It's been a year since we began publishing a crowdsourced series that we call Race in LA, written by Angelenos who’ve shared personal essays exploring how our race and ethnicity shapes our daily lives.
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From June 2020 to July 2021, we published your stories each week to continue important conversations about race/ethnicity, identity and how both affect our lived experiences. We now have a new series Being American, which is again soliciting your essays.
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Read:
Our contributors have shared deeply personal stories about their encounters with racism and discrimination, about their family histories and their immigrant stories, about themselves or their kids growing up multiracial and multiethnic, about colorism and “pigmentocracy.” No two stories are alike.
And now, we’re happy to announce that we’re bringing many of their voices to The L.A. Report, our daily podcast that brings you the top news stories from the L.A. region.
For the next several weeks, we’ll feature special Race In LA weekend episodes of the L.A. Report, with contributors reading from their essays.
Up this coming Sunday, July 4, as we celebrate American independence and American-ness in general: Since the beginning of the pandemic, many Asian Americans have repeatedly gotten the message that some fellow Americans do not perceive them as American enough. In her essay “Dear Racist,” artist and Race In LA contributor Tracy Park takes on anti-Asian hate in an open letter to the haters.
You can download The L.A. Report at LAist.com, on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or wherever you download podcasts. And once you do, you can also listen to our Sunday, June 20 episode featuring Race In LA contributor Shirlee Smith, who wrote about the time she was denied a job in 1950s L.A. because, as she was told then, “we don’t hire colored girls.”
You can also check out all the Race In LA essays here at LAist.com.
