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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A dedicated group of fathers in Los Angeles is working to help neighborhood dads do better by their children and their community. -
Venus and Serena Williams have inspired thousands of young African-Americans to learn and play tennis, and brought racial diversity to the sport. Has golf benefited in the same way from Tiger Woods?
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Sisters Yukia Walker and Yuneisia Harris are co-owners of Curvaceous Couture, an upscale bridal salon in Columbia, Md., that caters to plus-size brides. That clientele is often overlooked.
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Saturday marked the 50th anniversary of the successful crossing of the Edmund Pettus bridge in Selma, Alabama, a key moment in the civil rights movement. Journalist Ethel Payne was there. -
Oprah Winfrey has named Ruby, a novel about a beautiful, abused woman in Texas, as her March book club selection. That could make first-time novelist Cynthia Bond into a literary star. -
The film, about a 1965 voting rights march, stands out for its focus on black characters, including some of the movement's lesser-known organizers, and the way it humanizes Martin Luther King Jr. -
Audiobooks as we know them have been around for about 25 years. But the form really took off when MP3 players like the iPod came out.
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A filmmaker invited white residents of Buffalo, N.Y., to speak candidly about race. NPR's Karen Grigsby Bates finds that the results are thought-provoking, often surprising and sometimes disturbing. -
Carol's Daughter was started to sell products for black women who wear their hair natural. But ever since L'Oréal bought the brand, folks are wondering if it can maintain the loyalty of its customers. -
From the time of slavery, some light-skinned African-Americans escaped racism by passing as white. The new book, A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life, explores what they lost.
