From Mourning to 'Moonlight': A Year In Race, As Told By Code Switch
One year ago, Barack Obama was winding down his final term and Donald Trump was ... a candidate for President?
Muhammad Ali, Juan Gabriel and Philando Castile were still standing, and Standing Rock, N.D., wasn't on most people's maps. The term "alt-right" required an explanation; the phrase "hot sauce in my bag" did not.
And the Code Switch podcast was born.
Over the past year, our discussions about race have been shaped by pop culture and fine art; academia and activism; tragedy and humor and politics and food. And we've been shaped by you, our audience — the questions and ideas that you bring to us every day.
So for our anniversary, everyone on the team wrote about some of the stories and ideas that changed how they thought about race.
For Shereen Marisol Meraji, it was the idea of an "explanatory comma" — the brief explanation that follows concepts that might be unfamiliar to listeners and readers. (Eg.: Tupac Shakur, a popular African-American rap musician from.) This concept resonated with Shereen because, as a young woman of color, she was often asked to explain herself, but didn't get much in return:
