Op-Comic: Why didn’t we talk about race in high school?

By Malaka Gharib

Nov. 28, 2021 3:30 AM PT

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Recently, I called some high-school friends to ask why we rarely talked about the cultures we embodied at home.

I didn't talk much about race in high school.

My friends asked each other what we "were" but it never seemed to go deeper than that.

But our school had its own set of problems. Even though we didn't talk about racial issues, they were all around us.

I had no idea my friends grappled with the same comforts and insecurities that I had.

I think about how different school might've been if we had this knowledge as teens.

Malaka Gharib is a journalist on NPR’s science desk and the author of “I Was Their American Dream: A Graphic Memoir” and the forthcoming memoir “It Won’t Always Be Like This.”

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