White Women Wake Up

Send us Fan MailKaren opens with a photograph. Two women, fists raised, 1971, one of the most reproduced images of the feminist movement. Everyone can name Gloria Steinem. Almost nobody can name Dorothy Pitman Hughes, the Black organizer standing beside her. Gloria Steinem died on September 3, 2026, and in the wave of tributes, that image ran everywhere with one name attached to it. Karen traces how the two women met: Pitman Hughes came to New York from Lumpkin, Georgia at nineteen, sang in nightclubs, cleaned houses, and built a multiracial cooperative childcare center on West 80th Street with no funding and no resources. Steinem, then a young magazine columnist, came to write about the center. They toured the country together for years. The press printed one of them. From there, the conversation widens into the four waves of feminism, from Seneca Falls in 1848 through the 19th Amendment that left most Black women unable to vote until 1965, through Betty Friedan and the Redstockings and Shulamith Firestone, through Anita Hill and Kimberlé Crenshaw naming intersectionality, to Tarana Burke and Me Too. Jonelle interrupts twice to ask whether a claim is fact or projection, and once to name that Karen's framing of Steinem sounded like white saviorism. She brings up Latarsha Sanders alongside Lindsay Clancy: two mothers, the same county, the same judge, and only one set of medical records allowed into a courtroom. The episode lands where Karen started it. Learning the name is step one. Repeating it is the work.CALLS TO ACTIONPick one idea you repeated this week and find out who said it first. One search. Then say both names the next time it comes up.Look up the 1971 Dan Wynn portrait in the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery collection and read the caption. Notice which name it leads with.Put one book by a Black woman historian in your stack before book club. Martha S. Jones's Vanguard is the one this episode keeps walking into.We would love to hear from you! Contact us at [email protected] Notes: In '69, Redstockings speak out, and Steinem's own account of it comes from the Redstockings Archive for Action and Documented History. The story of Dorothy Pitman Hughes comes from historian Laura Lovett's biography, With Her Fist Raised. The Firestone material is drawn from The Dialectic of Sex itself. Tributes to Gloria Steinem are from NPR and CNN.Support the show

Send us Fan MailKaren brings the topic cold: why do we avoid the conversations we most need to have, especially when a life is on the line? She finished Crank by Ellen Hopkins and spent the whole book furious at the mother who watches her daughter unravel and never says a word, until she recognized herself in her. Karen opens up about her own teenage and college years of drug use, drinking, and a mother who never asked, and then about the two conversations she skipped with Jonelle: the self-harm she knew about in high school and said nothing about for years, and the letter she mailed after college instead of asking a question. Jonelle tells her what that letter actually did, and reveals that the cutting was never depression; it was autistic masking and a need to feel something. From there, the two of them take avoidance apart. Karen cites therapist Annie Wright on avoidance as a nervous system response rewarded by the body, and Audre Lorde's line that your silence will not protect you. Jonelle pushes back with a harder question: before you ask why you are avoiding a conversation, ask whether the conversation is yours to have at all, and if it is not, ask what in you is bothered by it. Karen lands on an epiphany midway through: that we may stay silent because we believe naming a behavior means permitting it. They close on what actually works: open-ended questions that invite self-reflection instead of advice that triggers defensiveness, and specific questions instead of a generic "how are you doing" that is too big to answer.CALLS TO ACTIONName one conversation you have been avoiding this week, and write down the actual fear underneath it. Not the reason you tell other people. The real one. Karen's turned out to be that all three of her reasons for staying quiet were protecting her, not Jonelle.Before you decide to speak up, run Jonelle's decision tree. Ask whether this is yours to say, and if the answer is no, sit with what in you is bothered by it. Sometimes the work is the conversation. Sometimes the work is the discomfort you are trying to hand to someone else.Swap one piece of advice for one open-ended question this week with someone you are worried about. Make it specific, not "how are you doing." Then notice whether they open up or shut down.We would love to hear from you! Contact us at [email protected] Notes: The line, "your silence will not protect you," is from Audre Lorde's 1977 essay, The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action. The idea that niceness and love are not the same thing comes from bell hooks' All About Love. The nervous system research on why avoidance feels safer and why it gets rewarded as a woman as diplomacy is from therapist Annie Wright, LMFT.Support the show

