Leah Donnella
Leah Donnella is an editor on NPR's Code Switch team, where she helps produce and edit for the Code Switch podcast, blog, and newsletter. She created the "Ask Code Switch" series, where members of the team respond to listener questions about how race, identity, and culture come up in everyday life.
Donnella originally came to NPR in September 2015 as an intern for Code Switch. Prior to that, she was a summer intern at WHYY's Public Media Commons, where she helped teach high school students the ins and outs of journalism and film-making. She spent a lot of time out in the hot Philly sun tracking down unsuspecting tourists for on-the-street interviews. She also worked at the University of Pennsylvania in the department of College Houses and Academic Resources.
Donnella graduated from Pomona College with a Bachelor of Arts in Africana Studies.
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To many, being "brown" is about a set of shared experiences that include things like being subjected to discrimination and stereotyping. But there's some history here. -
Scared, fine. Frightened, sure. But spooked? This week, we dive into the racial history behind one of Halloween's most fraught descriptors. -
Indian Country Today Media Network announced it would "cease active operations." That leaves a big hole in news coverage by, and about, Native Americans. -
NPR's Mary Louise Kelly talked to Mélisande Short-Colomb, whose family was once enslaved by Georgetown University. Now, at 63, Short-Colomb has enrolled as a freshman there. -
Last week, Ask Code Switch heard from a woman who was considering trading her white-sounding last name for her boyfriend's Latino one. Here's a roundup of the best advice we got from our readers. -
What does it look like when one Latino is racist towards another? And what can one tiny interaction say about the way communities relate? How one viral video reveals fissures in the Latino community.
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This week, we answer a question from a multiracial reader who looks black but feels Filipino. Let's get into it. -
A history professor who studies the politics of memory tells us what the United States can learn from how Germans remember their history.
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Dressed up as academic reasoning, racist tropes pushed by white identity advocates become more palatable, allowing those ideas to move from the fringes of debate to the political mainstream. -
The "DNA Discussion Project" brings students, staff and faculty at West Chester University together to learn about their genetic heritage. For some people, the revelations are hard to digest.
