Minority communities have always been aware of the problem of racial profiling, but by the late 1990s, it was at the forefront of public consciousness. By 1999, the New York Times was writing an average of three articles on racial profiling a week. The state of North Carolina took note, passing a law requiring police officers to fill out a form including information on the motorist's race at each traffic stop. More than ten years and 13 million traffic stops later, experts have analyzed the data. Host Frank Stasio will be joined by a pair of them to talk about racial profiling in the state as it exists now: James E. Williams is a public defender in Orange County and the head of the North Carolina Advocates for Justice Task Force on Racial and Ethnic Bias; Frank Baumgartner is the Richard J. Richardson Distinguished Professor of Political Science at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.
Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.
Shawn Wen joined the staff of The State of Things in March 2012 and served as associate producer until February 2014.
