Right You Good morning. Hello. Good morning. Good morning. My name is Ray Daniels. I'm the Chief Communications Officer at the American Booksellers Association. Thank you. Someday days I look forward to the work a little bit more than others and today is one of those days. Today I have the esteemed honor to introduce to you one of the profound voices of our time. The one who has reinvigorated not only snail mail and postcards, and sticky notes, but also conversations, the type of conversations that most people shy away from conversations about race. Michele Norris has broken ground at NPR as the first African American female female post. female host she's a Peabody and award winning journalist as a contributing writer for The Washington Post. And today she is our keynote without further ado, please welcome Michelle Norris.
One I just have my just in case water here. So this is a big room. This is a very big room and I am very happy to be here with all of you today.
I love words and I love books. And that means I love the people in this room. Books have given me so much in my life. They've saved me in some ways. I am a kid who grew up in the Midwest with a speech impediment. And when you have a hard time talking, you learn how to listen. And when you have a hard time figuring out how to make your way in the world, you find worlds in books. And so thank you so much for for what you do. For all of us right now. I was doing a soundcheck earlier this morning and they just asked me to say anything and I thought about that sentence that we all had to learn how to type for those of us who are old enough to still take typing. Do you remember typing classes? Now is the time for all good men. I thought No. Now is the time for all good booksellers to come to the aid of this country because we really do need you right now. I was invited here to talk to you because I run a kind of crazy project that turned into an interesting book. I run something called the race card project where I invite people to I tend to walk that's part of my dealing with my fear of speaking as I like to walk so I'm a wanderer. I am a story teller. I am a journalist. I've been a journalist for many years for more than three decades. But in the last decade of my life, I've also become a story collector. And I did that by accident. It was a bit of a magnificent detour. Because I wanted to understand how Americans thought and talked about this subject that I thought no one wanted to talk about. I wanted to actually understand America's conversation about race and I leaned into this at a time where we as Americans were pretending like our conversations around race were about to be done. I wrote a book in 2010 called the Grace of Silence, which is about my family's very complex racial legacy. It was actually the first time that I went out to try to talk about race in America. It was after family of color had moved into the White House. And there was a WORD that was everywhere in America at that moment. The WORD post racial someone's laughing. It's hard to even say post racial now without an IRA, right? But you remember, there was a time where this was like this was part of the vernacular of America and political commentary. And it sort of felt like this, this aspirational hope that we had taken the Express elevator to the top floor, and that we had just sped past all of the icky yucky stuff that was going to make us uncomfortable. And we just got to the top floor and rooftop garden where everything was beautiful. And I don't want to be the person to say I told you so. Because no one really likes that person. But I was thinking wow, we just had a family of color moving to the White House and we're pretending like things are over. Maybe we should be putting our seatbelts on and so I wanted to go out into America to listen to how Americans talk and think about race and I wound up taking the first of many left turns. Because in my own family, I started to hear a conversation that I had never heard before. My older relatives were suddenly unburdening themselves and talking about things that they had kept from me. And I had learned significant family secrets. I learned that my father had been injured when he was trying to enter a building called the Pythian temple in Birmingham, Alabama. If anyone's from Birmingham. You probably know this. It's in the Black Business District on Fourth Avenue. He had just returned from his military service. And he was going into a building where they would have classes at night, so people could learn as much as they could about the Constitution. Why? Because they had to pass a poll test if he wanted to vote. And when he tried to enter that building a police officer stopped, tried to stop him. And he asserted his right to enter the building. This is unusual to me because my father was so zen. I couldn't imagine him standing up to a police officer, but he had just returned from his military service in the Navy. And he thought I had fought for democracy overseas. Let me see if I can get a