Karen Grigsby Bates
Karen Grigsby Bates is the Senior Correspondent for Code Switch, a podcast that reports on race and ethnicity. A veteran NPR reporter, Bates covered race for the network for several years before becoming a founding member of the Code Switch team. She is especially interested in stories about the hidden history of race in America—and in the intersection of race and culture. She oversees much of Code Switch's coverage of books by and about people of color, as well as issues of race in the publishing industry. Bates is the co-author of a best-selling etiquette book (Basic Black: Home Training for Modern Times) and two mystery novels; she is also a contributor to several anthologies of essays. She lives in Los Angeles and reports from NPR West.
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Leslie Miley says the company keeps an internal list of colleges and universities it wants to hire from — Stanford, MIT, Carnegie Mellon — and says messaging like that is part of the problem. -
Activist and philosopher Grace Lee Boggs died in Detroit on Monday at the age of 100. She was well known for her social justice work, which she continued right into her 100th year.
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Brash, biting Cookie Lyon is arguably the most compelling character on Fox's hit show Empire. The show's co-producer and writer Attica Locke says that's because we've all got a bit of Cookie in us. -
Ravi Patel had tried and failed to find "The One." So he reluctantly let his parents arrange for him to meet dozens of prospects. And his sister has filmed the whole thing — for our viewing pleasure. -
Idris Elba's name has been floated as a possible successor to Daniel Craig. Anthony Horowitz, who writes the current Bond books, apologized for saying Elba is "too street" to play the suave spy.
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Tony Gleaton left a budding career in fashion photography to travel across continents, taking pictures of landscapes and people of the Americas that had special meaning for the African diaspora. -
Cynthia Hawkins leads a family business that endured the 1965 Watts riots, and the Rodney King riots in 1992. She praises the embattled neighborhood, and says strong community ties brought success. -
The Hawkins family has been feeding Watts since 1939. Cynthia Hawkins is the third generation to continue the tradition, and in an LA neighborhood that is often referred to as a food desert.
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Twenty-five years after Charles Johnson's Middle Passage — which dwells with race, class and gender in 19th-century America — won the National Book Award, he reflects on his book's evolving meaning.
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Bill Cosby was instrumental in opening the door for black stuntmen in Hollywood early in his career. He was to be a central figure in a new documentary about black stuntmen, but that has now changed. He will be mentioned, but his interviews have been pulled, following the latest revelations about the comedian, who admitted in court documents that he drugged women for sex.
