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, would rather not talk, but intermittently, fitfully, embarrassingly do talk about culture, identity, politics,

power, and privilege, and our pre-post, yet still very racial America. You could say all that,

or just call us about race. All three in the same room from the Panoply Studios in New York. I'm

Baratune Day Thurston, author of How to Be Black,

with my co-hosts, Raquel Sopeta, author of Bird of Paradise, How It Became Latina,

and Tanner Colby, author of Some of My Best Friends Are Black, The Strange Story of Integration

in America.

We're going to start with a round of status updates, Tanner.

What's your status update?

I actually just got an email as we walked in.

My book, some of my best friends were black, was amazingly picked up for the ninth grade

curriculum at the Raytown School District in Kansas City.

You could influence young minds.

I know, sadly.

That's very strange.

So it's currently being talked to several hundred

ninth graders and I just got an email from the teacher about where they are in the process. And so we'll

see once they're done with the book, how it comes out, what they learn and what we learn from them.

That is really exciting and terrifying news at the same time. Congratulations. Congratulations.

And what about you, Raquel?

What's your status update?

...