Send us Fan MailJonelle brings Karen two murder cases that stood before judges in the same August week, and one question underneath both of them: who gets believed. Lindsay Clancy, a Massachusetts labor and delivery nurse, is on trial for the deaths of her three children, with postpartum psychosis as her defense. Keshia Golden, eight months pregnant at the time, was charged with first-degree murder after stabbing a boyfriend; police had been called on more than fifty times. Jonelle refuses to put the crimes on a scale and says so on air. What she compares instead is the response. One case drew roughly 160,000 TikToks and close to two million GoFundMe dollars. The other drew six small Chicago organizations and a five-thousand-dollar bond. The conversation moves through the maternal mental health screening gap, the finding that Black women are 41 percent less likely to start treatment for a postpartum condition, the 2017 Georgetown Law research showing adults see Black girls as needing less protection starting at age five, and the uncomfortable detail that both lead prosecutors are women. Karen argues the cases are too complex to compare and that mainstream media is the culprit. Jonelle disagrees on the second point, and that disagreement becomes the spine of the episode. She closes by admitting her own feed skipped Keshia Golden entirely until two creators redirected her, and by naming attention as the one variable a listener actually controls.CALLS TO ACTIONThis week, when a woman's story is moving fast through your feed, stop and ask who is not in the frame. Then spend thirty seconds looking her up. That search is the whole ask.Pick one organization carrying a case nobody is covering and follow it. Survived and Punished and Moms United Against Violence and Incarceration are two places to start. Following is not activism, but it does change what your algorithm hands you next.Notice where your own empathy runs out this week. Not to judge yourself for it, just to see it. Then ask what would have to be true about a woman for you to give her the benefit of the doubt automatically.We would love to hear from you! Contact us at [email protected] Notes: The postpartum screening numbers, that 1 in 5 women are likely to suffer from postpartum, and the finding that Black women are 41% less likely to seek treatment come from the Policy Center for Maternal Mental Health and from research by Katy Backes Kozhimannil. The postpartum psychosis clinical picture is from Dr. Susan Hatters Friedman at Case Western Reserve and Dr. Veerle Bergink at Mount Sinai, reported by NPR and WBUR this month. The research on adults seeing Black girls as needing less protection in Girlhood Interrupted by Rebecca Epstein, Jamilia Blake, and Thalia Gonzalez at Georgetown Law. The numbers on the incarcerated survivors are from the Sentencing Project and from Survived and Punished, co-founded by Mariame Kaba and Alisa Bierria. Keshia Golden's case was carried on for 4 years by Truthout, Block Club Chicago, and the Chicago Sun-Times, and by Moms United Against Violence and Incarceration.Support the show

Send us Fan MailKaren brings a question she cannot stop turning over: when someone asks us to be more civil, what are they actually asking for? She traces the word back to its Latin root, civilis, and lays out the two dimensions researchers separate it into, politeness on one side and public-mindedness on the other. Most of us only ever use the first one. Karen then makes an argument that reframes the whole conversation: the Three-Fifths Compromise was civility in action, a polite agreement between northern and southern delegates that resolved white discomfort by deciding a Black person counted as three-fifths of a human being. Jonelle stops everything to sit with that. From there the two of them work through the civility industrial complex, the boom in campus dialogue programs and the private money behind them, and ask whether those courses teach productive disagreement or quietly train students not to protest. Jonelle brings the Carnegie Mellon Fence, a century-old free speech tradition the university painted over this summer. Karen introduces Black feminist scholar Loretta Ross and the five C's, calling out, canceling, calling in, calling on, and calling it off, and Jonelle names the pattern out loud: Karen is someone who has always wanted peace at any price. They land somewhere more useful than a rule. The question is not whether you were polite. It is what your compromise cost someone else.CALLS TO ACTIONThis week, catch one moment when you want someone to say it more nicely. Before you say anything, name what you were feeling in the two seconds before. Then decide whether your request is about their tone or about your comfort.Pick one conversation you have been avoiding because it might get tense, and try Loretta Ross's calling in. Name the harm plainly, then stay in the room with love and respect instead of blame. One conversation is enough.Practice calling it off. The next time you need to pause something hard, say out loud that you do not have the bandwidth right now, and name when you will come back to it. Then actually come back to it.We would love to hear from you! Contact us at [email protected] Notes: Our historical anchor on the Three-Fifths Compromise came from Britannica and the League of Women Voters. Our live 2026 example came from Ryan Quinn's reporting in Inside Higher Ed, published this week. The two dimensions of civility are based on research published by the National Institutes of Health. The Five Cs and calling-in framework come from Loretta Ross, Black feminist scholar and MacArthur Genius Fellow. The tone-policing history is from Dr. Zuleyka Zevallos, and adrienne maree brown's We Will Not Cancel Us shaped our accountability lens.Support the show