taste of it back home and voting. In America wasn't ready for that. A scuffle ensued, and he was wounded when he was shot in his like bullet grazed him. And I remember he had a scar. And I remember that he walked a certain way that was not a limp, but a little little tennis step that I always thought was just a little bit more like a man putting a little bit of something something in a step in the way that in the way that and I'm not trafficking in any kind of stereotypes that in the way that black men can do. You know what I'm talking about? Denzel Washington. You know what I'm talking about. He just kind of the way Barack Obama doesn't he just chats, you know, runs up to the podium. But he never told my mother. He never told my sisters he never told me I learned about it from an uncle. On the other side of my family. I learned a secret from my mother's family. That my grandmother was an itinerant Aunt Jemima. Yes. What does that mean? That my grandmother worked for Quaker Oats and she was part of an army of woman who traveled the country. When convenience cooking was new, she was going to Rotarian breakfasts is and Knights of Columbus halls, and county fairs, showing people how to use pancake books and basically abandon the four ingredients that it takes to make pancakes and instead using a box that was her job, and no one in the family wanted to talk about it because it's kind of complicated when Aunt Jemima is literally a member of your family. And what she was doing wearing a hoop skirt and a headscarf was just completely at odds with the aspirational hopes of people of color who were trying to gain respectability. And yet, when I did research, I found out that my grandmother did this. She made quite a lot of money doing it. It's how she was able to help some of us go to college. But she also was subversive in that she would go into these towns and she refused to use the slave lingo script that they gave her. She was supposed to talk about laws, the laws. Yeah, sure. I'm serving some beautiful pancakes this morning. And she's like, I'm not doing that. I found recordings of her talking about how she did the work and she would go to these small towns and she would speak in the language that I remember she was she would win oratory contests. As a kid she was very particular about the way we talk. She was always telling us to put the G at the end of our words. So we would not talk about how we were thinking about going Stayton she was like Mr. G is outside and he's very cold he needs to come inside and sit down at this table. And I learned these stories and I wound up writing a different kind of book. And then when I went out into the world, on a 35 city book tour, I wrote a book about race and I thought I'm going to be talking to Americans about race and I thought no one wanted to do that. I thought people would rather eat their toenails than have a conversation about race. And so I had to figure out how I could invite people into the conversation because at that point, I was hosting a show called All Things Considered a National Public Radio, which means you're cloistered you're in the studio all the time. This is a chance for me to get out in the world and talk to people. How do I get people to actually have an open conversation about race? I decided to invite them into the conversation through postcards. You have these on your table. They're a little fancier than the ones we created. These are full color and have pictures of the book that I wound up writing. If you don't have them on your table you have posted on your table. And I have an assignment for you. Eventually we'll have some of these outside also, but the original postcards just said raise your thoughts. Please said raise your thoughts six words please. Send six words is important. I chose postcards. I actually don't even know why I chose postcards. I thought they were interesting. I my parents were postal workers. Maybe it was my way of supporting the US Postal Service. But my my mother, my father is gone. But my mother's still alive in the original postcards. Were all black and they had in the back, you know the line and the postage stamp. And my mother said I love what you're doing honey, but those aren't regulation sides. So my original postcards were not street legal. But we printed 200 of them. And of the 200 that we printed at Kinkos in Washington DC about 30% came back to me. That's an incredible yield. So I thought, Okay, we're gonna keep putting these postcards. I got my publishers to print postcards. I left them everywhere I went. I was the Pied Piper of postcards. I was leaving them in the back of the airline seats. I was leaving them in the sugar station of Starbucks. If there was a menu near where they had the the ketchup and the mustard and everything. I just did a postcard in there. I was on a 35 city book tour. So I was visiting bookstores all over the country. And I apologize to other authors but I would figure out what are the best selling books and I put a postcard inside the book.
