Tools for the Tough Talks on Race and Identity With Michele Norris

Carol sits down with award-winning journalist, author, and podcaster Michele Norris to discuss how we talk—and often struggle to talk—about race in our homes, our communities, and with our kids.   Michele shares the remarkable story behind her bestselling book, Our Hidden Conversations: What Americans Really Think About Race and Identity, which evolved from a simple invitation for people to share their thoughts about race in just six words.

Carol and Michele discuss how these six-word stories offer a raw, honest, and surprisingly hopeful window into how Americans grapple with identity, difference, and belonging.  They explore how parents can use what comes out of these stories to help us approach some of the hardest—but most necessary—conversations we need to have with our kids.

Michele’s practical guidance for talking about race and identity with kids will resonate with parents of young children who are focused on how to begin these conversations, as well as parents of older children who want to find better ways to have them.  Regardless of where you are in this journey, this episode will inform and inspire you. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hello, and welcome to Ground Control Parenting, a blog and
now a podcast creative for parents raising black and brown children.
I'm the creator and your host, Carol Sutton Lewis. In
this podcast series, I talk with really interesting people about
the job and the joy of parenting. Today, I am
thrilled to welcome my friend Michelle Norris to the podcast.
Michelle is an award winning journalist one of America's most

(00:26):
trusted voices in journalism. She is currently a senior contributing
editor on MSNBC. Before joining MSNBC last year, she was
a columnist for the Washington Post opinion section, and prior
to that, she was beloved co host of MPR's All
Things Considered. She's a fellow podcaster host of the wonderful
podcast Her Mama's Kitchen, which is about cuisine and culture,

(00:49):
ingredients and identities.

Speaker 2 (00:51):
She's an author.

Speaker 1 (00:52):
Her memoir The Grace of Silence was published in twenty ten.
In Her latest book, Our Hidden Conversations What Americans Really
Think About Race Identity, which we'll talk about today, is
a New York Times bestseller, and it was named one
of Amazon's one hundred Best Books of twenty twenty four.
Michelle and her husband, Broderick Johnson, have two sons and
a daughter who are all young adults, and a grandson

(01:13):
who is two.

Speaker 2 (01:15):
Welcome to Ground Control Parenting, Michelle.

Speaker 3 (01:16):
Hey there, Carol. I have been watching and cheering you
on from AFAR. I am so proud of what you've
created with Ground Control Parenting, and I'm proud and honored
to be here.

Speaker 2 (01:28):
Oh, thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:29):
So much, and I am so excited to have you
here today, especially to talk about your wonderful new book
and how it can really help parents with some of
the difficult but really important conversations about race and identity
that we need to have with our children and ourselves.
So I just have to tell you I was so
inspired by the brevity and clarity of finding just six

(01:50):
words about race and we'll talk about that in a minute,
that I worked on creating just six questions for this podcast.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
It was great inspiration, and I thank you for that.

Speaker 3 (02:00):
It's a good idea.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
So let's get started.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
So, Michelle, in twenty ten, you asked people everywhere to
send you their thoughts about race and identity using only
six words on a postcard, and they did. And over
time you asked in the sin of digitally and more did.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
At this point, more than half a million people have
sent you their six words. So what prompted the initial
request and how did it evolve into this glorious book started.

Speaker 3 (02:31):
I don't want to say desperation is too strong a word.
It started because you have to remember where we were
in twenty ten. The nation had just elected a black
president and we were talking about being post racial. Those
two things were happening at the same time, and I
thought that there was a disconnect there, that we were
as a country having a conversation about being post racial.

(02:51):
But as I traveled around the country, I was noticing
that people were having different kinds of conversations about race,
and maybe even deeper conversations about race, and I wanted
to capture that. And I was on a thirty five
city book tour when my first book, The Grace of
Silence was released, and I thought a lot of things
were happening. That we were talking about being post racial,

(03:11):
but at the same time that people were really uncomfortable
with the conversation about race. And yet I had just
written a book about race and my family's very complex
racial legacy. And so this was this initial six word
ask was a way to bring people into the conversation
that I thought they wouldn't enter otherwise, and so it
was meant to create an on ramp onto a difficult conversation.

(03:36):
And I chose postcards in part because, you know, we
were in the initial stages of blogging and twittering and
things like that, so we were still you know, snail
mail was not completely dead at that point. My parents
were postal workers. I still like snail mail. I write
thank you notes. I have a box of stationery right

(03:56):
here on my desk. I still you know, the written word.
I like postage stamps. And so I asked people to
send me their six wort stories. And in the beginning,
it was, you know, it was a really simple postcard.
It just said, raise your story six words, please send.
And I even actually have one of them here, one
of the initial ones that I just happened to have

(04:18):
on my desk, and I didn't know if people would
send them back or not. And Carol, I've spent the
past three days archiving a lot of the cards and
putting them in to moisture proof humidity proof cases. So
I've been going through all of these old postcards and
I am just astonished at the honesty. I'm astonished at

(04:39):
the act of answering that invitation. That people found a pen,
found their courage, found a stamp, found a mailbox, and
then sent these back to me. So they're writing very
honest things, or they're asking questions, or they're you know,

(05:00):
I am just so very exhausted, you know, saying things
like this. My father, my black father, was never adopted.
You know, these are just some of the cards that
I saw this morning and then sending them out. And
I imagined that because my parents were postal workers and
they handled mail all the time. You know, I'm imagining

(05:20):
postal workers looking at these. I'm imagining the guys at
my ups store where all the cards arrive, you know,
looking at these and these these intimate I did this
because I thought no one wanted to talk about race,
and instead it created this this like stream of stories
that were all heading in my direction, with people speaking

(05:41):
in their truth and their own octave. Totally astonished to
this day that people still pull up to the mailbox,
mostly digitally now. But I thought no one wanted to
talk about race, and I was wrong.

