Code Switch

NPR’s Code Switch is one of my core podcasts - I tune in regularly to learn about current affairs, politics, society, culture, and history. It’s thoughtful, smart, and often funny. I love the wide variety of topics it covers, from the co-opting of MLK Jr to what it’s like to find community while learning to play the banjo. While some episodes focus on race and racism as the central core of the story, many simply tackle a topic from the lens of people of color, which gives me a deeper understanding as well as insights I wouldn’t have had from my own lived experience as a white person.

We need to learn the past, we need to hear points of view, but what we really need is for people to tell the story of where they and as a nation, we go from here. Staying a victim is not helping. There is too much of this scattered in episodes. Every now and then I get a show that doesn’t make me shake my head…those are few. As for the episode on DEI hiring, being a federal worker I am glad DEI is gone with how it had been allowed to evolve. I never wanted to be hired because I checked a box. I was sickened that someone with less than 3 months of work had first dibs of a entertained level permanent position over someone who worked years as a temp, all because they checked certain boxes (true story that no one tells). We should have been expanding our outreach, instead we only recruited from a select group of colleges, and did not allow others who didn’t go to those colleges to apply. DEI was just as discriminating as what proponents of DEI said they wanted to get rid of.

Thank you so much for discussing solutions to social struggles. B. A. Parker inquires with knowledge, curiosity and poignant insight.

Thank you Gene for reminding and re-educating me on this important topic. I’m 67 years of age and only played high school and college football for a total of eight years. I don’t think I’m affected but who knows. When this subject first became widely known and I became aware of the term ‘ race norming’ it made me furious. Over time I had forgotten why I stopped watching football. Thank you for the reminder.