I'm Karen Grigsby-Bates and this is Code Switch from NPR.

Okay, so we all know race is a social construct, right?

We sound like a broken record repeating that over and over and over again.

But it's true.

And it's meant a lot of different things over the generations.

But even as it's evolved and changed, one key component has always been the color of

a person's skin.

Black, brown, white, red, yellow.

We keep lumping people together who look all kinds of different ways under limiting

labels.

So the actual color of our skin becomes a proxy for race, ethnicity, identity.

Even today with a nationwide movement for racial justice, as widespread as discussions

of race may be, it's still largely skin deep.

Well, for the past six months, we've been working with our very first cohort of Code

Switch Fellows to report out their own stories about race.

And today we're going to share the first one from Code Switch Fellow, Kamna Shastri, who's

going to shake our ideas about race right on up.

Here's Kamna.

I wanted to actually start out by asking you, like, if you, if I hadn't introduced myself

to you, if I just walked up to you right now, what would you assume my race is?

Oh gosh, this is, that's such a hard question.

And particularly because we're wearing masks, right? And so so much of race, I think, is

...