Speaker 1 (05:53):
In twenty ten, as you said, we were still pretty
heavily invested in snail mail, and the concept of bearing
your soul to the public was not something that we
were all nearly as comfortable with as people seem to
be today. So to your point, to be able to
write this on a postcard send it out in the world,
you said, a lot of people signed it too.

Speaker 2 (06:12):
It wasn't all anonymous.

Speaker 3 (06:13):
They would sign it. They would in many cases include
their contact information, their email address.

Speaker 2 (06:20):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (06:21):
Postcard doesn't require a return address, but some people included that.
I wonder if that's why some of the people put
them in an envelopes, not just to protect them so
I would know who they were and how to reach them.
And with so many people sending me cards, I do
try to dip into the inbox and interview people. I
just haven't been able to get to all and it's
actually many, more than five hundred thousand now it's more
than seven hundred thousand. Wow, I haven't been able to

(06:42):
get to everybody. And as I've been archiving the cards,
I keep saying making notes to myself and calling my team, Oh,
we've got to follow up with her, or we've got
to follow up with that person. We've got to follow
up with that person, and sometimes I remember meeting them.
There was a woman who sent in a card and said,
mother in law still wishing daughter in law was blonder.

Speaker 2 (07:02):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (07:03):
And I remember meeting her medical doctor in Oregon. And
she is a woman of color, maybe Indian, possibly Pakistani,
but of that, you know, part of that diaspora. Married
someone who's Caucasian and has a great relationship with her

(07:23):
mother in law. But there's just little bit that she
just knows that her mother in law wishes she's and
she'd actually you know, changed her hair, and and so
there's still even even love is not necessarily the last frontier.
Sometimes it's a new frontier, you know. And it was
one of the things. But she she put that on

(07:45):
a postcard and sent that, you know, through the mail.
And so even though I had met her and she
told me the story, she wanted to be a part
of the archive. So she put it on a postcard
and sent it so that she would be part of
this archive that we've created that will help people understand,
you know, the experience, the lived experience of race years

(08:05):
from now.

Speaker 1 (08:06):
Now, you as a black woman who was on tour
talking about your black family story, sent this out to
the world, and I imagine expected to get black people's responses,
but you got everyone's responses, and more white than black,
isn't that right?

Speaker 3 (08:20):
That is the thing that is truly astonishing. I mean,
I wrote a whole chapter in the book about this,
and you know, I never knew when I ask people
to start sharing their stories with me about race, that
so many white Americans and white people around the world,
actually because we have cards that have come in from
more than one hundred countries, would step up to the
plate and share their stories. I mean, let's be honest,
when you talk about race, it's usually a conversation that

(08:42):
is by for about people of color, and most especially
black people. And as a black person myself, and as
you said, I had just written a family memoir about
my black family's you know, unique experience in America that
turned out to be not so unique, because so many
families have secret you know, and didn't talk about things
that had happened in the past. I just assumed that

(09:06):
I would be engaging in a conversation with people of color,
and in the main black people. I had no idea
that I was embarking on a fourteen year odyssey of
listening to white Americans talk about race in a very honest,
candid way. When I started this, I didn't even think
that that was in the realm of possibility. And so
for the fourteen years that we've been doing this, in

(09:27):
the majority of those years, the majority of the stories
that we've collected have come from white Americans, from people
who are part of the at present majority in America,
or white people who live overseas.

Speaker 1 (09:43):
I found that to be one of the more fascinating
of the many fascinating things about this book. And while
I want to talk to you in this conversation about parenting,
I was really struck as I read so many of
these responses of how much the story of where we
are today is predicted in This is a real entry

(10:03):
into a world that so many of us would not
otherwise have. So it is so such a valuable tool
in terms in addition to being such a great book.
And speaking of books, I just have to not only
give a massive plug for the reading of the book,
for the reading of the hardcover book, which I have done,
but I've only done that recently because my first introduction

(10:25):
of the book was audio.

Speaker 2 (10:26):
Oh yeah, and very dear friend of the both of ours.

Speaker 1 (10:28):
Sharon said to me, you've got to listen to Michelle's
book on audio, and I did, and it is one
of the most amazing productions of a book.

Speaker 2 (10:38):
That I have ever heard.

Speaker 3 (10:39):
Oh thank you.

Speaker 1 (10:41):
It is so beautifully and thoughtfully produced. And for those
of you listening who don't generally listen to audiobooks, generally
there's a narrator, they read the story and they're pretty good,
and so you're engrossed in it in that respect, because
this book is filled with people's stories. Michelle and her
team had various people, sometimes the people themselves, and read
their stories, so with each new story you're hearing someone

(11:05):
and oftimes the actual person talk about what's happened. It's
just it's so engrossing. I mean, anyway, you know, for
those views are real book people.

Speaker 2 (11:15):
You can do both.

Speaker 1 (11:16):
Because I had I had lowered expectations for the actual
book having had that experience, and then lo and behold, the.

Speaker 2 (11:23):
Book is filled with pictures and anyway, so that's what
people should do both.

Speaker 3 (11:27):
I mean, shout out to our dear friend, doctor Sharon Malone,
who is a big audio person. She listens to audiobooks
all the time. I think that's why she's so well
read is because she's always listening to them. But I
always tell people that you should, if you can, pick
up the book because the pictures are so beautiful and
you get to see this, you know this, this beautiful
scrap book almost of Americans and telling their story. But

(11:51):
also the audiobook, because I worked in audio for so long,
I really wanted the audiobook to create an homoral experience
for the listener, and I describe in the book what
the project feels like to me. I grew up in Minnesota,
and I spent summers in Alabama because that's where my
father's ancestral home is, and they would send the grandkids

(12:11):
down to spend time with our grandparents in Birmingham. And
in both places I grew up in, I grew up
in a community where it got hot outside, both in
Minnesota and in this time that I spent in Alabama
during the summer, where people open the windows, and when
people open the windows, you heard the world live out loud.
Suddenly all the inside conversations were available to you if

(12:33):
you were just walking down the street, or as we
were doing as kids, riding our sting Ray bikes up
and down the alleys and you could hear everything. And
that's what this book is like. It's like walking through
American neighborhoods at a moment where the doors and the
windows are open wide and you can hear the private

(12:54):
conversations that people have with themselves, with their spouses, with
their loved ones, with their children, and with their neighbors
in the shower, in the mirror while they're shaving or
putting on their makeup. It's it's a very intimate look
at American life.

