Karen Grigsby Bates
Karen Grigsby Bates is the Senior Correspondent for Code Switch, a podcast that reports on race and ethnicity. A veteran NPR reporter, Bates covered race for the network for several years before becoming a founding member of the Code Switch team. She is especially interested in stories about the hidden history of race in America—and in the intersection of race and culture. She oversees much of Code Switch's coverage of books by and about people of color, as well as issues of race in the publishing industry. Bates is the co-author of a best-selling etiquette book (Basic Black: Home Training for Modern Times) and two mystery novels; she is also a contributor to several anthologies of essays. She lives in Los Angeles and reports from NPR West.
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In her debut book, My Monticello, author Jocelyn Nicole Johnson asks what it means to claim a home in a place like Charlottesville, Va., — where whom the city belongs to has long been in question. -
When Bethany Morrow was asked to write a new take on the beloved classic, she agreed on one condition: The new March family would look nothing like the old. -
For the Code Switch podcast, we talked to authors Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray to discuss The Personal Librarian — the fictionalized account of the very real Belle da Costa Greene. -
After a racism controversy, the national trade organization for romance writers had been making progress. Then, it gave a major prize to a book whose hero murdered Native Americans at Wounded Knee. -
The 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre commemorations are winding down, but the neighborhood where it took place, Greenwood, remains forever shaped by the event.
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NewsPaula Yoo discusses her new book From A Whisper to A Rallying Cry and how the 1982 death of Chin, a Chinese American man in Detroit, led a new generation of Asian Americans into political action. -
Stories about Black history often focus on struggle and suffering—but Beverly Jenkins, the author of more than 40 historical romance novels, has spent her career telling stories about Black love. -
NewsAfter the Capitol was cleared of insurrectionists on January 6, there was work to be done — and it wasn't lost on many that cleaning up the mess would fall largely to Black and Brown people. -
Before 2020, the Karen was known by other names. NPR's Code Switch looks at the evolution of the entitled white woman, how her name has changed, but her behavior – and its consequences – not so much.
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Protestors flooding the streets, chants calling for racial justice, tear gas filling in city squares — protests over George Floyd's death have a lot in common with the civil rights movement of 1968.