Because they could use a bookmark just put a postcard right inside the book. But the postcard started to come back. And you might think six words What can people possibly say in six words? I chose six words because people were familiar with six WORD exercises. Because I knew as a writer, when I write something complicated, I try to reduce it to one sentence and then I understand how I can build it back up. And because this is a big toxic subject, if people could just distill their thoughts, maybe they would get to the essence of what they were thinking. In the beginning a lot of the postcards were very we call them rainbow and Bunny postcards. And maybe it was because we were in that post racial aura, but only one race the human race. A lot of people quoted Rodney King Can't we just get along, but then things started to get deep white not allowed to be proud. I'm only Asian when it's convenient. You said dirt? So I scrubbed to black for black men's love. No My name is not Maria. People would send in postcards and they would turn them into art. Look at what Dorothy Dorothy Umi Garcia did to that card. No WORD for what I am. She lives in Santa Cruz. And her card is unique to her. That's her as a little girl. That little Fair Isle sweater sitting between her mom and dad her dad is Latino her mother is Asian. Now if you are mixed race yourself if you are part of a partnership, where you have married or love someone across a culture, you know what it's like to go to kindergarten and they put that form in front of you and you get to choose one box that you have to check and one box sometimes is not enough. So she's saying no WORD for what I am. And I love it. That card is individual to her but it's also universal. Because so many of us are put in boxes of fixed servitude, and it's not enough. You may look at me and you said she's an African American woman. Because that's often what you do quick, but you check a box. I'm a journalist. I'm a wife, a mother, a daughter. I like to think I'm a dancer. I'm a cook. I occasionally rollers i There's a whole bunch of stuff. But often it's just one thing that sticks to us. Most of the cards now come in digitally, but I still love the postcards. I love the intention in them. I love the way you can see how people think. When people send in their cards digitally because we created a website. Once the card started to come they were so interesting. I wanted to share them with the world so we created a website and then the cards started to come in digitally. But the postcard you you can't cut and paste on a postcard. So when you write something you can you can fix your sentence and it's perfect by the time I see it right. But in this case, there's no cut and paste function on there. So you see his thought process. Now he brought it down to six words and we're glad about that because it was seven and a lot of people are slick. I asked for six words. And I knew that if I asked for a sentence people would give me a paragraph and I asked for a paragraph people say oh too much work. I'm not going to do that. So I asked for six words. And sometimes people hyphenate several words. Or they put words in parentheses or there's an asterisk and then there's more stuff down below. So he got his down to six. And I love this card because his thought process is evident in this. The cards are pretty heavy stock, and he says Father was racist. I'm not progress exclamation point. But he goes over those words. I'm not over and over and over with his pen so much that it goes through in dense the card. He wants you to know something. His dad was in one place and he is evolved and he's someplace else. That's the story you see on the card. But doesn't it make you think about what happens outside the four corners of that card? Did dad ever evolve with him? What was the relationship like? Over the holidays like this is another card that's unique to him but it's universal because many of us have people that we love and cherish and adore but we don't love or cherish or adore their values, their perspectives, the things we say out loud. Everybody in this room has probably had that experience at a holiday table at some point, especially right now right? Uncle Earl says something and the conversation just goes to another place. My house started to fill up with these postcards. And I kept them as you see in Tupperware containers and shoe boxes and I realized that I was archiving something very interesting about America and that I had to figure out how I could contain these stories hold onto these stories, share them with people I created journalism around them. As I said we created the website. And the stories often came in the form of questions suggesting to me that people were asking questions that they weren't able to ask in other spaces. This is a woman who said did my southern grandpa attend lynchings? In case you can't see that? And if you ask a question like that, you probably have a pretty good idea of the answer. We have archived more than 500,000 of these stories we have 1000s of stories waiting to queue since the book has was published our hidden conversations published by Simon and Schuster on January 16. We've received 10s of 1000s of new cards in the inbox just since then, and I'm going to take you inside the inbox because I want to give you the experience that I have every day when we go into the inbox. I work with a very small, teeny but mighty team maintaining this archive and I included these photos here to help you understand that the stories that I'm about to share with you. They are included in the archive that I administer but they're not my stories. I am a conservative other people's truths. And at some point my teams suggested that we do a few things and some of the things I agreed to and some of the things I fought and this is another case where I admitting I was wrong. I created this project because I thought no one wants to talk about race. Apparently a lot of people do. And we added two words to the forum that said anything else. So people would sign on there six words on the forum when they sent it in digitally anything else? And that was like opening a spigot. Oh, you want to know why I chose these