My family had a complicated relationship with race — “Oreos” are what my family called Black folks who betrayed their skin color. They were the ones who might look black on the outside but whose actions showed they were white on the inside. Growing up as a white-passing person I might have been accused of being the opposite. But…

My face burned — whether with anger or shame, I wasn’t sure. In 1994, I stood outside human resources at the CBS offices in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Studio City and listened to my future boss over the phone. You want the job? You need to complete the paperwork…

The first time I was accused of kidnapping my daughters, I stood shaking with anger on a side street in New Orleans’s French Quarter. My 2-year-old daughter shyly hugged my hip as I fumbled for my wallet. I pulled out a photo of us together on a playground and thrust…

I walk a racial tightrope. It’s one I’ve struggled to balance on for my entire life — I see how that distorts America — I walk a racial tightrope. It’s one I’ve struggled to balance on for my entire life. But over the past several weeks, I’ve felt myself teetering. I’m black and outraged that racism continues to kill black people like George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor while burdening the lives of…

For years, the guiding force in my life tied my shoes, yanked a comb through my tangled hair, and then dragged me along by the hand wherever she went. My big sister Neecie had big dreams and wasn’t about to let me slow her down. Being the only girl in…

In the national debate over reopening school buildings, the parents of more than 50 million American school children were forced to make decisions that could have long-term implications for their children’s health and education. Some families had plentiful, if imperfect, schooling options this fall: pods, private tutors, schools able to…

For all the revelations in Oprah Winfrey’s interview with Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, the most striking was Meghan’s claim that an unnamed member of the royal family raised concerns and questions about the skin color of her then-unborn son, Archie. Black Americans winced at that…

A Conversation about Race, Identity and the Ties that Bind Us For years, I have written about my struggle to find my identity and my place in a world that often sees things in black and white. I live somewhere in the in-between, born to a different father than my…

I’ve often wondered what a dirt-poor, white handyman would see in a poorly educated, black domestic worker. Certainly, they saw love. But undoubtedly, they also glimpsed the future. Decades before Richard and Mildred Loving defied interracial marriage laws and social mores, my grandmother and her common-law husband did the same…