NPR's Code Switch newsletter is publishing its final edition after eight years, with host Leah returning from maternity leave to write a farewell letter to readers.
Leah said she was sad the space is going away and called it a privilege to process the news with readers over that time. She said she has covered the race and identity beat for more than a decade and has never tired of it, and that she missed the weekly ritual of writing the letter and reading reader responses while away from work getting to know her second child.
She said that when Americans think about racism, they are taught to think of spectacle — images of violence, weeping children and torch-carrying crowds. But she said much of racism barely looks like anything at all, describing it as the way a form gets sorted, a line gets drawn on a map, or the mundane ways people with excess try to give their children everything they had and more while calling it love.
Leah said Code Switch has discussed "Karens" — white women who call police on children selling lemonade, on women grocery shopping and on men looking at birds — but that for every such case caught on video, many more people live so segregated that they never have to confront anyone. She said she has spent years writing about the racism that makes headlines, and may now have more time to consider the kind that does not, which she described as slow, patient and faceless.
She said she is grateful to have shared the space with readers and that their emails made her more compassionate and hopeful. NPR said the newsletter is passing the baton to Pod Club, its newsletter for handpicked podcast recommendations from across the network.