• Join Puck

    Directly Supporting Authors

    A new economic model in which writers are also partners in the business.

    Personalized Subscriptions

    Customize your settings to receive the newsletters you want from the authors you follow.

    Stay in the Know

    Connect directly with Puck talent through email and exclusive events.

  • What is puck? Newsletters Authors Podcasts Events Gift Puck Careers

After The Tide: Confronting Race in America Now

It’s hard enough sometimes just living in Black skin in America. But I’ve chosen to work as a sense-maker and storyteller to help others process this often nonsensical and maddening land we share. This piece is the first in a series.

George Floyd protesters in Washington, DC
Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images
Baratunde Thurston
October 6, 2021

Back in the spring of 2019, I delivered my first original talk on the TED main stage. It was titled “How To Deconstruct Racism One Headline at a Time,” and in it, I dissected the barrage of news stories about white people calling the cops on Black people for no good reason. It was a talk born of the moment, during the summer of “BBQ Becky” and “Permit Patty,” before social media consolidated around the Karen epithet to describe such entitled and damaging behavior. Yet it was a talk that connected to our nation’s long history of racial terror lynchings and violent policing of Blackness from its inception.