six words. So people would send in paragraphs essays, sometimes entire treatise in some cases. And the team said, you know, we should include photographs, and I didn't want to include photographs. I was so afraid that the website would start to look like and I apologize if anyone here works for Mehta or Facebook or has relatives that do but I was afraid that the website was going to look like Facebook, which to my mind looked like a messy teenage bedroom. I didn't know where my eye was supposed to go there was all kinds of stuff all over the place. It was another example I was wrong. We asked people to include their photos in the adorn their essays, their six WORD essays in many cases, and the pictures themselves tell a story. So I wanted you to see the pictures to understand that these are individuals who are telling their own stories, and in some cases, sharing something that they're proud of look at that picture that she's holding, sharing a moment that meant something to them, oftentimes sharing pictures of them when they were young, because in many cases, the stories that they chose to share with us suggested that they're still adjudicating something that happened to them much earlier in their life. That little boy in that little outfit. How many of you had that outfit because I had something that looked just like it. It came from Sears or Montgomery Ward's it was like Garanimals and everything match. So I'm going to take you inside the inbox to let you understand what it's like to listen to Americans singing all on its own octave around a subject that no one allegedly wanted to talk about. And I like to bring the room into this. Does anyone want to read these six words? Just shout them out if you don't mind. Anyone? Thank you. Thank you. We just met this morning. Isn't this interesting? Because she's telling us that she's feeling uncomfortable. This photo is so beautiful that we actually did forensics on it to make sure that it wasn't like enhanced in some way. It actually is a photo. We know what kind of phone it was taken on. Is there anything about this picture that suggests that she's uncomfortable? She looks like she has got it going on. And yet it is a reminder to us that maybe we shouldn't judge people because you never know what's actually going on. Who wants to read this one? Thank you. That's Kyle Lin from Grand Rapids. And again, I had to check the photo because look at that photo. I thought is that really them or is that a did they just grab that from sort of ice stock or something like that? That's actually the two of them. It's on their wedding night. They had a fantastic wedding for a photographer that caught them in this beautiful Moran gay moment. And I called him for two reasons because I said Kyle's not really you and I also call them because we're going to put it on the website. And I know that the first year of marriage can be tender. And so I said, you know, I'm gonna put this on the website and I didn't miss his wife, Claire, and I didn't want Claire's cousin to say Did you see what Kyle put on the internet? And he said, No, I want you to post this and this is his story. They met and married. They met in college and marriage soon after that. They had many of the same interests. They liked the same theater. They liked the same music. They had the same ideas for vacation. And Kyle says that his wife looked at him he is Chinese and Singaporean because he is mixed race but Asian. And she said that he said that his wife looked at him as someone who was basically an assimilated white man.
A white guy who tans really easily. But when they got married, and they started to build a life together and they started to think about how are we going to raise our children? What holidays are we going to celebrate? What's the kitchen gonna smell like on New Year's? Which New Year's do we celebrate? Do we do more than one? And Claire didn't understand that that was part of the deal. Because she thought that he was moving into her culture. And he said so please post this because every time I go to the mall every time I go to the bank every time we go to a sporting events, I see lots of couples that are just like us, and I bet they're having the same conversations. Who's going to read this one? So of course several people read this one, because this is the most common card we get up doing this for 14 years archiving hundreds of 1000s of cards. This is the card that comes in most often. No Where are you actually from? How many people in the room have had someone say some version of this? Where you actually From where are you really from a lot of hands go up? How many people have actually asked this question, but where are you really from? Or where are you from? Okay, I'm gonna be honest, I've asked that question. I'm a journalist, but I also am interested. But now I know that I have to be careful about how I ask that question because sometimes it can be an irritant to people if it's the first thing you ask that people feel like what box am I going to put you in so I know how to deal with you. Several people who sent in these cards are much like this is chigan. And she's slick. She knows what people are after. So they say where are you from? And she says I'm from Naperville. Illinois. No, but where are you? Actually from? I'm from that part of Naperville. That's near the mall around from the tasty freeze. I mean, she knows exactly what the deal is, but she kind of pulls them along. And this is a card that actually was in the news fairly recently a woman of color went to Buckingham Palace, and a member of the royal family asked her again and again but no she keeps saying I'm English I'm British, no but what are you really, really actually from? So the lesson to me is when people when you ask the question you have to accept whatever answer is given to you. Otherwise people can make assumptions about where you're really coming from. And that's one of many lessons I've learned from this box who's going to read this one and you read that with Brio lady I don't want your purse at the racecar project we would over time when we still carried business cards. Everyone now has like a QR code instead of a business card. But they