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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Many black women in the U.S. have or know someone who has done domestic work. With an expanding black middle class, some find themselves conflicted: To hire help or not? -
Despite the prominence of Asian artists in several aspects of hip-hop, they're still not the most visible performers in the genre. Dumbfoundead wants to be an exception. -
Diedre Melson, John Cox and Pam Thatcher are college-educated parents who once considered themselves part of the middle class. Then the Great Recession hit. A new HBO documentary shows their families desperately trying to make ends meet. -
The Kennedy administration commemorated the Emancipation Proclamation with a reception for a virtual who's who of black Americans. However, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. stayed away. -
When Detroit milliner Luke Song made Aretha Franklin's now-iconic 2009 inaugural hat — you know, the one with the big bow? — he had no idea he'd be making thousands more. -
The freshman class of the 113th Congress is the most diverse in congressional history. As part of a series on who the newbies are, NPR's Karen Grigsby Bates profiles Representative-elect Raul Ruiz, who gave up a career as an emergency room physician to improve life in his California desert community of the Coachella Valley.
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NPR's Karen Grigsby Bates profiles novelist Susan Straight, who is putting her hometown of Riverside, Calif., on the literary map. Straight herself is white, but she weaves the black, working-class voices of Riverside into her work.
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The Beverly Hills Hotel, a place fondly known as the Pink Palace, has preserved guests' privacy and indulged their every whim for 100 years. This year will be filled with celebrations of its centennial, as the hotel becomes the first historic landmark in the city of Beverly Hills. -
The idea of an "affordable manicure" was once an oxymoron. That's before Vietnamese immigrants arrived in the U.S. and cornered the market for inexpensive nail-care salons. The industry has offered a path to self-sufficiency for many Vietnamese-Americans in California and around the nation. -
In his new memoir, Rodney King explains why he gave his famous "Can we get along?" speech when riots erupted after police officers were acquitted in his beating. His lawyers had drafted a far angrier script for him. He also reflects on his life since the trial: "Things have changed for me," he says.