Speaker 1 (13:11):
Absolutely, and there's music in the audiobook. It's amazing.

Speaker 3 (13:15):
And I was thinking about the music also. I was like,
music doesn't have a certain sort of groove to it,
but I really wanted it to feel like a production.
And and thank you so much for plugging the audiobook.
It really is worth digging into. I made and I
made the publisher crazy, and so I'm so I will
this when it actually is released and say, see, people

(13:35):
do appreciate it, because they were like, oh, do what
you want to have this many voices and you want
to have them record everything and let them send it.
And once they got into it, then they really got
into it. Because I understood the power of letting someone
tell their own story. There's a story in the book
about a woman who always wanted to meet her father,
and her mother prevented her from doing that, and then

(13:57):
she finally, through the magic of DNA, was connected with
sisters she didn't know she had, and then eventually met
her father and was able to spend a small amount
of time with him before he went to glory. And
she is so emotional in telling that story, and there's
no way that I, as a reader, or that an

(14:18):
Oscar winning actor as a reader, could have done justice
to the real and raw emotions that she conveyed in
telling her own story. And so I just wanted to
get out of the way and let people tell their
own stories and their own words.

Speaker 2 (14:32):
If you can do both, do both.

Speaker 1 (14:34):
Because listening to it first and then I read the book,
and when I would come across the same story in
the book, I could.

Speaker 2 (14:40):
Hear the people.

Speaker 1 (14:42):
I knew immediately they were like old friends, these stories
coming back to visit me because I'm like.

Speaker 2 (14:46):
Oh, yes, I remember.

Speaker 1 (14:48):
There was a story in which a gentleman had to
stop because he was overcome, and I heard him stop
in the audio, and then I ran into that story
in the book, and I was like, oh, this is
a ma but you really should hear him unable to
go on to really feel the depth of his emotion
in that story.

Speaker 2 (15:06):
So yeah, and you're talking about.

Speaker 3 (15:07):
Ed I think, yes, yes, yeah, yeah, yes, yes, And
that's an amazing story. Other also, a woman had had
four children that she gave up in Foster Hair, then
had a second family, and the second family never knew
about the previous family who lived on the other side
of town.

Speaker 2 (15:25):
It's amazing.

Speaker 1 (15:25):
And that's actually a really good segue into my next question,
which is as this book makes so clear that so
much of our understanding about race, the good and the
bad of it, comes from our families. And in many
of the stories we learned, like the one you just mentioned,
that parents couldn't figure out when and how to reveal
the secrets. I mean, in the one you just mentioned,

(15:46):
the person telling the story as an adult, when she
understands that her mother had four children before her, she
thought of herself as an only child.

Speaker 3 (15:54):
Four black children. Also, the woman labors that she has
four black siblings surprise.

Speaker 1 (16:01):
So we understand that so much of this rests in
the families, and when people do discover this so much
later it can be traumatizing. So, how as you've looked
over these stories and heard them from people, how do
you think that families can determine the right time to
have these discussions? I mean, and how do they prepare
themselves and their kids for these kind of revelations? I mean,

(16:23):
is there like with adoption, now, it's thought that one
should know everything as soon as possible. But do you
think with these kind of stories, is there is there
any kind of timeline or is there any point at
which it seems like it's better for everyone to reveal them?

Speaker 3 (16:37):
Well, I don't think there's anyone recipe for every family.
You know, it's different in every family. And I'd like
to think that these kind of discussions are easier to
hold now. I'd like to think that we as a country,
as divided as we seem to be in this moment,
are getting a little bit more comfortable with being uncomfortable,
and both through family and through the stories that we

(16:59):
tell in popular culture. Also, you know, the things that
we see in film and on streaming and the books
that we read, that all of those create an environment
where maybe it's easier to have to tell these kinds
of stories, and so you have to figure out when
the time is right, but also try perhaps not to

(17:20):
wait for when the time is perfect. Does that make sense,
because when the time is right might not be when
the time is perfect. It's never going to be. You know,
a moment where the sun is coming through the window
and just this way, and the music is playing and
everyone is in a good mood, and realize that if
you're going to have I mean, there are certain things
I've learned. I've learned that these conversations aren't one and done.

(17:41):
You know that it's like peeling an arto choke, and
sometimes like peeling an onion. I mean, sometimes it will
make you cry. Sometimes it will wind up becoming the
story that we started talking about. Dane Stasco, whose story
is in the book, who discovers that her mother had
four black children. She discovers again because Ed realizes that

(18:01):
he thinks that that's his sister calls her up out
of the blue, and her mother admits to having one child,
and then she goes back to Ed and she goes like,
I guess we're siblings after Allanie says, did you tell
did she tell you about the other three kids? There's
actually four. So mom was trying to hold onto that
secret and cop to one, but not four. And as
difficult as that was, in the end, she got to

(18:22):
spend time with those kids that she had given up
to foster care. You know, I tried to write that
story in a way that you would not judge her
because she was a woman living in liberal San Francisco
but couldn't get housing, couldn't get a job because she
was a white woman, four black children, and her family
is like, don't bring those babies back here, So she
couldn't even go to the cocoon of her home, and

(18:43):
so she gave them up under the condition that all
four of those children stay together, hoping that they would
be together and find a loving environment, you know, just
outside of San Francisco, literally like a cross town. But
when that secret was revealed, it wound up becoming a
g to everybody. Diana discovered she's not an only child.
Ed and his surviving siblings were reunited with their mother.

(19:06):
As rocky as that was, they at least were able
to look her in the eye before she left this earth,
and learned about their medical history, learned about their family history.
So these things that can seem so burdensome, have dividends,
you know, hidden within them if people are willing to
have those secrets. Now, these conversations are not always about secrets.

(19:27):
I mean an adoption, it's not necessarily about revealing a secret.
But you know, at what point do you tell a
child you know where they came from? At what point
do you tell them about their culture? I would suggest
in that case to find a support group that will
help you figure that out, because sometimes, particularly if you

(19:48):
are adopting across culture, or you're involved in a transracial adoption,
you know you don't want to travel that path by yourself.
There's a whole chapter in the book on adoption. Spend
a lot of time talking to people in the beautiful,
wonderful world of adoption where people open their hearts and
their homes to children. And one of the things that
they said, we're transracial adoption is concerned that always stuck

(20:11):
with me is your child should not be your only
black acquaintance, or your only Asian acquaintance, or your only
Indigenous acquaintance, and it shouldn't be your first and so
it shouldn't be your first, and it shouldn't be your
only you know, to figure out how to create the
village that you need to help you travel that path.
And then once you're on that path, if you start

(20:32):
revealing where that child came from and share with them
the adoption process, that they're with you and that they're
part of that experience, you know as well. And I
think that as transracial adoption becomes more common, I think
it's easier on one hand to have those conversations. But
on the other hand, because the project, I know that

(20:54):
you may be comfortable in your own cocoon at home,
but then you go out into the outside world. And
one of the most surprising things for me, and I
don't know if you noticed this in reading and listening
to the book, was at one point I realized there
are so many stories about encounters at the grocery store.

Speaker 1 (21:10):
Yes, a lot happens at the grocery store, and it
came up.

Speaker 3 (21:14):
You know, multiple times, like dozens of times. And so
even though you create a certain kind of open and
respectful and embracing environment, and then you go to target
and someone says to you, well, where'd you get that baby,
or you know, who's the father. It's amazing to me
how people the kinds of comments and questions that people
wind up having in spaces where we're all thrown together,

(21:37):
in church and at school, but especially at the grocery store.

Speaker 1 (21:39):
And it struck me in reading all this that to
your point, when people are at home and they've thought
a lot about how they're going to manage life with
their child who doesn't look like them but is very
much a part of them, this book will be helpful
to people who have chosen that journey to understand that
not only can you not control for how the outside
world sees it, you can't really control for how the

(22:01):
child sees it. Because as great as your intentions may
be to either create this new looking family that operates
by its own rules and that is filled with love,
your child it can experience a totally different can be
grateful and love, feel love, but can feel there's trauma

(22:22):
involved as well, which I don't think that that may
come as a surprise to some parents who are just difference.

Speaker 3 (22:28):
Or just difference. I mean, I remembered there was a
wonderful pediatrician named Stanley Greenspan when I covered education for years.
He was someone that I often talked to because he
just was, you know, a good guide, and then when
I became a parent, I was reaching out to him
for other reasons. And one of the things that he
always said as new parents is you need to parent

(22:50):
on your hands and knees, both in terms of safety,
but also to understand how your child sees the world.
You need to little get down on the floe so
you're looking them in the eye, and also so you understand,
oh that's a sharp coffee table edge, or to see
the world as they see it. I had an epiphany
and I realized that applies to adoption, because you can

(23:13):
create the most loving environment for your child, but you
also need to understand how the outside world greets that child.
People don't even mean to do it, but you can
see them during the calculus in their head. Okay, since mom, dad,
where does a child fit in? And the child's aware
of that difference. Sometimes the child is you know, to

(23:34):
understand what it's like if you adopted a child of
color and you think you're doing their hair, this comes
up over and over and over again. You think you've
got their hair. If you remember that wonderful episode and
this is us, where you know, the black mommy comes
up to her and says, you know, I can take
them to the barbershop if you really want me to,
but to understand what it's like for that child to

(23:55):
enter a space, a cultural space where they're different, and
then they're different also because someone is dealing with their
curls or their kinks or their hair texture. Who doesn't
understand product, you know, who doesn't understand shaping up the
edges when you go to the barber shop. And so
that idea of figuring out how to step outside yourself,

(24:18):
and that applies to you know, if you're parenting someone
who's somewhere on the LGBTQ plus spectrum, if you're parenting
a child who is neurodivergent, if you're parenting a child
who is you are a first generation immigrant and they
are not, you know, they're So just that idea of
stepping outside yourself and trying to understand how the world

(24:41):
greets your child and what they see from their unique
perspective is very valuable. And I thought that that only
applied to my toddlers, and I realize that it still
applies to me as a parent of adult children now,
and I'm thinking about that with a toddler in my life.
Life as a grandchild. But how I will try to

(25:02):
carry that forward with him as he steps into preschool
and as he steps into preteen and then teenager in adulthood.
I'll try to hold onto them mindset.

Speaker 1 (25:12):
So tough but important to talk about so that parents
can think about the need to do this.

Speaker 2 (25:17):
So one of the things. Another thing that I noticed in.

Speaker 1 (25:20):
The book is that so many people shared how their
parents or their grandparents feelings about race negatively impacted them.
I mean, there are lots of stories six words stories
about I mean, you mentioned one mother in law still
wishes daughter in law with blonder but sort of my
grandmother said, don't bring one of those home.

Speaker 2 (25:39):
That's not the six words. But basically it.

Speaker 3 (25:41):
Was boyfriend visited and Nana called police.

Speaker 1 (25:46):
I am really interested in how parents cope with acknowledging
and or censoring their own feelings about race when they're
talking with their kids. I mean, as we try to
embrace the conversations about race, how do we check ourselves
with respect to.

Speaker 2 (26:04):
How we feel.