Send us Fan MailIn this re-release episode of White Women Wake Up, Karen and Jonelle dig into what it really means to let people be—without needing them to think, act, or believe like us. Karen shares how a moment at church triggered deep discomfort around conversion culture and her own lifelong urge to “help” others align with her values. Together, the two explore how white women are often taught to equate goodness with agreement and acceptance with control. They look at why authenticity requires boundaries, why curiosity can feel risky, and how moral certainty can quietly turn into moral policing. In a culture that rewards comfort and conformity, this conversation invites listeners to practice a slower, more courageous kind of connection—one rooted in respect, not rescue. Calls to ActionAsk yourself: When do I try to align others with my values instead of learning from theirs?Practice acceptance without agreement—curiosity over conversion.Notice when “being right” starts to feel safer than being real.We would love to hear from you! Contact us at [email protected] Support the show

Send us Fan MailRoughly 66,000 people are in ICE detention tonight, and about seven in ten have no criminal conviction at all. In this episode, Jonelle traces how that became both legal and profitable, all the way back to a single sentence in the 13th Amendment: the exception clause that abolished slavery "except as a punishment for crime." From convict leasing in 1868 Georgia, to the roughly $11 billion a year in prison labor produced at pennies an hour, to private prison companies posting record profits from ICE detention, Jonelle and Karen follow one pattern across 160 years. Slavery did not simply become prison. Each system of racial control keeps dying and returning in a new legal costume, always justified in race-neutral language, always landing on the same communities.Calls to ActionThis week, look up whether your own state still keeps the 13th Amendment exception clause in its constitution. Roughly 15 states still do, and most people have never checked.Learn your rights before you need them. If you see an ICE detention in your community, film from a safe distance, stay calm, and save a local rapid-response number, like United We Dream's MigraWatch hotline, in your phone now.Watch the documentary 13th this week, then send this episode to one person and ask them what they were actually taught about how slavery ended.We would love to hear from you! Contact us at [email protected] Notes: The ICE detention figures are from TRAC at Syracuse University, and the analyst Austin Kocher, current as of summer 2026. The prison labor data is from the ACLU and the University of Chicago Global Human Rights Clinic's "Captive Labor" report. The history we walked through comes from Talitha LeFlouria's "Chained in Silence," Sarah Haley's "No Mercy Here," and Elizabeth Hinton's "From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime." The abolition thinking is Angela Davis and Ruth Wilson Gilmore. And the complication is James Forman Jr.'s "Locking Up Our Own.”Support the show

Send us Fan MailPeacemaking is a skill you train, not a mood you hope to be in. Karen brings a confession: a moment when she spoke unkindly about someone and then asked to re-enter the room and try again, and turns it into a bigger idea: nonviolence and accountability are practiced, not performed. She and Jonelle trace how Rosa Parks trained under Septima Clark at Highlander before the boycott, why role-play changes behavior when intentions don't, and how Mia Mingus' four parts of accountability make a real apology repeatable. They sit with appropriation and attribution, and land on the WAIT practice: why am I talking?Calls to ActionTry Karen's re-entering-the-room practice this week. If a conversation leaves you uneasy about who you were in it, go back and ask someone to let you try again out loud. Repair is a skill, and it gets stronger with reps.Adopt the WAIT check from the White Woman Whisperer: before you speak in a hard moment, ask yourself, why am I talking? Is it helping me grow, or taking up space someone else should have?Pick one nonviolence or peacemaking resource and actually start it: read the book White Women by Regina Jackson and Saira Rao; read Kazu Haga's Healing Resistance; or sign up for non-violence training. When you learn these tools, ask where they came from and credit the civil rights lineage that built them.We would love to hear from you! Contact us at [email protected] Notes: The Rosa Parks history comes from the Stanford King Institute and the Rosa Parks biography archive. She trained 2 weeks at Highlander Folk School under Septima Clark months before the boycott. The re-entering the room framework traces back to Mia Mingus' 4 Parts of Accountability on her blog, Leaving Evidence. The science on rehearsal building real skill faster than talk alone comes from a 2025 randomized trial on Behaviour Research and Therapy. The modern nonviolence tradition comes from Kazu Haga's Healing Resistance and the Kingian Nonviolence Curriculum. And if you want somewhere to practice this yourself, check out the Telos Group's Principles and Practices of Peacemaking.Support the show

