Did you miss us last week? We missed you! Listen in to this week’s episode in order to hear some exciting updates, a small podcast look-back, and what we have planned for this summer…

When the email came into our inbox introducing us to a multimedia project called “Jane Crow, Then & Now,” we were immediately intrigued.  After all, Jane Crow - or White women’s support for White supremacy - is something we’ve talked about a lot. This support, of white women for white supremacy, has gone on for way longer than most people realize; it’s not just confined to the South; and it’s a prevalent force in our schools, meaning that students and teachers of color are often oppressed due to the power of white women’s support of white supremacy.  

As we’ve often said, White women have a lot of power in their own spheres of influence, where two-thirds of women voters are white, 80% of public school teachers are white women, and beyond that, one of these many spheres is deeply personal: child-rearing. It’s the conversations and actions that White women are taking with regard to their own children, and what they’re teaching them, both implicitly and explicitly, that will change the course of the future - for the collective good, or for individual gain. 

A lot of White women have chosen to uphold White supremacy through apathy or inaction, even if they don’t consider themselves racist. Those who have chosen to walk against the tide of our country’s trajectory toward racism have done so at great personal cost - but sometimes, for even greater collective gain: our children’s futures.

That’s why, on the eve of Mother’s Day, we’d like to highlight this project by EdPost which highlights the allies in history: the White women accomplices who challenged the system and worked for equity in education for Black and brown children, at great personal cost.  For white women looking for historical role models and sheroes, the Gallery of Accomplices provides a GREAT list of resources to encourage and inspire all people to deepen our historical knowledge and commitment to cultural humility, deeper listening when working with children, and families, and communities whose experiences differ from our own.  

If you’re listening to this episode when it’s released, we’re now in May of 2023, which is also AAPI Heritage Month. There are a lot of names for this month, which is great, as there are also a lot of countries and ethnicities represented by the simple word “Asian”. But one group of people that is often left out of the overarching Asian umbrella are the biracial Asians - and, given our own identities in this space, this is something that we experience regularly. 

So, to kick off AAPI Heritage Month from a perspective not often discussed, we’re focusing today on our personal stories of being biracial Asian women, and what identity, belonging and inclusion means when we look at being Asian in this country through this lens. And, since it’s us, we’ll be throwing in a little bit of history, laws and psych along the way.

What SCOTUS will do this term, and what they decide in June, will determine a lot of our ability to keep some basic human rights in a democracy - and the three cases that we’re going to be talking about also may impact you, regardless of what state you’re in. 

Back in Episode 108, “Why we all should be concerned about voter suppression,” we talked a LOT about the history of voting rights in this country, the need for the Voting Rights Act (hint: it comes back to racism), and how voter suppression was currently happening in this country. And… while we’d like to say that here in 2023 things have changed, they have not, given that two of the three cases that we’re talking about in this episode deal directly with the right to vote. The third addresses LGBTQ+ rights, but could be interpreted to limit rights much more broadly, and in all 50 states.

So listen up, because we’re going to be breaking down three key cases and why you should be following these decisions when they’re released in June.

With decisions pending in the two Supreme Court cases discussing the future of affirmative action, today we talk about all things affirmative action, including: where it came from, who the biggest beneficiaries of it have been (and if you know a White woman in this country, you’ll want to listen) if we still need it (yes), and what you’ll really need to know about where our society may be headed – because this not only impacts education but our companies and communities, too.

Bottom line: affirmative action actually affects all of us.  Listen in to hear why.

This week marks the FOUR YEAR anniversary of the Dear White Women podcast! 

From those first few episodes released altogether on April 15, 2019, to now… it’s been quite the ride.  This year, in order to kick off year five (!!!) of the podcast, we thought we’d devote an entire shorter episode to talking about not only the past four years but what we have in store for the future (you didn’t think we’d end with four, did ya?). 

Most people that we know didn’t grow up thinking about or knowing people who were involved in unions.  Us too – until Sara married a union man.  And it got us thinking… how have unions impacted all of our lives?  Turns out, quite a lot.  

Here’s one way: the length of the typical workday.  Thank unions for 8 hours – because that didn’t just magically happen out of the goodwill of employers.  Unions campaigned for over 70 years to move the average workweek from 100 hours per week (!!) down to 40.  At one stage, back in the 1950s, nearly one in three workers were in unions, and they played a HUGE role in reducing income inequality and boosting wages.  Done right, unions are a public good – they provide benefits for all of society, so basically are the underpinning of a democracy and economy that works for most people. 

But here we are today in 2023.  You have probably heard about the Fight for 15, to get $15/hour to be the minimum wage for folks in the fast food industry.  You may be seeing headlines of workers starting unions at Starbucks, Amazon, Apple, and maybe you even know some folks who are involved.  Support for labor unions in the U.S. is currently at a 57-year high, where 71% of Americans approve, but participation is at a record LOW, where only just over 10% (about 14 million American workers) are actually part of a union.  Join us as we dive into understanding this critical piece of the puzzle when it comes to shaping not just corporate but our country’s policies and the perpetuation of this growing inequality - and yep, it’s not surprising, but there’s a racial component to this too.