The following podcast contains explicit language.

Hello and welcome to our national conversation about conversations about race,

the bi-weekly multiracial podcast where we discuss the ways we can't talk,

don't talk, but rather not talk, but intermittently, fitfully, embarrassingly do talk about culture, identity, politics, power, and privilege in our pre-post, yet still very racial America.

Now, you could say all that, or you could just call this show, about race.

In the studio from Los Angeles, I'm Baratune Day Thurston, author of How to Be Black, and with me today from the Panoply Studios in New York are my wonderful co-host,

Raquel Sepeda, author of Bird of Paradise, How I Became Latina.

What's up, Raquel?

What up, what up, Baratunday?

What's up, Earthlings and others?

I'm looking forward to this combo.

And we are looking forward to you as well. And the Tanner she speaks of is

Tanner Colby, author of Some of My Best Friends Are Black, The Strange Story of Integration in America. Good

Day, Tanner. Good day to you, sir. Here's what we have in store for today's discussion.

Because it's the premier episode of About Race, we'd be remiss if we didn't

discuss the spectacular failure of Starbucks attempt at racial conversation, this

race together campaign promoted by its CEO Howard Schultz. It seemed that everyone loved to hate

it. And now that the shitstorm of mockery and ridicule is passed, we're going to look back

at how it failed and why.

The next story we'll get to is three miles. This story recently aired by this American life.

It's about two schools in the Bronx that are mere three miles apart, but super different. One is a

struggling public school predominantly made up of low-income students of color. The other,

...