Karen Grigsby Bates

The Saturday morning fog was burning off above the part of Santa Monica's beach known as the Inkwell. It's the stretch of sand to which black Southern Californians were relegated by de facto segregation until the 1960s.

Men, women and children walked across the sand in wet suits, carrying surfboards. ...

Sheryl Sandberg's best-seller Lean In has sparked a national debate among women about reaching for success in the workplace. But in order for women to lean in to their ambition and spend the arduous hours embracing the success Sandberg urges them to, they need to lean on support at home. ...

Filmmaker Benson Lee believes that on the quest for success in America, comparatively speaking, "Asians have done pretty well."

"They have the highest income [and] spend the most money on entertainment," Lee says.

But, he says, there's one drawback: "They're the least satisfied with their image in the media."

Lee, ...

This story is part of a series from Code Switch — NPR's new team covering race, ethnicity and culture — about America's demographic shift from a mostly-white country to a truly multiracial one, and the other cultural transitions we'll see as a result.

Say "rapper" and many people often ...

This is an occasional collection of stuff that makes NPR Code Switch's Karen Grigsby Bates shake her head.

There were plenty of rumors flying around during O.J. Simpson's Trial of the Century, but one of the most interesting was the allegation that at some point before he became an actor/broadcaster/corporate ...

It's a visual no parent wants to picture: a child describing what it's like to live in a house with no power for lights, heat or cooking. For many middle-class American parents, it's hard to imagine their family ever facing a situation like that. But a new HBO documentary suggests ...

In the history of Los Angeles hip-hop, many names loom large: Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, DJ Quik. But there's another, lesser-known name that nevertheless played a big role in the early years of L.A. rap. Wan Joon Kim opened a swap meet stall in ...

A new law provides a path to temporary legal status for some youth in the U.S. illegally, but families must produce a bevy of documentation to qualify. In California, some school dist...

Andy Cohen made the cable channel an unlikely focus of water-cooler talk by developing the Real Housewives series. After work, he hosts a nightly talk show — and he's not looking to stop doing either anytime soon.

The pop diva was discovered dead in her Beverly Hills hotel room Saturday, the eve of the 54th Grammy Awards. When she burst upon the music world in 1985, there was no doubt in anyone...

Karen Grigsby Bates, correspondent for NPR News and contributor to The Root, offers advice for surviving the annual office party.