we would dip into the inbox and choose different six WORD stories for our business cards. And so Melissa bear who has been with me since the very beginning on this her six words on her business card said Grandma you can't say that anymore. And Omer Dillon, who is South Asian, her sixth WORD said no, I don't like spicy food. Because people assume that since she was Indian that she would want the super hot food and she's like a handy that gives me a suggestion please. I always chose lady I don't want your purse. Because I liked the way that Hiawatha was using humor to talk about a situation that is not always so funny. Again, I'm going to ask the room. How many people have had the experience in this room? And I'm gonna ask you to be honest all the way in the back all the way in the right side left side. You walk down the frozen food aisle of the grocery store and you encounter someone who's a little bit different than you. You walk into an elevator and you encounter someone who's different from you and you don't even know why you do it. You pat your wallet. You pull your bag a little closer. How many people will admit to doing that? How many people admit to driving in a neighborhood and you're in unfamiliar territory, and you see people who don't look like you and you try to be a little bit a little bit slick about it and hit the lock on the car. Never do that. But today the car locks are auditory they're so loud that you hit the car or the lock and it's like could you do and someone living lady I don't want your purse. Other side of this. How many people have had the experience of walking in that elevator or walking down the street and seeing someone hit the lock on their car, seeing someone pull their purse closer? Raise your hand high if that's happened to you? And when that happens, the people who pulled their purse a little bit closer, probably move on with their day and they're done. The people who witness that move on with their day but it lives inside them. It's one of the assumptions that we make about people and how that how that affects society. And now that I think about this, and maybe since I've shared this story with you, you'll think about that next time that happens. Why do I do that? What leads me to do that. Going in the inbox for me is like listening to a waterfall of voices and when I wrote the book, I wanted the book to feel that way also. The book includes 13 essays that I wrote where I would reach into these cards and do research and do deeply reported essays because many of these stories are the portal to a deeper story about American history, about how we live in America about regional differences. But I also wanted the book to include this cascade of voices. And so there are almost 1000 stories in the book. Some of them just six WORD stories. So in them six WORD stories of backstories. Some of them which photos there are 287 photos in the book, the person who didn't want photos thought to make sure that there were photos inside the book, but this gives you a sense of what it feels like when I go into the inbox. Things that you generally don't hear people say out loud, you know that you're in a special space when every day in your inbox someone shares something with you that they've never shared with anybody else hated for being a white cop. I have covered so many incidences where we have seen all of us black death on small screens. police killings around America, but the one people the one group of people that I rarely get a chance to talk to are the police officers, because usually they can't talk because of enthalpy rules because of litigation. But in this case over 14 years in my inbox several cases, we've had several cases where police officers have sent in their stories and have said I actually do have something to say I just don't have a place where I can say it. That's Brent Mizel, who wrote to me from Nacogdoches, Texas. Oh by the name of that town, right. Thank you said Perfect, thank you. And he talks about what it's like to wear the blue and how everywhere he goes everyone assumes that he's a certain kind of guy. And he faces a wall of hatred everywhere he goes. And he told me a story that when he went into a restaurant once he was using the bathroom, and he saw someone spitting into the food and he realized that the person who was spitting into the food was the server that was going to his table. That's the kind of hatred that he faces and he joined the force because he said he wanted to protect and to serve. He retired. He went back to work on the force because he's got a son and a nephew who are also working in law enforcement. He went to work for the sheriff's office because he says if there's going to be a change I want to be a part of it. And I want to share my voice I am not the paralegal I'm counsel. This is a woman who walks into a room and it's kind of the corollary to lady I don't want your purse when she walks into a room people are always assuming that she's there to get the yellow pads to get the coffee to set up the room. And actually, her name is on the masthead at the law firm. One of the reasons I liked the story is she says I she still struggles with what to say in that moment. Does she put her hands on her hip and say, Well, why would you say that to me? I'm actually the lawyer. She usually just goes along with it because she needs to keep things moving because lawyers are built on the hour. But she says every time it happened she wonders what should I have said what should she have said? Is it a teachable moment? Do you go back and do an after action report. She like many of us then winds up thinking about it for a long time. She's thinking about all the things she could have said when she was making dinner that night. Maybe in the shower the next morning, that's me. Something happens. I'm brilliant in the shower. When I'm writing I often will take showers in the middle of the day just to get my mind going. But it's one of these questions. Hmm when things happen. What do you say? Should someone else have said something? Did she need an upstander at the table? Why is it always on her to say something maybe someone else could have said by the way? Who wants to read this?
