Equity & Justice

We're reading and writing about race all the time here at Code Switch, but we don't get to blog about everything we see. Here are some stories that are worth your time.

On Monday, the folks over at Reddit were kind enough to have my colleague Shereen Marisol Meraji and me on to do an Ask Me Anything on our recent reporting on Bluefield State College in West Virginia. Bluefield State is a historically black college, but today it's nearly 90 percent white.

The history of Africans in the Americas is a long and complicated one, filled with tragic twists and hopeful turns. Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. has taken on the task of telling the story in its entirety in the new PBS documentary The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross.

The noted scholar spoke with Tell Me More host Michel Martin about why it's important to trace the path of African American people in the documentary format, and how to change the conversation about race.

People aren't exempted from new regulations because they're old and crotchety, even if that's what it sounds like when we say they're "grandfathered in."

The term "grandfathered" has become part of the language. It's an easy way to describe individuals or companies who get to keep operating under an existing set of expectations when new rules are put in place.

More than 1 in 3 women in the United States will experience physical violence, rape or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetimes.

The Slants, a six-member band from Portland, Ore., calls their sound "Chinatown Dance Rock" — a little bit New Order, a little bit Depeche Mode. They describe themselves as one of the first Asian-American rock bands. Their music caters to an Asian-American crowd, they've spoken at various Asian-American events, and they're proud of all of it.

There's a true American saga on screens this weekend.

Twelve Years a Slave tells the story of Solomon Northup. He was an African-American musician from New York — a free man, until he was kidnapped in Washington, D.C., and sold into slavery. After an unlikely rescue from a Louisiana cotton plantation, he returned home and wrote a memoir, first published 160 years ago.

But the end of Northup's story is an unsolved mystery that has confounded historians for years.

"We the undersigned, are distressed about the continuing divide that persists in the North American evangelical church in the area of racial harmony."

That's the first line of a four-page open letter to American Evangelicals ("On Cultural Insensitivity and Reconciliation in the Church") from a coalition called Asian American Christians United. The letter was released earlier this week.

Wendy Montgomery was raised, and raised her children, in the Mormon church. She was part of the church's campaign to aid a ballot initiative banning same-sex marriage in California. But her faith was shaken when she found out her teenage son is gay. She talks to Tell Me More host Michel Martin about how she came to accept her son and her faith, and is now trying to change the Mormon Church from the inside.

Interview Highlights

"Everything I thought a gay person was..."

It opened in the late 19th century as the Bluefield Colored Institute, created to educate the children of black coal miners in segregated West Virginia. Although it still receives the federal funding that comes with its designation as a historically black institution, today Bluefield State College is 90 percent white. The road that separates those realities is as rocky as any story of racial transition in post-World War II America.

We went to the campus of Bluefield State to see what campus life was like at this unusual college.

A new documentary, American Promise, follows the lives of two African-American families as they try to navigate a path for their young sons at The Dalton School—a prestigious, private school in New York City with predominately white student body.

If you are at all interested in travel or photography, then you probably know National Geographic for the stunning images that take you around the world, introducing you to remarkable cultures and people. Over the past decade, some of the most powerful images in the magazine — and the stories behind them — have been captured by female photojournalists.