Send us Fan MailPropaganda is a manufactured narrative repeated until it feels like common sense. In this episode of White Women Wake Up, Jonelle unpacks the American propaganda that quietly taught us who to fear, who to pity, and who to never think about at all. From the welfare queen Ronald Reagan popularized in 1976, to the super predator panic of the 1990s, to the crack baby myth that never held up under research, Jonelle and her mom Karen trace how media and politicians built dehumanizing stories about Black and marginalized communities, and how that propaganda still shapes how we see poverty, crime, and human worth today.They connect The Birth of a Nation to the model minority myth to Bacon's Rebellion, showing how divide-and-conquer propaganda has always protected power by pitting struggling people against each other. Karen turns the mirror toward white women: what narratives do we absorb without questioning, and who benefits when we keep believing them? This is anti-racism work at its most practical, learning to interrogate the propaganda you never chose to believe, and refusing the white savior script that Hollywood keeps selling.Plus a Banned Book Club update, next up is Last Night at the Telegraph Club on August 11, and an honest reflection on grieving whiteness instead of sitting in guilt. Come curious. Stay open. Keep waking up.Calls to Action:Pick one belief you hold about a group of people you don't belong to, and this week trace it back. Where did it come from? A movie, a headline, a politician, a childhood joke? Naming the source is the first act of interrogation.Next time a news story labels someone (a drug addict, a runaway, a high-risk individual), pause and ask what that word is doing. Whose humanity does it erase, and who benefits from you seeing them that way?Notice the white savior story when it shows up in your feed or your favorite film. Instead of asking how you can help, ask how you can make space, step back, and let people of color lead.SHOW NOTES, REFERENCES CITED IN THIS EPISODE:The Birth of a Nation (1915): History.com and Time magazine. The welfare queen and Linda Taylor: PBS NewsHour and Ange-Marie Hancock's book The Politics of Disgust. The super predator myth (John DiIulio, 1995): the Equal Justice Initiative, Retro Report, and The Marshall Project. The crack baby study: Dr. Hallam Hurt's research, reported by WHYY. Model minority origins: William Petersen's 1966 New York Times Magazine article, Success Story, Japanese-American Style. ICE and immigration figures: Human Rights Watch (June 2026), Northwestern University, the Cato Institute, and the American Immigration Council. White savior industrial complex: Teju Cole. Banned Book Club current read: Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi; next up, Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo.Support the show

Send us Fan MailWhite guilt keeps us defensive and stuck. White grief, the practice of actually mourning what whiteness has cost all of us, is what moves us toward empathy. In this episode of White Women Wake Up, Karen brings the topic and asks Jonelle to sit in the physical feeling of mourning a loved one, then carry that same guttural feeling into how we hold race. Together they draw a hard line between guilt, which centers white feelings and rushes to fix or hide, and grief, which names a specific loss and builds community. Karen introduces the idea of a weeping class, a society that lets itself mourn what could be: love, repair, and systems that let everyone flourish. Jonelle pushes back on whether grief risks re-centering white people, and the two work out how to grieve without asking people of color to hold that grief for us. The conversation lands on three tangible practices for turning white guilt into white grief, and on why a weeping community can hold its own sorrow and still make room for the deeper grief of those who have been oppressed.Calls to ActionThis week, name one specific loss instead of sitting in vague guilt. Ask yourself: what am I actually grieving here, and can I say it out loud?Notice the next time you reach for a “but” in a hard conversation. Try staying in the discomfort for one more minute instead of rushing to fix or soften it.Find or start your own weeping community. Text one person you can grieve honestly with, so you are not asking people of color to hold your grief for you.We would love to hear from you! Contact us at [email protected] the show

Send us Fan MailThe United States calls itself the greatest country in the world, yet it is the only wealthy nation with no national paid maternity leave and the only country in the World Cup without socialized medicine. In this episode of White Women Wake Up, Jonelle brings the statistics she could not shake after a Fourth of July and a World Cup steeped in national pride: the U.S. is one of only eight countries on earth with no paid maternity leave, it spends roughly $14,700 per person on healthcare, almost $5,000 more than the next-highest country, and still lands near the bottom of wealthy nations on life expectancy and dead last on the Commonwealth Fund's 2024 Mirror Mirror report. Jonelle and Karen trace how a country this rich cares this poorly for mothers, families, and anyone who needs care, and the answer keeps coming back to racism. In 1945, Truman's national health insurance plan was blocked by Southern Democrats who feared it would force hospitals to desegregate, pushing the U.S. toward the employer-based system we still live under. They talk maternal mortality by race, the state-by-state patchwork of family leave, Estonia and Bulgaria putting the American bar on the floor, and Heather McGhee's drained-pool metaphor: when we refuse to share, we drain the resource for everyone. This is a conversation about the difference between pride and arrogance, and what it would take to stop begging for scraps.Calls to ActionThis week, notice one place where you have said or thought 'we are the greatest country.' Ask what the number behind it actually is, and who that number leaves out.Look up your own state's family leave policy and compare it to the 29-week global average. Then ask whether you have been praising the bare minimum.Read or revisit Heather McGhee's The Sum of Us and sit with one shared thing your community has drained rather than shared. Bring it to someone you trust and talk it through.We would love to hear from you! Contact us at [email protected] the show