That's Dan and he's heard that all his life. He was adopted as a young child by a German Irish couple. And he actually runs a diversity program for a large company. And he said he'd go along with it and go along with it and finally realize it's not a compliment. You're invited. You're not a minority that's Raphael. He was working as a young man. This picture is about 25 years old. He was working at a big financial house and he got invited to the special luncheon. And he was very excited because it was a luncheon where you got to have lunch with the principals at the firm. And he goes there. And he actually goes with all the other interns and he realizes before the lunch that everybody else who's going is either Asian, Latino or black or indigenous. They're minorities, obvious minorities of one kind or another. He goes over to HR which is right around the corner and says I think I don't think I'm supposed to be over there it says but your name is Rafael and he said but I'm Italian and she says it's a free lunch. Just go to the lunch. So he goes to the lunch and he has a great time when he gets to meet people whose offices are usually on high floors and corner offices. And 25 years later, he's still thinking about this because he can't figure out if this was a good thing or a bad thing. Because he realizes why wait, why did they get special access to people who are on high floors and corner offices when people who are Caucasian didn't get that kind of access? But he's wrestling with this because he says you know what, of the people who interned none of them got hired. And after 25 years in the financial services industry, I say I see very few people in my industry who looked like the other interns who got to go to that lunch. So he's like, wrestling with this. And it's interesting because many of the people who share their stories, they have not come to a conclusion. They're thinking out loud and this is a space where they can actually do this. Who wants to read this one? No, thanks. I'm with him. They're a mixed race couple. And every time they go to a restaurant go through TSA, they're separated. And she always says No thanks. I'm with him. And she's ever he says no thanks. I'm with her. And again, assumptions that are made. Who wants to read this one? This was one of the earlier cards we got that Celeste. She's one of our race card project babies. We've watched her grow up. She sent in her card when she graduated from college. And this project in some ways is perfect for a moment where people are thinking out loud on Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, this one out on what my mother calls the Twitter and no one calls it the Twitter because it's now something else, but it sparked a three week debate. It just kept going and going and going where people were saying Wait, I thought strongmen was a compliment. I thought that that was when I say someone is strong. I always think that that is I'm telling them that this is the best part of themselves. And other people would roll into this chat and say well wait, no, no. No, no, no. It makes it sound like you can throw anything at us and we will survive. It makes us sound like weeds instead of flowers. And it's interesting that Celeste is now you see her there on her scrubs. She's an OBGYN she works in in Houston, Texas. Now and she wrote her medical school essay based on her six WORD experience. And she has done grand rounds at our hospital. Again, based on this experience because as an OBGYN, she realizes through a body of research that's been done across the country that pain meds are given to women of color. at a different rate. Then they're given to Caucasian woman in part because of an assumption. Again, assumptions. We come to these assumptions because we don't talk to each other because we don't we're not Proximus enough to each other and so she still is referring back to those six words that she sent us 13 years ago. Two white dads three black kids, isn't this a great picture? These two gentlemen, we live in Washington DC adopted three children on the same day and what a happy moment Right? And yet I asked you to think about something outside the four corners of a race cars in this case, thinking about what happens outside the four corners of that picture. Such a beautiful picture. But wow, do they have a complicated road ahead of them, right? No, kids, three kids. They can't wait to get out of those clothes. They're like get this start to dress off me these shoes hurt. I want to get out of here. But also, they have to learn how to do hair. Right? They have to get all kinds of new hair products that they probably haven't thought about need to go to a new aisle when they go to Target or Walmart. They have to take that little boy to the barbershop. Think about that encounter they have to go and enroll the kids in school and is there a space for them to check to dads or to have guardians? You know all the things that we're trying to figure out how to talk about in America? Can someone helped me find my privilege sent from someone here in in actually, especially Ohio to this