Speaker 3 (26:07):
I think you need to be sensitive. I think it's
always good to be sensitive and to be aware. As parents,
you realize that you know it's like secondhand smoke. Your
attitudes are absorbed by the young people in your life.
But that cuts both ways because you also want to
hopefully have an environment where they can be honest with

(26:29):
you also, And how do you create a safe space
and a brave space and an open space where people
can speak their mind. And it gets difficult when that
includes prejudicial statements against any one person. You're talking about
the home training that people get when you want to
make sure that your child understands black culture, for instance,

(26:51):
but in some cases, you know you talked about don't
bring home someone that doesn't look like that. I mean,
you know, there are a lot of people who hear
that from black mommies and daddies. There's a chapter in
the book about dark skin you know you're pretty for
a dark skinned girl. And how often people hear that?
We have heard We have hundreds, literally hundreds of cards
with some iteration of those words. The astonishing thing for me, though,

(27:13):
was that ninety percent of those come from people who've
not heard it at school, that heard it at home.
That's what they've heard from their love circle. That's the
message that they get from the people who were supposed
to love them most. And how easily that that apparently
rolls off the tongue for people, so that censorship at home.

(27:37):
I guess the other side of that is figuring out
how to be at upstander and not just a bystander
like in someone why would you say that? Or do
you understand how that makes me feel? You know? How
do you process some of those things when you hear
it and it's you know, when I was writing the book,
one of the difficult things, much like this story I
shared with you earlier, is trying to figure out how

(27:59):
to tell these stories in a way that people can
interpret them from their own entry point. And an example
I use when I do workshops is a six word
card that came in Grandma sent one hundred dollars when
we broke up. Broke up was typhonated, so it became
one word, and one hundred dollars was like, you know,

(28:19):
numeral one hundred, So he made it six words. When
you hear that, what do you think was behind that?

Speaker 1 (28:27):
She was so happy that this union that she didn't
approve of ended that she wanted to reward her grandchild.

Speaker 3 (28:34):
Yeah, so it's got a certain ambiguity, you know, But
I always note that could it be that your heart
might be broken? Right?

Speaker 1 (28:43):
That didn't even Yes, I thought of that immediately after
saying that here's one hundred dollars.

Speaker 3 (28:47):
Go go get your toes done, you know, fix yourself up,
go go out for go, go out for a night
on the town. But even if it's more of one
than the other, does that mean that Grandma was racist?
Or did Grandma I just want someone who was going
to get in the kitchen with her and make to
Molly's you know? Did she want someone who was going
to understand her culture, her religion, her history. And that's

(29:14):
that kind of fuzzy line. Is that racism? Is that
cultural pride? Is that insensitivity? You know? And I don't
have the answer to that, but I use it as
an example to show you how a story can be
interpreted in lots of different ways.

Speaker 1 (29:34):
I agree that we have to police ourselves, but I'll
also say, and I know you know this to be
the case as well, our kids will police us as well.
I mean, we want our children to be able to
say to us, do you understand how this makes me feel?
Because I think so many of us are so intent
on making our wishes known that we're not thinking about

(29:56):
the impact of these wishes, and really, I think in
personally speaking, every instance where a child has called me
out on some perspective that they didn't appreciate by saying,
you understand how this is? Do you understand how you're
making me feel? I mean, that's that's like the best
way to make me sort of stop in my tracks.

Speaker 3 (30:14):
And you've done some very good parenting because that's like
that's you know, a therapist would tell you that that
is the best way to approach that instead of saying
that made me feel bad or that made me feel sad,
is to turn the tables and ask, you know, do
you understand or have you ever thought about, you know,
how those words might be interpreted by someone else. So

(30:36):
good on you for raising so it's intelligent and emotionally intelligent,
sensitive children.

Speaker 1 (30:43):
They would certainly appreciate that. I appreciate that as well,
but it's it's still hard to hear. There's also a
real need to remember that it's not we're not reliving
our lives, and we're not we're really not reliving our
lives because what they're what our children are experiencing now
is not what we experience.

Speaker 3 (30:59):
I think that there is a case where censorship is
a good thing, you know, where you have to realize
I have to swallow my own fears and swallow my
expectations and let them figure this thing called life out
with guidance from me, but not not with mandates from me.

Speaker 1 (31:21):
Absolutely, absolutely, And the goal would be to always have
an environment at home where, regardless of where you all are,
you can talk about it, because the last thing any
of us wants is to inadvertently have these intentions grow
into isolation or some sort of separation from our kids.

(31:42):
I mean, just as we say that parenting never ends
from respect with respect of having kids that grow older
they still need parenting, it never ends as a parent
because there's always more stuff to do and more stuff
to learn. Now, a related question to what we're just
talking about. Your book makes clear this a divide in
terms of thinking about race that seems to be growing,

(32:04):
and current events would suggest that it definitely seems to
be growing. And yet, as you note in the book,
the number of interracial marriages is growing as well. So
do you think people are finding it easy to talk
about race with one another or or do you think
they're just falling in love hoping that love will conquer all.
I mean, it's a kind of an odd circumstance that

(32:26):
they're both happening at the same time.

Speaker 3 (32:27):
It is interesting that they're both happening at the same
time that we've seen more cross pollination in terms of
our loving relationships and blended families and raising children that
we've ever seen, and yet we're also seeing a moment
of divisional Some of that division is because there are
people who are deeply invested in divisions and they're stoking
those divisions, and there's a little bit of social engineering

(32:49):
that is creating some of those divisions. But even in
places and I noted this, you know, when I was
I remember doing some reporting on a loving anniversary. Loving
being the court decision that that struck down anti miscegenation
laws that struck down laws that outlawed marriage across races
in the seventeen states where it was still illegal. And

(33:11):
I was deep in Virginia and it was a very
divided community, and it was I went actually to the
county where the Lovings lived and talked to interracial couples
that were living there now and some of the difficulties
that they had. But then I went to this basketball
game and there were all of these grandmas with the

(33:32):
leb Brown babies. You know, people had intermarried, you know,
and they were still divisions, but you know, they had
crossed that line, you know, and in some way. So yeah,
it's all happening at the at the same time. And
one of the big lessons I mentioned this earlier is
that even when people crossed that rubicon when you open,

(33:54):
when you marry, or you have a relationship, or you
raise a children across a racial line or a cultural
line or a religious line, it doesn't mean that it's
over right. It sometimes means that you've entered a new
chapter where things are going to be wonderful but sometimes
wonderfully complicated, where there will be misunderstandings. You know, there's

(34:15):
someone in the book Kyle m his six words were
married a white girl. Now what? And there's this beautiful
picture of he's South Asian and his wife, Claire, who's Caucasian.
And they realized when they got married that they each
thought that they were going to follow their cultural path,
so they were going to celebrate Christmas the way they
celebrated Christmas. The holiday is the way that they and

(34:35):
they realized that they had to give and take because
they both thought that, oh no, but that happens. You know,
if someone is Irish marry someone who's Greek. It happens
in all kinds of ways.

