’t solve what we are unwilling to acknowledge or confront.”
• We will never fully understand how far we’ve come as a nation until we accept and acknowledge the spectacular abominations that passed as normal.
• ‘Where do you actually come from?’ winds up sounding like ‘Why are you here?’ Even when someone tries to answer the question the true response is far too complex to explain in a breezy conversation.
When someone says they are from India or Alabama, Boston or Brazil, that is usually one piece of a much larger tangle of class, education, inter-marriage, migration, assimilation, adoption or individual anthems. And I know from doing scores of workshops and lectures where the frequency of this question comes up, the person asking the question, and I must admit, I myself have often asked this question, has no idea that their curiosity might feel like a microaggression. This is a case where intent matters, and grace can go a long way. But perhaps we can learn something from the hundreds of people who have shared six word stories in this particular vein. For me, the lesson is that this should not be the first question in an encounter. It’s a good idea to get to know who a person is before trying to figure out what they are.
Intentions matter, and are often signaled in small ways, through language and body language. And when you ask someone where they are from, be prepared to accept any answer you receive, even if it does not satisfy your entrenched assumptions about lineage, geography, pedigree or ancestry.
• Swallow the instinct to press on by repeating the ‘Where are you from’ question with some qualifier, because when you inject words like ‘truly’ and ‘actually’ and ‘really’ into that sentence, the subject of the inquiry might make an educated guess about where you are coming from with that question in the first place.
• “My sons not half, he’s double.”
• “Race is not real, it is malleable. Racism is real. It’s pervasive, and inside all of us.”
• Race, as a construct, is made up. But racism and its consequences are very real.
• “The point I’m trying to make is that by spending all our time beating ourselves up, we white people give ourselves an excuse not to do anything. So let’s throw our white guilt out the window so that we can take action against slavery and racism in the world today. Let’s make our white ancestors turn in their graves.”
o *Or make them so grateful that what they now regret is not being passed down
• “We all live with labels. Some are self assigned, and some are assigned by society.”
• The fact that our diversity is part of our strength needs to be repeated, and more white folks are the ones who need to be saying that.
• When so much is at stake, silence is no longer an option.
• Don’t expect black and brown people to diffuse the time bomb they did not create.
• “What to change. But do I?”
• Words carry weight, perceptions create boundaries that can be almost impenetrable.
• In her seminal book, The White Album, Joan Didian said, “A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that he remakes it in his image.” She was talking about California, but I hear the song of America in those words. The song of a people who refused to be broken by a country that kept them at the margins. The song of a people who lived in or swallowed anger, and yet created a culture of joy that flaps like an unfurled flag slapping against the twisted face of hate. The song of a people overlooked who nonetheless created a sumptuous, crazy, sexy, cool culture in their dress, their music, dance poetry, art, sports, street culture and food. From bar-b-que to hip-hop from J-Z to J Lo from Beyonce to Barack and Michelle Obama. From the music that gets people moving on the dance floor at the big family wedding and gets fans fired up at the biggest sports arenas – regardless of location or color of the crowds. From the players who mesmerize us on the field and on the court, from the clothing and slang that kids emulate and amplify in every corner of the US from Appalachia to Alaska. From the K-pop bands whose slick dance moves are clearly inspired, or lifted wholesale from Black culture, to the long line of white British music superstars who say their greatest inspiration came from Black blues or soul performers in the US.
• It’s fair to say that a whole lot of thirteen year olds across this vast planet dream of acquiring even a glimmer of that crazy, sexy, cool magic of a people who created a thundering definitional culture from the margins of American society, that fresh swagger, that fly strut, that calm under pressure, that ability to shine like the sun - on one's own terms. This is the delicious irony of 21st-century America, the rhythms and flavor of America’s core culture are now defined by the people this country tried to disregard. Black culture is one of America’s greatest exports, and certainly one of its most profitable.
• I applaud those who continue to bring people together to search for common ground, but I suggest we put more energy toward cultivating a generation of bridge builders who could help folks reach across differences to work toward better understanding and some framework for productivity. While Americans remain in antagonistic, political, ideological, social or generational silos, I lean towards this concept of bridge building because people rarely cross a bridge in one direction. You usually travel to a different place and return to your homebase informed, and maybe even in some way enriched by your experience in another realm.
• It’s time to reframe the way we talk about race, and the reasons for doing it. Not about sensitivity training but more about acquiring skills. Not about finding common ground, but learning to work effectively alongside someone you don’t agree with. Not about a binary tension between Black and white Americans, but an open armed elastic dialogue that includes those who have too long been stuck at the fringe. Not as a political cudgel used to divide people by praying on their fears, by keeping them afraid of a future that has already arrived. Not as a perspective that posits that those who wear the most red white and blue and fly the biggest flags and appropriate the term patriot can claim so special status that appears on no government document or within no law, for now.
• But the greatest challenge for the next generation of leaders is not just figuring out how to diversify the people in the room, it’s trying to figure out how to get a team to row together, in the same direction, when they don’t agree with each other. How do you keep a vessel afloat when it’s full of people sending their energy in opposite directions? Whether it’s a sports team, a hospital, a construction site or managing the five people who work at the local gas station, this is the management challenge of the future. Protecting kids from an examination of this country's dark chapters or uncomfortable conversations won’t prepare them for that task - and make no mistake, that challenge awaits them.
• I am not suggesting that we weigh down our young people with worries or throw physiological speed bumps in their path. If you want your young ones to soar, you don’t put rocks in their pockets, but a few pearls of wisdom about the complicated road that awaits them might keep them both grounded and girded for the journey ahead.
• Listening is an act of courage and a measure of grace.
• Found family is such a beautiful thing.
• Share your story because you never know who might need to hear it.

[Darren · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was really excellent, but by about halfway through, it was getting too depressing to continue. I may finish it at some point.