Diversity in the Diaspora

Slate News

Slate Podcasts

News Commentary, Politics, News

4.5 • 6K Ratings

🗓️ 25 February 2024

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The American obsession with categorizing people by race isn’t just a problem for our institutions. For multi-racial and multi-ethnic Americans, it can be intensely personal. On today’s episode of A Word, Jason Johnson is joined by journalist Natasha Alford. She shares her own unique experience navigating America’s complicated ideas about race in her new book, American Negra: A Memoir. Alford shares how her African American and Puerto Rican heritage shaped her understanding of race in her early life, and how those ideas were challenged when she attended Harvard University and later became a journalist. Guest: Natasha Alford, author of American Negra: A Memoir Podcast production by Kristie Taiwo-Makanjuola Want more A Word? Subscribe to Slate Plus to immediately access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page. Or, visit slate.com/awordplus to get access wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is a word, a podcast from Slate. I'm your host, Jason Johnson.
0:03.8	America and not just the United States has been preoccupied with race from the beginning
0:09.3	and that obsession is not just felt in our institutions and communities.
0:13.3	For people of mixed race, that tension reaches deep into their homes and their families and their
0:19.0	lives.
0:20.0	Because there is a commitment to a narrative of color blindness and racial democracy,
0:25.2	what you have is people who don't want to talk about racism.
0:29.0	In these people's eyes, to even talk about race or racism is to be divisive.
0:34.0	More from the new book American Negra,
0:36.1	coming up on a word with me, Jason Johnson.
0:38.8	Stay with us.
0:42.0	Granny and Grandpa had their hearts set on getting Jess a drum kit for her birthday.
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1:09.2	and borrowing history.
	...

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