In her Jan. 11 Opinions Essay, “Our true feelings about race and identity are revealed in six words,” Michele Norris wrote about the Race Card Project, which she started to have a conversation about race. The project asks people to submit their stories about race in six words.
In more than 1,100 comments on her Post essay, readers talked about race and offered their own six words. Here’s a sampling. (Comments have been edited for clarity, brevity and style.)
TeamTime: The United States will stop being turbulent on race when people begin to feel they are getting a fair shake here regardless of their race.
canty1: Perhaps each of us should spend more time on “dealing” with how to be better people. How to encourage our kids to be better students. How to treat others with respect. I’m sure readers can add a few here, but my intent is perhaps we should be “dealing” with ways to build a better present and future.
Beyond Good and Evil: In 1,000 years or so, when we will all have more or less the same skin color, they will look back at us in the “enlightened” 21st century and marvel at how long it took for us to realize three things: That we are all part of one race, the human race; that, regardless of our national identity, we have much more in common than we have differences; and that we were being manipulated by demagogues who knew exactly how to play to our fears by demonizing others to gain power and influence for themselves.
SuRI: Thank you for the comment on the flag. I’ve begun to feel it wasn’t my flag anymore. I served 21 years in the U.S. Air Force and my husband served 26. My father served on a tank landing ship that landed on Omaha Beach. My mother’s father was a stretcher-bearer in World War I. Those big flags have felt like tools to exclude. I’m glad to get my feeling of pride back.
BittyBop: Best Washington Post essay ever. One to be shared and hopefully discussed everywhere. Thank you, Michele!
gerrya: Thank you for such a powerful story. Though progress has been made, work still needs to be done so we see each of us as a person who matters.
Trooper72-74: The truth is that in today’s America, race does matter and plays a role in the distribution of opportunity.
U S 1953: You can’t have a better present and future if you don’t have a full understanding of the past. You can’t deal with present realities if you are not educated about the complete past. How can you deal if you don’t know? Knowledge is everything.
Catherine P: What a great essay. Thoughtful and thought-provoking. As an older, professional White woman who has faced some discrimination from male colleagues over the years (we don’t hire female managers, etc.), I fully admit I enjoy a privilege based on the color of my skin. I strive to be open to everyone but sometimes don’t know the best way. Asking helps. Checking my assumptions. I always want to learn to do better and be better as a human.
Skeptical optimist: The Trump-initiated tidal wave of White grievance in reaction to the election of a Black president is, I hope, the last gasp of inherent racism in this country. It will take time — a generation or two — but we are on track to become a multicultural, demographically diverse country where Whites are a minority — finally.
Cubby_Michael: Thanks for sharing this powerful essay on a very interesting and, I think, necessary project. It seems to me that what we call race is something that so many struggle to discuss without the conversation devolving into unpleasantries. Until our society can have those conversations and we can learn the perspectives of others, I sadly fear this will continue being a problem.
Hopefully, one day, maybe it will be less so. The younger generations can’t fix this alone, but the way most of them seem to embrace diversity makes me feel hopeful that we might at least get closer to that “perfect Union” we’ve been working toward for nearly 250 years.
Not-yet: Great article. Acknowledging our commonalities, respecting our differences and acknowledging the past can make a difference. Racism can be diminished but will never go away because a hater must hate something or someone to feel alive, which is so unfortunate for them.
Scotty N: Even if most don’t care, it doesn’t change the fact that it does have an impact on society today. So when people say “I don’t care,” it comes off as “I don’t care to recognize and help fix the racial injustices.”
JERiv: My own two cents: I believe it will forever be impossible to move on from the issue of race when the overwhelming majority of people just want to ignore it and move on “because we’re all human” while completely ignoring or minimizing the issues of racial injustice and racial privilege pervasive in our society.
I always think of Desmond Tutu’s quote: “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”
Sture Ståhl: What puzzles this Swede is the U.S. obsession with labeling people out of “race” or “ethnicity.”
The U.S. Census Bureau considers race and ethnicity to be two separate and distinct concepts. The Census Bureau defines race as a person’s self-identification with one or more social groups. An individual can report as White, Black or African American, Asian, American Indian and Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander, or some other race survey respondents might report or multiple races.
Ethnicity determines whether a person is of Hispanic origin or not. For this reason, ethnicity is broken out in two categories, Hispanic or Latino and not Hispanic or Latino. Hispanics may report as any race.
We don’t register either in Sweden, although most Americans would be surprised over the diversity one can find walking down High Street in my little town.
Our queen is partly of Brazilian origin. Should she register as “Latino”?
But the real puzzle to me is that Americans who’s ancestors arrived enslaved on ships during the 17th century still mostly are defined as “African Americans,” for some reason not just Americans. The ones whose ancestors arrived on the Mayflower aren’t defined as “British Americans,” just Americans.
Former president Donald Trump isn’t defined as “German American,” but, for some people, it’s extremely important to state Vice President Harris’s race.
Might this custom make it harder to unite as one single country?
Clandes7ine: The best way to understand this is to understand that the vast majority of the ancestors of Black Americans did not arrive here intentionally. To take away their Africanness is to erase the part of them that the enslavers tried to take from them. By taking away their religions, their stories, their history, the enslavers managed to strip them of their culture, their past. They split families so no one knew who their ancestors were. African American does not make them less American but recognizes their past that was for a long time something White people strove to take from them.
BelmontrGan: Best column I have read in a long time. We have seen great social progress in my more than 75 years, and it will continue. Change scares some people, but the reality is that all things change. Each of us must ask what are our core principles and live an ethical life.
Russell Sommers: The topic of Race (with a capital R) in today’s media is invariably linked to racist behavior of such radioactive toxicity that I almost didn’t read this incredible article by an amazingly wise human being who initiated a worthy project of deceptive simplicity that illuminates rather than toxically irradiates. That would have been my loss. Brava! And thank you.
My six words: Our souls are colorful yet colorless.
tvelection: Thanks for this article, Ms. Norris. Just amazing, honest, with great mini-quotes that say so much about us. An article that leaves readers with hope that in our humanity we can respect the “content of character.”
Six words? When tempted to prejudice, try empathy.
Six more words? What if you were “the other”?
Khatdaddie: My six words: Hate being the only Black woman.
ShireSteve: Insignificance that significantly defines American history.
FrayedNot: A social fact: Race is destructive.
Epaminondas a Radical Centrist: Here are my own three words regarding race: People are people.
attorneylois: People are people, no matter color.
SouthBySoDak: I wish race did not matter.
JohnR-Montana: Tribalism: ever present in human nature.
Technocrat Curmudgeon: Trauma radicalizes. Rationality understands. Judge objectively.
Drumsing: Racism is institutionalized marginalization in America.
Gustav62: Be more cooperative, less competitive. Adapt.