tendency, Stephen who uses the WORD privilege, which is thrown around a lot, but I'm careful about how I use the WORD privilege now because I've heard from so many people who don't feel like they have it. Even though we live in a country where there were advantages that were given to people based on their skin color automatically. And yet Steve says I grew up on food stamps. I lived in a homeless shelter for a while my family had to choose at the end of the month. Are we getting meat or does he get a new pair of shoes? Where is my privilege name is unpronounceable never called on that's even names also are things that come up again. I love the six words can't pronounce my name try harder. And I'm going to close in the inbox with this. My name is Jamal, I'm white. We did a story about Jamal on public radio. So you may have heard it but Jamal is a fellow who grew up in Oregon. And he is a teacher. And he wanted to work in the Midwest. And so he sent his resume to several states in the Midwest and it wound up in Iowa where because the state is so large, they have teacher fairs. And in the teacher, it's hard for the principals to travel around so they go to one place one location and there's binders full of resumes. The teacher from North High in Des Moines comes across a resume and one of these binders for a gentleman named Jamal. He was planning to hire someone in the STEM program. He was not intending to hire an English teacher except he comes across this resume for someone named Jamal who lists Muhammad Ali has his cultural hero who coaches basketball who teaches spoken WORD poetry. And he thinks you know we have this fast growing African American population in Des Moines. I'm going to switch it up and I'm going to hire Jamal and he calls from all they talk on the phone and Jamal has told me that later he principal told him your accent was kind of interesting. Jamal comes across country for an interview flies from Oregon. to Oregon to Iowa goes to knock on the door of actually goes to the office. And you know in the principal's office, there's usually like someone sits out front at your bookseller. So don't pretend like you have not been to the principal's office. You're exactly the kind of people who questioned authority so I know that you were probably in the principal's office. At this time of the year the principal's office is usually all tricked out for whatever holiday is coming up like right now would look like Valentine's Day lots of hearts lots of any goes up to the the sort of separation there the partition gets her attention. And he said that she looked up at him. And there was this really long pause and then she finally said I thought you would be taller
and that's Jim Hall. And, again, hired because of assumptions because they thought one thing but yet Jamal goes to Des Moines and introduces diversity in his own right he grew up in Oregon in between llama farm and a commune. He gets pulled over at Tsia all the time because of his name and it's always random but do we think it's really random? He goes out to eat with his friends and they always give him the fees with a group of people and some of them are people of color. He gets the check with the credit card that says Chris or Bob and his friend who is Chris or Bob who is darker skinned gets the car that says Jamal so again, all kinds of assumptions. But his story reminds us that we have to be careful about assumptions. I started this project because I thought no one wanted to talk about race and 500,000 stories plus later I now realize that people do and they're just looking for the right onramp we were at a wonderful dinner last night and mine was the only book that was actually about race. But there were six other authors and all of them were writing about identity. It's something that we need to figure out how to talk about it's something that we need to figure out how to give avenues for people to talk about. And I think that words are the place that we do that books are the place that we can do that. I happen to write a book about race, but I hope that that when people pick up this book when people come to the project, that They lurk, and maybe have the kinds of conversations that we need to have. I'm a longtime storyteller, and now I'm a story collector. And I'm collecting these stories at a moment where Americans are trying to close this conversation where Americans are trying to limit access. I just wrote a book that I know will be banned. The first book I wrote has bad is been banned in more than a dozen states. And people actually say yeah, right on I don't want to be congratulated because my book is banned. That's the wrong thing to say. Instead of saying right on we should be saying no wrong, it's wrong and figure out how to fight against that. This project to me feels like a door jam. Like when people are trying to shut down a conversation. It's a way to put your foot in the door and say, No, not yet. I want to make sure that people who do have stories to tell have a place to do it. And that through these stories we can find our histories. And through these stories we can find