Speaker 1 (34:47):
And I'm from the North, my husband's from the South.
It happens, right right.

Speaker 2 (34:52):
We'll be right back after these messages. Welcome back to
the show.

Speaker 1 (34:57):
One of the things that I've heard you say which
really resonated was that you hope that the next generation
learns the critical skill set of how to lead people who.

Speaker 2 (35:06):
Don't agree with one another.

Speaker 1 (35:08):
Can you talk a little bit about how you envision
the skill set working of leading people who don't agree.

Speaker 3 (35:16):
I think that this ability to bring people together across
difference is an actual skill, and if we start acknowledging
that it is a skill and treating it as a skill,
and cultivating it as a skill, and rewarding it as
a skill, I think we will all be better off

(35:37):
in a country that is as diverse as ours is,
in a country that has the kind of politics that
we have embraced right now. You know, through our democracy,
we are going to have these kinds of divisions, and
so we have to cultivate a group of leaders. And
I know that people don't like DEI right now, and

(35:57):
it's you know, it's been demonized. But the fact is,
even the people who are the anti DEI warriors, you
will wind up working in a place where you don't
all agree. And it might not be that it's because
of color. It might not be about race. I mean,
we had someone who used the race Card project. We're
used in hundreds of schools. We've been used by some

(36:20):
very large corporations. We've been used by the State Department
and the Justice Department in a previous administration, and you know,
people have brought us in to allow people to talk
to each other to figure out how they can learn
a little bit about each other. And one of the
things we realized in one of the companies that used
this project in Grand Rapids, Michigan, was he he wanted

(36:42):
to get people together because he realized, if there's this
divided in the lunch room, all people that race sit
together and all the people that ethnicity sit together, how
are they ever going to be appropriately innovative Because innovation relied,
you know, depends on people's share things with each other.
How are they going to look out for each other

(37:04):
on the factory floor because they were part of the
drive tain system and they actually manufactured things, and you
need to look out for people on the factory floor.
You know. They called it the shirttail hanging, like if
someone's shirtail is hanging out, it can actually create a problem,
can be caught up in some machinery and someone can
get injured, and then the whole plan is shut down
for a while. So you want people who care enough
about each other to say, hey, man, your shirt, tuck

(37:27):
it in, you know, for the good of all of us.
Tuck it in. And he realized that it wasn't just
the racial and the ethnic and the religious divisions. That
in the state of Michigan, they were divided over sports.
You know, they were divided you know, the University of
Michigan versus Michigan State. They were divided over you know,
the people who dared root for the Chicago Bears, you know,

(37:50):
and in the Lion. It was so people were just
figuring out how to divide themselves. And the sports analogy
is this, people who live in very divided communities figure
out how to root for their team, and the coaches
of those teams often have politics that are very different
than the players, but they figure out how when they're
on the field, they all fly the same flag, they

(38:10):
all run in the same direction with gusto in passion.
And we think that coaches are just kind of magical
because they figure no, that's a skill. That's a skill
if you run a large hospital. Hospitals are often the
most complicated diverse spaces, right, and we want to move
to a space we're not talking about diversity, equity, inclusion. Well,

(38:30):
you can't get rid of the diversity. Diversity is just there, right,
And it's not just diversity of skin color, it's diversity
of opinion, it's diversity of experience. So if someone is
successful at doing that, we should figure out how to
reward them for it and how to learn from them
and recognize that it is indeed a skill set and
it will be useful if you're running that big, mega hospital,

(38:53):
or if you're just running you know, a small nail
salon someplace, whatever. If you are in any kind of
leadership position, or you aspire to leadership, or you are
someone who is a key team member, whatever you do
to have the ability to figure out how to get
people to set aside not to inoculate them, or not

(39:14):
to say you can't, you have to believe this, but
how to figure out how they can continue to embrace
their beliefs, embrace their worldview, and yet show up in
a way that is productive and constructive in a diverse
environment is going to be very important if America is
going to continue to be innovative, if America is going
to continue to be anything close to a superpower in

(39:37):
terms of economics and manufacturing and critical thinking.

Speaker 1 (39:41):
Absolutely, and so parents, I always talk about the importance
of focusing on the values of compassion.

Speaker 2 (39:48):
And empathy when they are younger.

Speaker 1 (39:50):
I make sure that your empathetic muscle gets exercised, because
it is I think with those two traits that children
can grow up into people that are not only aware
of other people's opinions, but respectful of them. I mean,
you want to raise a child who firmly is standing
tall and proud in their beliefs, but that same child

(40:11):
also has to have some capability for understanding that people
around them don't feel the same way. I mean, and
I think instinctively when they're little, they do. I mean,
kids don't sort of divide up racially or politically when
they're very, very small, but it's up to us as
parents to keep fueling that fire. And I think that's
really important for parents to think about. I've come to

(40:32):
what I think is actually my sixth question. Well, if
you don't count all the sub questions, so I've heard
you say that your six words are now still have
work to be done. So what do you hope people,
but parents in particular, can take away from your book
about how they can help further this work. What would

(40:55):
you like people to come away from your book feeling
about the future.

