I went to the Sharp Viewpoint Speaker Series on the 12th, where Michele Norris gave a talk called The Race Card: Observations on Race, Identity, and Inclusion. One of the main things she talked about was The Race Card Project, a project she started several years ago where people would tell stories about their identity in 6 words. It was an inspiring speech, because the goal of this project was to promote speech and give a voice to topics that are generally silent. The project has collected over 500,000 post cards, and that number is constantly growing larger with digital cards and social media allowing for even larger participation.
Some of the most interesting points in her speech, for me, was when she brought up how racism is a spectrum that can range from a noose down to a small social papercut (microaggression), saying that “biases are baked into western DNA.” Serious, uncomfortable discussions are necessary to move us closer to a post-racism society. To end, Michele Norris’s two six-word stories are “fool them all, not done yet” and “there’s still work to be done”
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