I am very into NY resolutions & reflections & retrospectives so here are a few things I (re)learned about race reporting while editing the @NPRCodeSwitch podcast in 2020:

1. Everything comes around again. The same injustices and reactions get repeated, in different variations, over and over and over again.

2. When it comes to fixing racism, a lot of people rely on individuals. We think that a "good person" will automatically do the right thing, and that the "right thing" will be enough.

3. Conversation, in and of itself, is not an endgame. We can have conversations and dialogues and racial reckonings until we're blue in the face, but only systemic change leads to systemic change.

4. Racism is resilient.

5. POCs are resilient.

6. Whiteness is resilient.

7. Categories overlap. No group is pure.

8. Feelings and actions are not the same thing.

9. The best person to tell a story is often the person who experienced the thing.

10. People approach the same problem in different ways. No one knows definitively what approach is going to be the most effective at a certain time.

11. Not every story is a race story.

12. Every story is a race story.