Send us Fan MailIn this re-release episode of White Women Wake Up, Karen and Jonelle turn their attention to ableism and its everyday impact. They explore how neurodivergent people are often pressured to mask in order to fit into neurotypical expectations, and why this demand for assimilation can be harmful rather than supportive. Drawing from teaching, personal experience, and lived realities, the hosts highlight how good intentions—like “modeling” behavior—can unintentionally reinforce exclusion. Instead, real inclusion begins with asking what success and support look like for each individual, and trusting the answers given. From autism and ADHD to dyslexia, anxiety, and more, they call for a shift in perspective: valuing difference as strength rather than deficit. This conversation reminds listeners that creating inclusive spaces is not about making people conform, but about reshaping systems, classrooms, and workplaces to honor the full spectrum of human diversity.Calls to ActionNotice ableism when it hides behind conformity or correction.Ask directly: What does support look like for you?Advocate for systems that value difference as strength.We would love to hear from you! Contact us at [email protected] the show

Send us Fan MailWhen Karen walked into a plumbing shop, a loud stranger she had already judged turned out to be genuinely kind, leaving her with a question she could not shake: why do we so often feel we have to put someone down to feel okay about ourselves? This episode unpacks the superiority complex, Alfred Adler's idea that looking down on others is a cover for our own felt inferiority, and how that instinct scales up into affective polarization, the emotional hostility that divides us along political lines and quietly benefits the people in power. Jonelle pushes the limits of the story. The kindness Karen received came partly because a stranger assumed she was on his side, and the grace extended to a white woman is not the same as the grace extended to a trans person or a person of color. Together they sit in the tension between “calling people in”, the practice Loretta Ross offers as an alternative to public shaming, and refusing to excuse politics that dehumanize others.CALLS TO ACTIONThis week, notice one person who triggers your bias at first sight. Before you decide who they are, ask what you are assuming, and whether your discomfort is really about them or about protecting your own footing.Pick one relationship where you call someone “like family” or “practically family”. Ask yourself whether they could open the door of your fridge, or whether the closeness lives mostly on your terms.The next time you want to write someone off completely, try “calling them in” instead. You can hold someone accountable for harm and still talk to them like a human being. Notice what shifts in you when you do.We would love to hear from you! Contact us at [email protected] Link: https://www.whitewomenwakeup.com/community-surveySupport the showSupport the show

Send us Fan MailCorporate America runs on a caste system, and most of us were taught not to see it. Karen brings a question sparked by a LinkedIn essay from a South Asian woman who fled the caste system in India, then in Britain, only to feel it again inside American corporations. Jonelle, who held executive roles for years, resists the word at first, then walks straight into agreeing with it. Together, they map the two-tier workforce: full-time employees with benefits, stock, and a career path on one side, and a fast-growing shadow workforce of contractors on the other, the people who sit at the same desk doing the same job with a different color badge, no benefits, and no way up. They connect it to the 2025 DEI rollbacks, to Isabel Wilkerson's framework of caste as the worn grooves of unthinking expectation, and to the uncomfortable truth that the same companies cutting diversity programs are expanding a contractor class that is disproportionately Black and Latino. Karen names how white women get recruited to enforce patriarchal power, using Bari Weiss at CBS as the example. The episode lands on a fix: stop fighting for benefits for yourself, and start fighting for rights for all, because programs everyone can use are the ones no one can cut.CALLS TO ACTIONIf you have a full-time job that uses contractors, find out who on your team is classified as what and whether they have healthcare. Awareness leads to change.The next time a benefit or program is framed as helping only one group, ask how it could be designed as rights for all, the version that is much harder to cut.Notice one moment this week where you were asked to use your position to protect power instead of share it, and name it out loud, even just to yourself.We would love to hear from you! Contact us at [email protected] the show