each other and through these stories. We can create bridges of understanding. I no longer use the WORD common ground very much because I think in a very divided moment. It's hard to actually ask people to occupy climate Common Ground ideologically, but I do know because I've done work through the race car project on college campuses. And corporate settings and in the Justice Department and in libraries, and then factories and some of the reddest states and some of the Redis counties. And the divisions that we see in America are playing out in those places. They're making it hard for people to meet their deliverables are making it hard for people to figure out how to roll together when they don't agree with each other. And so I feel strongly at this moment, then instead of talking about common ground, we need to find bridge builders, people who will help us find our ways to one another because when you cross a bridge, you're usually not crossing in one direction. You cross a bridge and check something out and then you go back to home base. And I hope that we can do that through words. And I think that books help us do that. I'm a longtime storyteller. I'm now a story collector. But in the last few years I feel more strongly that I've also become a story defender and I feel like I'm in a room full of story defenders, because you are the ones who are fighting the front lines. I've spent most of my career asking people to listen to me as a print reporter and television and for 10 years on the radio. This is the most important work I've ever done because it gives people an opportunity to listen to each other. And I think that that's what we have to do right now in this moment in America is figure out how we can stay in the same space and listen to each other and I'm so honored that you've spent time with me over breakfast to listen to me. Thank you very very much
thank you for all the work that you do
I want to say one last thing. Speaking is hard for me as i said i i have to quiet the eight year old in my head every time I speak because I if you have a speech impediment and never goes away, you just learn how to deal with it. They are trying to take words away from us. They're trying to take books away from us. I know that there is a kid like me out there who is looking for a place of belonging and the one place that they might find it is in your stores. The one place where they might find someone who understands them is in your stores. The one place where they might look at a wall of worlds and see a possibility because they don't have books at home or because they don't have the right kinds of books at home or because they don't have those books in those schools. So I'm doing a lot of speaking on a book tour right now. But this is the one that meant the most to me because I'm speaking on behalf of that eight year old or that 10 year old or that 14 year old that's out there that needs so desperately what you offer. And I thank you so much for making sure that your doors are open. And I know that it's really difficult right now, in this moment where people are trying to restrict what you do. So I just before I left the stage, I just wanted to say thank you. I mean thank you so deep down in here. Thank you
and because I'm a story collector, we are collecting stories from you on all of your tables you have these lovely post it notes. And because we know that first thought best thought is not always what happens when you're trying to come up with your six words. So you have several chances if you want. But don't overthink it. Your six WORD story is often the first one that comes to your mind. And please share your six words and this isn't roomful of interesting people. And so we're asking people to do what's outside, you will see kiosks where you can write your six WORD stories and post them on the kiosks. Make sure and share your name you don't have a lot of space. So you know write small I guess and and place them on the kiosk. So people can see who you are. Maybe throughout the rest of the conference. Talk to you about your own six WORD stories. My six WORD story. When I began this work, it was fooled them all not done yet. Because I'm a brown girl who grew up in Minneapolis, Minnesota with a speech impediment and no one thought that I would spend my life behind a microphone. Didn't see a lot of people who look like me behind a microphone. There was no one Eifel doing what she was doing. When I was young. The six words that I land on now are still more work to be done. Remember we were talking about how America's post ratio? Probably not in my lifetime but maybe in my grandson's lifetime. We might be post racist, but I don't know that we're ever be post racial because look at this room. Look at the beautiful diversity in this room. within my lifetime this room probably wouldn't have included this kind of diversity may not have included as many women may not have included the kind of geographical diversity that we see now. So now my six words are still more work to be done and you will have work to do and sharing your six WORD stories. Thank you very much
