Gene Demby

The historian Marcia Chatelain's new book, Franchise, outlines a forgotten history of McDonald's as a site of social protest and a mechanism black entrepreneurs hoped might spur black liberation.

Since our show debuted in 1979, some notions of race and identity have changed dramatically, while in other ways the same painful battles continue.

The first British ship carrying enslaved Africans landed in Virginia in 1619. The Tucker family believes they can trace their ancestry back to that ship — and are fighting to preserve their legacy.

Just as it did at the end of the 19th century — an era of racist lynchings and massacres — the idea that a less-white populace poses a danger to the United States continues to enjoy wide purchase.

White nationalism is not limited to the United States' radical, violent fringe groups. There's a long history in mainstream politics of stoking anxiety about America becoming less white.

We talked to Angela Saini, author of the new book Superior: The Return of Race Science, about how race isn't real (but you know ... still is) and how race science crept its way into the 21st century.

Black women have long been used as symbols in debates over welfare, but a movement of poor black women who fought to radically redefine aid to the poor as a guaranteed right has been mostly forgotten.

An effort to believe victims of hate crimes rose as a counter to a long history of disbelief. Actor Jussie Smollett appears to have taken advantage of the "impulse to believe" for personal benefit.

Blackface has been a constant in American culture going all the way back to the country's founding. It's one of those inconvenient facts of U.S. history: a white supremacist cultural building block.

Gov. Northam has made a call for racial dialogue after his yearbook photo controversy, but these conversations are hard to have productively.

Over the weekend, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam called for more conversations about race. But the calls for productive dialogue around race rarely lead to them.

In the fallout of Rep. Steve King's remarks to The New York Times, journalists have been struggling over whether or not to use the word "racist" to characterize his quote.

Reports that a white shooter killed a 7-year-old black girl led to a national outcry, but in the days since, deputies have charged two black men. Gene Demby spoke about what this incident reveals.

President Trump's attack on the press intensified this week, including angry comments directed at a number of black female reporters.

Black men don't get seen as adults. Black boys don't get treated like kids. Meanwhile, a certain class of men can float in and out of either category as the need arises.

NBC's Megyn Kelly opened a pandora's box this week when she said she didn't understand why blackface on Halloween is a problem. The issue and the debate around intent seems to resurface every year.

NPR's Code Switch podcast looks at race and identity in America. In this episode, NPR's Shereen Marisol Meraji and Gene Demby talk about transracial adoption.

President Trump called on NFL players to suggest names of incarcerated people who they feel have been treated unfairly. A new op-ed from four NFL players calls for the president to issue a blanket pardon for people serving sentences for non-violent drug offenses.

The reactions to Kanye West's noisy rightward lurch illustrate some important dynamics about black voting behavior and why a country with many black conservatives has so few black Republicans.