Send us Fan MailLast week, Jonelle and Karen ended in a stalemate over whether white people have a culture. This week, they finish the conversation and land somewhere hopeful. The breakthrough is a distinction: white culture is the dominant, often invisible set of social norms we were built inside, while heritage is the specific, nameable story of where your family came from. Confusing the two is how white people end up either glorifying a sanitized 'small town' whiteness or reaching for someone else's culture to fill the gap. The real answer, drawn from Beverly Daniel Tatum and Ali Michael, is the fourth way to be white: an antiracist white identity that is neither pride nor guilt. You name the default, drop the shame, claim the lineage of white people who resisted racism, and build belonging through chosen values and heritage told as a story, not as a claim on cultures that were never yours. Karen shares how the safety of her Chicago suburb was built on other people's backs, and Jonelle connects bell hooks’ on consuming the other to the cornrows debate from last week. They close where Toni Morrison left them: if you take racism away, are you any good? The fourth way is how you answer her without flinching.CALLS TO ACTIONCatch yourself this week the next time you reach for someone else's culture as a spice, a hairstyle, a phrase, a ritual, and ask what void you were actually trying to fill.Tell one heritage story about your own family as a story, not a claim. 'My grandmother went to a German Lutheran school' instead of 'German culture is mine.'Pick one piece of the fourth way to practice: talk about race openly, learn to spot a system, or build one real cross-racial friendship that is not about your own growth.We would love to hear from you! Contact us at [email protected] Link: https://www.whitewomenwakeup.com/community-surveySupport the show

Send us Fan MailTikTok is full of a new directive aimed at white people: get your own culture, stop stealing ours. In this episode, Karen brings the question to the conversation, asking what it would actually look like for white women to find and embrace our own culture. Jonelle pushes back. She argues that asking white people to 'find our culture' misses the deeper truth Nell Irvin Painter, the Princeton historian who wrote The History of White People, identified more than a decade ago: whiteness is the default, and the dominant culture cannot be re-found because it never went anywhere. The conversation moves through the Americanization movements of the early 1900s and post-World War II era, the cornrows debate, the plus-size store backlash, and ends with Toni Morrison's 1993 question to Charlie Rose that neither host can fully answer: if I take race away from you, what do you have? They agree to disagree, on the air, in real time, which is what WWWU is for.CALLS TO ACTIONSit with the Toni Morrison question for 24 hours: if I take race away from you, what do you have? Then write down what came up. Do not edit it. Notice what your first answer was before you tried to make it acceptable.When you catch yourself wanting to claim a piece of someone else's culture this week, pause and ask why the borrowed version felt better than your own life. The answer is usually the actual work.Stop using 'I don't have a culture' as a defense. The next time the phrase rises up, replace it with: 'My culture is the default in this room, and that is exactly the problem.'We would love to hear from you! Contact us at [email protected] Link: https://www.whitewomenwakeup.com/community-surveySupport the show

Send us Fan MailWhen DEI programs were rolled back in 2025, white women were quietly the biggest losers of leadership ground we had spent a decade gaining. But Black women lost almost everything. In this episode, Jonelle pulls the receipts on the first full year of the DEI rollback, including a McKinsey and Lean In Women in the Workplace finding that C-suite representation for women dropped from 29 percent to 25 percent in a single year, and a Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies report showing 200,000 Black women were pushed out of the workforce in 2025 alone. Karen and Jonelle work through why white women have been the number one beneficiaries of DEI without realizing it, why patriarchal assimilation made it easy for white women to vote against the very programs that lifted them, and what it actually looks like to defend DEI as white women instead of waiting for white men to do it. The episode also uncovers the buried Black origins of Memorial Day, traced by Yale historian David Blight to a May 1865 ceremony organized by formerly enslaved Charlestonians.CALLS TO ACTIONAudit one thing this week. Pull up your company's last DEI report, your alma mater's diversity statement, or your favorite retailer's supplier diversity page, and notice whether the language has quietly disappeared.Pick one Black woman-owned business in your zip code and spend money there before the end of the month. Then tell a friend why you went.Have one DEI conversation with another white woman in your life this week. Not a fight. A real one. Bring the 142K versus 319K number and ask her what she thinks it means.We would love to hear from you! Contact us at [email protected] want to create more ways for this community to connect, learn, and take action. Tell us what you actually want here: https://www.whitewomenwakeup.com/community-surveySupport the show

