They included their contact information and uploaded photos. With time, and much to my surprise, many contributors began signing their names, knowing their stories could be placed on a website for the world to see. In the beginning, most of the submissions were anonymous. It became an international forum where people could share their own stories but also learn much about life, as if it were lived by someone else. People sent in poems, essays, memos and historical documents to explain why they chose their six words. Over time we added two words to the submission form: “Anything else?” That changed everything.

To keep the conversation going, I created a complementary website for the Race Card Project, where people could submit their six-word stories online. Here I was, doing my part to support the Postal Service. Since my parents were both postal workers, this gave me an extra thrill. Much to my surprise, strangers who stumbled on the cards would follow the instructions and use postage stamps to mail their six-word stories back to me in D.C. I hoped a few of those postcards would come back, thinking it would be worth the trouble if even a dozen people responded. Sometimes I snuck them inside airline in-flight magazines or left them at the sugar station at Starbucks. I left the cards everywhere I traveled: in bookstores, in restaurants, at the information kiosks in airports, on the writing desks at all my hotels. I printed 200 black postcards at my local FedEx Kinko’s on upper Wisconsin Avenue asking people to condense their thoughts on race or cultural identity into one sentence of six words. A shorthand for “Just shut up.” And so, in 2010, I flipped the script, turning that accusatory phrase into a prompt to spark conversation. I have always cringed when the accusations fly about someone allegedly “playing the race card.” It’s usually a proxy for “You’re making me uncomfortable, so please stop talking.” Or a diversionary tactic used to avoid having to speak about race with any kind of precision or specificity.

Line drawing of a thumbs up