Speaker 3 (41:01):
Well, I hope they feel hopeful because so many people
pulled up to the table and shared their stories, and
I think there is something hopeful about that they want
to share something. You know, this thing that I thought
no one wanted to talk about, hundreds of thousands of
people actually do want to talk about it. I hope
that it stokes curiosity. I think curiosity is a superpower,
unrecognized superpower. So when you talk about compassionate empathy, you know,

(41:24):
curiosity is a big part of that. To be curious
enough to care about learning about a world outside your own,
to be curious enough to ask a question, to learn
about someone else's life, that's I am naturally curious. I'm
a journalist, so in journalism you know that is the
coin of the realm. But I think that it is.
And that's a skill also, absolutely, you know, to remain curious,

(41:48):
to not be that sponge that has already supped up
so much that you can't take on more, to be
willing to explore other worlds. And what I wanted this book.
It's a book of unusual design, and that there are
two hundred and eighty seven photos in the book. There
are indices and you will encounter in addition to the

(42:13):
thousand stories that are in the book, there are hundreds
of postcards that are included in the book. And I
wanted to design it so it felt like a coffee
table book so that people would leave it out. And
one of the things that I just so appreciate is
when people tell me. Early on, a friend of mine, THEO,
said that she was at a beach house with her kids,

(42:36):
and her kids were in various relationships adult children and
in some cases had coupled outside of their own culture.
And she said, during the week that they were away,
the book sat at the kitchen table and every day
people picked it up. And just because it's designed so
you can read it front to back or you can
just open it up at any page, and they just

(42:58):
would start talking about other people's story and debating it
and well, what do you think, you know, what if
it happened this way? And so the book wound up
stoking these really interesting conversations and bringing people into their
kitchen and into their lives that they might not otherwise encounter.
And so I hope that that that's what the book

(43:18):
can do, is make you more curious, but also help
introduce you to different ways of thinking and different ways
of being, and worlds that you might not otherwise encounter,
and histories that you might not otherwise learn, because there
is a lot of history in the book where people
are talking about in America that they knew or you know,
I wound up learning a lot about Peruvian culture when

(43:41):
I there's a chapter about someone who discovers that her
mother is not who she thought she was, that she's
Afro Peruvian, and so, you know, you I want people
to learn to basically take what I learned and sop
that up and hopefully march forward even more curious.

Speaker 1 (43:57):
That is a great answer and a great call to
action for parents to pick up this book and leave
it around, read it yourself, and then leave it around
for your children to look at it. And you're right,
you can open it to any page. It's delightful in
that respect. You're not sitting down with a tome to read.
It's a great straight through read, but you can pick

(44:20):
it up and at any page there's going to be
something that can spark a conversation. And for that, and
for creating such a wonderful archive and book and experience,
I thank you so much, Michelle Norris, my dear friend.
So I'm going to have to wrap it up here,
but first, of course, I have to thank you again
so much for this great conversation. I'm sure that parents

(44:44):
listening everywhere really appreciate your perspective and your advice, and
they will appreciate the book if they have not bought
it already, because parents now go out and get this
book and hardcover or the audio or both. And so
there's one more thing before we go, and that is
you have to play the GCP lightning with me.

Speaker 2 (45:00):
Four very quick questions. Are you ready?

Speaker 3 (45:03):
I'm ready?

Speaker 2 (45:04):
So your favorite poem or saying.

Speaker 3 (45:07):
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
It's not a poem. It's something something that Eleanor Roosevelt
said when I went to college, my mother, who who
I lost in June. When I went to college. Mom
sent me to college with that written on a piece
of paper.

Speaker 2 (45:26):
That is so beautiful. I'm so sorry about your mom.
But that's a beautiful memory, isn't it.

Speaker 3 (45:30):
And I wish you know, And I lost track of
that little piece of paper. What I would give to
find it. You know. I put it in your tour
and then it just you know, I moved from dorm
to college and I.

Speaker 2 (45:39):
Lost head in your heart, so it's there. That's great.
That's so great. Okay.

Speaker 1 (45:45):
Now two favorite children's books. And I imagine you have
become well reacquainted with children's books now that you have
your little one, your grandson, so they can be ones
that you read to him, or you read to your children,
or that you read when you were little.

Speaker 3 (46:00):
Well, when I was little, I loved Curious George. Isn't
that funny? Because I just said curiosity as a superpower.
I love Curious George. Took my kids to the Curious
George Museum there in New York and the man with
a yellow hat, and he was always getting into trouble.
I just love I don't know why. I loved Curious
George books. Loved, loved, loved, loved Curious George books. And

(46:22):
there's a book that is really close to my heart.
There's a book called by Spike Lee Antonia Lee called Please, Baby, Please,
And my son had lost his hearing for a while,
and so when he was in speech therapy, when he
had had Myron gotamy and ear tubes put in and

(46:43):
his hearing was coming back. That was the book we
read over and over and over again. I love that book.
It's hard for me to tell you just one. I
love Kadie Nelson's We Are the Ship you know about
the Negro baseball leagues. I love Missus Biddlebox, which is
a book about a woman who has a bad day
and she takes all the things that are in her

(47:04):
in the making is of a bad day, and she
turns them into a cake. Oh it's a hard book
to find because I've actually tried to find it. It
was written by someone who had cancer and it was
her way of dealing with a bad diagnosis. And I
read that book over and over to my kids, and
we use that as a metaphor for bad days. You know,
let's bake it, let's turn it into a cake. You

(47:26):
only ask for two. But the last one I will
share is the one that I give to new mothers
all the time, and that's owl Babies. Are you familiar
with owl babies?

Speaker 2 (47:33):
Oh? I don't know owl babies.

Speaker 3 (47:35):
I buy them by the stack and when when when
people have babies, it's the book I gave them, it's
give them. It's a mama owl has to leave the
nest to go find food for her owl babies. And
I often give this to women just when they're going
back to work because the owl, the babies that are
left in the nest at night, they hunt at night.
Owls hunt at night, so the babies are worried is

(47:57):
mommy coming back. They're hearing noises in the woods and
it's just beautifully written and illustrated. And then at some
point they hear this woosh and they know the wings.
They know that that, you know, the owls have the
great wingspan, and it's mama owl coming back. And the
messages mom leaves because she has to because you all
got to eat, But she always comes back, and it's

(48:19):
just a comforting message for a young mother who's getting
ready to leave her own babies behind.