Send us Fan MailKaren brings the topic this week: Mother's Day. She shares the original Mother's Day Proclamation, written by Julia Ward Howe in 1870 as an anti-war appeal to mothers to refuse to send their sons to be killed, and walks through how Hallmark turned a political uprising into a sentimental holiday. From there the conversation moves into Barbara Welter's Cult of True Womanhood, the four Victorian virtues that defined white middle-class womanhood and excluded Black, immigrant, and poor women by design. Karen and Jonelle name the suffrage betrayal, the post-Civil-War flip into the 1950s housewife, and the trad wife movement, using Hannah Neeleman of Ballerina Farm as a case study of how an heir to a billion-dollar fortune sells colonial nostalgia as authentic rural domesticity. Then Jonelle shares the matriarchal AI agent team she has been building in her consulting work, framing distributed web-based leadership as a Trojan horse for breaking down hierarchical systems. Karen lands the episode with six matriarchal values for leadership: decision-makers must bear the cost of their decisions, care work is a political category rather than a personal virtue, power is accountable to the people closest to the problem, conflict cannot be exported, the values matter more than the title, and real matriarchal leadership would cost white women the racial privilege they have traded for proximity to patriarchal power.CALLS TO ACTIONRead the full 1870 Julia Ward Howe Mother's Day Proclamation this week. It is in the public domain and a five-minute read. Then ask yourself what you would have to give up to take it seriously as a Mother's Day call to action this year.Pick one of Karen's six matriarchal values and try to apply it to a decision you are making at work or in your family this week. Notice where it bumps against the hierarchical patterns you have been taught are normal.Join us at the Banned Book Club, second Tuesday of every month at 5:15 PM Pacific on Zoom with Becky Hope leading. June's book is Mad Honey. Reading along is welcome but not required. Email [email protected] to register.We would love to hear from you! Contact us at [email protected] want to create more ways for this community to connect, learn, and take action. Tell us what you actually want here: https://www.whitewomenwakeup.com/community-surveySupport the show

Send us Fan MailJonelle brings the topic this week, the day after the Supreme Court issued Louisiana v. Callais. On April 29, 2026, in a 6-3 ruling, the Court gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, the part that for sixty years let civil rights groups force states to redraw maps that diluted Black and brown voting power. Justice Elena Kagan called it the completed demolition of the Voting Rights Act. Within days, Louisiana, Alabama, and Tennessee began rewriting their congressional maps before the 2026 midterms. Jonelle then connects Callais to the SAVE Act, the bill that passed the House in February 2026 and would force 69 million American women whose married name does not match the name on their birth certificate to produce a passport or extra documentation before they can register to vote. The hosts walk through the parallel to Jim Crow grandfather clauses and poll taxes, the history that white women were not taught about the 19th Amendment, and the uncomfortable data point that white women are the biggest beneficiaries of affirmative action while consistently electing the judges and senators who dismantle it. Karen names what most civil rights coverage misses. We do not have language for 'protection,' which is exactly what the Voting Rights Act was. The conversation lands on a usable definition of electoral accountability for white women, and a reminder that 2026 midterm maps are being redrawn right now, including for school boards and state legislatures, where the people drawing the lines actually live.CALLS TO ACTIONIf you changed your name when you got married, pull up your current voter registration this week and check whether the name on your ID matches the name on your birth certificate. Then tell three other married women in your life what you find.Look up who your school board members and state legislators are, because those are the people drawing the new maps. Pick one local race on the November 2026 ballot you previously would have skipped, and commit to learning the candidates this week.We would love to hear from you! Contact us at [email protected] want to create more ways for this community to connect, learn, and take action. Tell us what you actually want here: https://www.whitewomenwakeup.com/community-surveySupport the show

Send us Fan MailKaren brings the topic this week, and it cuts close to home for almost every white woman doing this work: I am tired, my Instagram only has 97 followers, and I am not sure any of this matters. Inspired by John Lewis's book Across That Bridge, Karen walks Jonelle through the eight principles Lewis used to sustain a lifetime of civil rights work, organized as four inner practices and four outer ones. The four inner principles, faith, patience, study, and truth, are the part that white women tend to want to skip, because doing inner work in private feels safer than doing public, imperfect outer work. The four outer principles, community, peace, love, and reconciliation, are the part Lewis insists must be done collectively, never alone. Jonelle pushes back where the framework hits its limits for white women: when privilege keeps your own life so insulated that intuition cannot find anything wrong to act on. They land on a starting place that feels honest. Look at the injustice you can already see inside your own circle, and treat that as the on-ramp. The work is a marathon, and Lewis is offering a map for staying on the road.CALLS TO ACTIONThis week, write your own one-sentence mission statement for the anti-racism work you want to be doing. Not what you think you should write. What is actually true for you right now. Read it out loud, and notice what shifts.Pick one of John Lewis's eight principles and live with it for a week. Faith, patience, study, truth, community, peace, love, or reconciliation. Notice where it shows up easily for you, and where it does not. The friction is the practice.Join us at the Banned Book Club, Tuesday, May 12, at 5:15 PM Pacific on Zoom, with Becky Hope leading. Reading along is welcome but not required. Curiosity is the only entry fee.We would love to hear from you! Contact us at [email protected] the show

