Race. Your story. 6 words. Please send.
With those six words (and one number), Michele Norris began a conversation about race that began 14 years ago with 200 postcards she distributed during a tour of the United States — and it continues today with more than half a million submissions from 100 countries.
She described the results of the Race Card Project in her new book, “Our Hidden Conversations: What Americans Really Think About Race and Identity,” during a May 13 appearance in the 2024 International Speaker series sponsored by World Oregon.
She launched The Race Card Project in 2010, while she was still co-host for NPR’s “All Things Considered,” public radio’s afternoon newscast, from 2002 to 2012. She had hoped to write about it for her first book as Barack Obama was elected president — his father is Black, his mother White — and the nation is moving from White majority to majority-minority status by the middle of this century.
Instead, she began the project while on a 36-city tour for her first book, “The Grace of Silence: A Family Memoir.”
“What I have done for the Race Card Project is the most important work of my life,” Norris told an audience at Revolution Hall in Portland. “It’s my legacy in some ways because it allows people to listen to each other.”
While attitudes toward race have changed and are more open, she said, some of the messages on postcards (and their electronic successors) are open to question.
As she spoke, one of the earlier postcard responses appeared on the screen behind her. “Father was racist. I’m not. Progress?”
Norris said among the unanswered questions were whether the respondent’s father had changed, too, and how their relationship stood.
“Particularly in recent years, all of us have had the experience of loving someone, adoring someone, even cherishing someone,” she said. “But you do not love, adore or cherish their values.”
Another card Norris displayed to the audience read: “White privilege. Earned it, enjoy it.”
“You ask why we would include his story,” she said. “Well, because his story is part of America — and we are trying to hold up a mirror to America.”
How Oregon stands
Norris erroneously described Oregon as diverse, though she correctly herself after prompting from the audience.
Oregon ranked 30th on the diversity index by the U.S. Census Bureau, below the national average. The top 10 states in the bureau’s diversity index are Hawaii, California, Nevada, Maryland, District of Columbia, Texas, New Jersey and New York (tied), Florida and Georgia (tied).
But Oregon’s population in 2020 was more diverse than in 1980 — 75% White, compared to 95%. Comparisons of census data are inexact because the 1980 Census did not allow for an individual response of two or more races. Nearly 20% in the 2020 Census chose those options.
In the 2020 Census, 80% of people aged 18 and older in Oregon were White, but that share dropped to 64% among younger people.
Postcards to email
Norris said she began distributing postcards for The Race Card Project as she promoted her first book, although her parents — both postal workers — informed her that the first batch she printed were smaller than allowed by regulations. She left them at the bookstores she stopped at, plus coffee shops and airline seat pockets.
“I was the Pied Piper of postcards,” she said to audience laughter. “I would look at their list of top-10 selling books and I would put my cards inside those books. But people sent them back to me.”
Now most of the submissions are electronic. But she said an extra two-word invitation, “Anything else?” allows people to say far more than they could ever submit on a postcard.
Norris acknowledged that race is a subject that can touch off heated arguments and her project is a way to promote civil conversations on an urgent issue.
“The divisions we see in our headlines, our politics and sometimes at Thanksgiving are affecting how we live, work and learn,” she said.
Diversity under attack
She said the concept of diversity has been “weaponized” by opponents. Under Republican governors and legislatures, Texas and Florida — two of the four most populous states, and also among the more diverse states — have banned diversity, equity and inclusion offices on college campuses.
But she said research has shown that businesses with more diverse workforces retain employees, are more innovative and post higher profits.
“They are not always happy places because it means you have people who come from different perspectives. But they actually work better and smarter,” she said. “I do not know how we are going to get around diversity in a country as variegated as ours. So, we better figure out how to talk to each other.”
Instead of discussing diversity in the abstract, Norris said, people should look at it as if they were discussing the consequences of poverty without using that term.
“Then you have to talk about the condition of poverty — what it means to live in want,” she said. “Then you have to talk about what it means to be hungry, to be insecure about your next meal, about whether you have a roof over your head. The same exercise works when you have a conversation about diversity or inclusion.”
She added:
“Progress is not always quick. Progress is not always visible. But we have to figure out how to keep doing it. I think the people who are trying to figure out how to do this have a better story to tell. But they don’t always figure out how to tell that story.”
pwong@pamplinmedia.com
Link: https://www.theracecardproject.com
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