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 and thinking about her race and cultural identity, Michele Norris decided to start a conversation about race, and ask others to describe their feelings in six words. It's called 


Michele Norris and others "performed" these statements and talked about what they mean, in a special event held at the 2014 Aspen Ideas Festival.

, has puzzled over fragments of memories from her childhood — bits of mysterious and uncomfortable history — for years. This history centers on an envelope she was given by her grandfather when she was 9 years old, and it led her to submit her six words to The Race Card Project: "Grandfather's poker gift, a hanging invitation." (

:"I have always thought I've had a particularly strange face," he explains. "I looked at my parents growing up and I didn't see their faces in my face — I did see some combination, some mixture." When he looked in the mirror, he says, he didn't see a "typical American face." (

: "I think the question of my ethnicity wouldn't bother me so much if it was a true inquiry about the substance of who I am and what makes me ME (including but not limited to my ethnicity). But more often then not, I find that the desire to know "what" I am seems to be motivated by an anxiety about the unknown, an anxiousness to know which category of people to put me in." (

Aspen Ideas Festival: Who Will the 'Us' Be?

Michele Norris and others "performed" the way people describe their feelings about race, in six words or less.

Aspen Ideas Festival: The Race Card Project

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