Speaker 2 (48:25):
Oh that's lovely. I'm gonna have to look that up.

Speaker 3 (48:27):
What up.

Speaker 2 (48:28):
I love all of your the books you've listed.

Speaker 1 (48:30):
I too love children's books, and so I'm delighted when
I hear about books I don't know about.

Speaker 2 (48:35):
So two mom moments.

Speaker 1 (48:37):
First, A mom moment that you'd love to do over,
and by that I mean you'd do it differently and
that or not it was so great.

Speaker 2 (48:43):
That you want to do it again.

Speaker 3 (48:47):
Okay, A mo moment that I would want to do better.
I remember this. I was My son came home and
thrust his hand out and inside was the sandwich that
I had made for him that morning. I can't believe
I'm admitting this. It's all good, but on the sandwich

(49:08):
was mold on the bread that I was using that
I used to make him his sandwich, which is peanut butter,
because he went through a period where everything he ate
was brown or tan, so it was just brown and
tan sandwich. And he was just like, you didn't even
have words.

Speaker 2 (49:23):
He was just.

Speaker 3 (49:23):
Like, what's up?

Speaker 2 (49:29):
Look what you did?

Speaker 3 (49:31):
And I can remember I mean, he marched in the
house and I happened to be. I usually wasn't home
in the afternoons. For some reason, I was home that
day and our sitter, Myrtle, had picked him up and
brought him home. And she looked at me and I
was like, this was on you. I didn't make that sandwich.
I am. You know, she's one of old Jamaican woman

(49:54):
who's still very close to us, and she was just like,
m I'm out of here for that. But what the
the do over is? I was juggling so much, as
so many parents are. I was working mom, I was,
you know, having to read six different newspapers before I
went and considered all things every day before four pm,
you know, on the air, I was, you know, getting

(50:15):
my husband out the door and making sure that you know,
the dray, just doing so much.

Speaker 2 (50:19):
Everyone listening knows this, you know.

Speaker 3 (50:21):
It, And so I just was not fully present in
the moment I was making the sandwiches. Baby, why, I
was doing other things and didn't notice that we needed
to buy some new bread, And I am, I can't
believe I just told you that story. But that's that's
you know, you wish you had do over moments, and
that was one where I really wished I had it.

Speaker 1 (50:43):
Okay, here's what I will say to that. First of all,
in the cosmic scheme, I mean, a multi piece of
bread is nothing.

Speaker 2 (50:49):
I do not worry about that.

Speaker 1 (50:50):
But I also kind of like, I'm going to spin
it a little because I like the fact that your
son was indignant.

Speaker 2 (50:57):
I mean it would have been I think more.

Speaker 1 (50:59):
Trauma tizing over time if he had been like, you know,
it doesn't matter or sad or felt sorry for you.

Speaker 2 (51:05):
I mean, he expected.

Speaker 1 (51:06):
Better, and he was right to expect better, and so
he was just kind of calling you out.

Speaker 2 (51:11):
And you're I mean, you're.

Speaker 1 (51:12):
Like, okay, yeah, that was a mistake, but you know
I do better, and my goodness, I mean, the woman
who has this podcast about cooking, clearly you have delighted
your family with your culinary expertise. So I like that story.
I think it did kind of give you a lesson
to be more present. But I would not spend a
minute on that one. I mean, in terms of any
kind of chamber embarrassment, that's a good one.

Speaker 2 (51:32):
I like that story.

Speaker 1 (51:34):
And now, on a happier note, when did you last
nail it as a mom.

Speaker 3 (51:39):
I think you know, I was gonna say Christmas, but
it's not even the Christmas. We have started gathering as
a family on the weekends when we can, when everyone's
in town, and I'm always am having to try out
the recipes from the podcast I host Your Mama's Kitchen.
But I decided to just do a little simpler, and

(52:00):
I wanted to get some exercise. And I had remembered
something that Inina Gardener told me she'll be a guest
in the upcoming season, and she said, the point is
to make sure that people have fun, Like you're doing
all this extra stuff. You're using Doili's and you know,
and doing all this stuff that's for you that's not
for your guests. And so all the kids are coming
over and my grandson and my nephew who I'm very

(52:22):
close to also and I decided to order pizza and
it was really good pizza, and I said, I'll make
an excellent salad. And the kids were like, run pizza.
But it want to be in a great night because
it was just there was less cleanup. I made a
fantastic salad. There was more floor time because when my
grandson's over, we're on the floor with trucks and all

(52:44):
kinds of things. There was a game on pizza seemed
to go with the game that I guess shows you
how I've evolved. The two stories there, the moldy bread
and the pizza. You know, like it was really good pizza,
and I did, you know, tarted up a little bit
when it came in the house and added some extra
stuff to it. But it was you know, understanding that time.
Time is the most important thing, and I wanted to

(53:05):
make sure that I could take care of myself and
get my workout in and also feed my family and
do it in a way where we all got together.

Speaker 1 (53:15):
I love that story because you interpreted it as I
would interpret it as nailing as a mom in a
way that served their loved ones well and served you well.

Speaker 2 (53:27):
And that truly is nailing it as a mom. So
that's a great, great answer. Thank you so much, Thank you,
Thank you, Michelle. I love this and you're the best,
and thank you so much for being here. Love you, Carol, Oh,
love you too.

Speaker 1 (53:44):
I hope everyone listening enjoyed this conversation that you'll come
back for more. Please subscribe, rate, and review where you
find your podcasts and tell your friends. For more parenting
info and advice, please check out the Ground Control Parenting
website at www groundcontrol parenting dot com. You can also
find us on Facebook and Instagram at ground Control Parenting
and on LinkedIn under Carroll Sutton Lewis. Until the next time,

(54:08):
take care and thanks for listening.