EP #80: Why Everybody Needs to Talk About Racism - and How to Do It with Celeste Headlee

Sunni and Lisa are joined by Celeste Headlee who talks about her
latest book, Speaking of Race: Why Everybody Needs to Talk About
Racism - and How to Do It.

Celeste Headlee is an award-winning journalist who has appeared
on NPR, PBS World, PRI, CNN, BBC and other international
networks.  She was formerly a host at National Public Radio,
anchoring shows including Tell Me More, Talk of the Nation, All
Things Considered and Weekend Edition. For many years, Celeste
has been a mentor and managing editor for NPR’s Next Generation
Radio Project, training young reporters and editors in
broadcasting.


Celeste is co-host to the Scene on Radio podcast—MEN with
the podcast’s producer, Duke University’s CDS audio director,
John Biewen. John describes the season: “Co-host Celeste Headlee
and I will take a similar approach to the Seeing White series,
which explored the history and meaning of whiteness. With MEN,
we’ll be asking questions like, What’s up with this
male-dominated world? Is male supremacy inevitable? How did we
get sexism/patriarchy/misogyny, and what can we do about it?”


Celeste will co-host new episodes of The Retro Report with Masud
Olufani. Retro Report is a non-profit news organization that
produces mini documentaries looking at today’s news stories
through the lens of history and context.


Until February, 2017 Celeste was the Executive Producer and host
of the daily talk show called “On Second Thought” for Georgia
Public Broadcasting in Atlanta. You can listen live to On Second
Thought, weekdays from 9 – 10 a.m. EST on the GPB News website.
Click here for archives from past shows.


In 2014, Celeste narrated the documentary “Packard: The Last
Shift” for the Detroit Free Press. She has won numerous awards
for reporting from the Associated Press and SPJ. She was selected
twice to be a Getty/Annenberg Journalism Fellow and was selected
as a fellow with the Institute for Journalism and Natural
Resources. She was also among the first fellows in Reporting on
Native Stories for National Native News.


Until September of 2012, Celeste was the co-host of the national
morning news show, The Takeaway, from PRI and WNYC and anchored
presidential coverage in 2012 for PBS World Channel.


BOOK DESCRIPTION  - Speaking of Race: Why Everybody Needs to
Talk About Racism - and How to Do It.

In this urgently needed guide, the PBS host, award-winning
journalist, and author of We Need to Talk teaches
us how to have productive conversations about race, offering
insights, advice, and support.


A self-described “light-skinned Black Jew”, Celeste Headlee has
been forced to speak about race - including having to defend or
define her own - since childhood. In her career as a journalist
for public media, she’s made it a priority to talk about race
proactively. She’s discovered, however, that those exchanges have
rarely been productive. While many people say they want to talk
about race, the reality is, they want to talk about race with
people who agree with them. The subject makes us uncomfortable;
it’s often not considered polite or appropriate. To avoid these
painful discussions, we stay in our bubbles, reinforcing our own
sense of righteousness as well as our division.


Yet we gain nothing by not engaging with those we disagree with;
empathy does not develop in a vacuum and racism won’t just fade
away. If we are to effect meaningful change as a society, Headlee
argues, we have to be able to talk about wha