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The April 2018 issue of  National Geographic focuses on race, and  begins with a critical look at the magazine's own sordid history on the topic. As new Editor-in-Chief Sarah Goldberg writes in her introduction, "It’s possible to say that a magazine can open people’s eyes at the same time it closes them." From the NatGeo 2018 caption: Photographer Frank Schreider  shows men from Timor island his camera in a 1962 issue. The magazine often ran photos of “uncivilized” native people seemingly fascinated by “civilized” Westerners’ technology. Editor Goldberg was also part of a broader discussion about representations of the past in a March 2018 episode of On the Media . On the same day I first read the National Geographic editorial (I got a bit behind on the magazine), I heard Shades of Privilege , an intriguing and important story about colorism as a particularly insidious form of racism in several national contexts. Together, I believe these items are good starting point...

In this short conversation with TED Radio Hour host Guy Raz, writer Taiye Selasi offers listeners a lot of wisdom on the meaning of place, and the relationships among place, power, and identity. Some of the things that concern her are familiar, but two decades of thinking about them have led her to some very useful ideas about how to have better conversations about the places that have shaped us. People are more alike than different, but focusing on national identities needlessly accentuates difference. The Places We Call Home page includes links to  her biography and the full TED talk upon which this conversation was based. It also includes a link to another TED talk about which I have written recently, The Danger of a Single Story .