Send us Fan MailJonelle brings a confession to the table: she broke a traffic rule on the way to a doctor's appointment, another driver blocked her to punish her for it, and her first reaction was rage, not guilt. That gap is the whole episode. She and Karen unpack the entitlement paradox, a 2019 study by Stamkou, Van Kleef, and Homan showing that entitled people enforce rules on others more aggressively than non-entitled people, because they feel rule-breakers are getting ahead without deserving it. They trace the impulse from American slave patrols, which deputized all white citizens to police Black movement, to today's neighborhood listservs, where sociologist Maria Lowe found Black men were the residents most frequently flagged as suspicious in liberal, predominantly white communities. They land on a Pacific Northwest case study, Shoreline, Washington, where Resolution 467 commits the city to anti-racism while neighborhood watch groups continue the same racialized monitoring patterns the city is trying to dismantle. Jonelle closes with the practice: minding your business is not passivity. For white people, choosing not to police a stranger is an active discipline.CALLS TO ACTIONThis week, notice once when you feel the urge to correct a stranger. Pause and ask yourself: are they actually in danger, or are they just annoying me? Whichever answer comes up, sit with it before you act.Pick one moment from your week where you broke a rule, ran a yellow light, parked where you should not have, or took longer than you should have. Hold it next to a moment where someone else broke a rule, and you got irritated. Notice the gap. That gap is the practice.We would love to hear from you! Contact us at [email protected] the show

Send us Fan MailKaren takes Jonelle through the Reconstruction era, the 12-year window after the Civil War when 2,000 Black Americans were elected to office, 400+ Black towns took root, and the Black-to-white wealth gap collapsed from 60:1 to 10:1 in just over a decade. Then she names the forces that buried it: Andrew Johnson's pardons, the reversal of 40 acres and a mule, the Dunning School narrative that trained history teachers into the 1970s, and the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the white Christian women who successfully lobbied Lost Cause textbooks into southern public schools as late as 1980. The through-line that makes this episode land: historians are calling the current rollback of civil rights the largest dismantling since Reconstruction. 591 books by Black authors banned from Pentagon schools. 3.4 billion in HBCU grants frozen. Arlington's Reconstruction pages quietly removed. Karen and Jonelle connect the dots between what was taken from Black communities in 1877 and what is being taken right now, and they make a case for why white women in particular need to know this history, because white women were central to erasing it the first time.CALLS TO ACTIONThis week, ask yourself what you actually learned about Reconstruction in school. If the answer is nothing or a myth, pick one source from our show notes and spend 30 minutes filling that gap.Notice one moment this week where you, or someone around you, makes a snap judgment about who belongs in a space and who is serving it. Sit in the discomfort of the assumption rather than skipping past it.Find one Black-led Reconstruction historian to follow or read this month. Kidada E. Williams, Henry Louis Gates Jr., and the Equal Justice Initiative's Reconstruction in America report are starting points.We would love to hear from you! Contact us at [email protected] the show

Send us Fan MailThis week, Jonelle and Karen unpack what happens when white women borrow survival language that was never built for us. After reading The Hate U Give for Banned Book Club, the conversation digs into what code-switching actually means (a survival strategy rooted in enslavement, not a cute HR term for adjusting your vibe), what masking actually means (a clinical term from the autistic community tied to depression, burnout, and suicidality), and why casually using OCD, depression, triggered, or gaslighting as adjectives quietly harms the people those words were built to protect. Jonelle walks through the documented mental health tax of code-switching, Karen names the words she has thrown around without thinking, and together they land on a simple shift: use precise, accurate language for what is actually happening to you, and leave the survival words to the people they were coined to name.CALLS TO ACTIONCatch yourself this week. The next time you reach for the word masking, code-switching, OCD, triggered, or depressed to describe your own experience, pause and ask what is actually happening to me, and say that instead.Go read or re-read The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas. Pay attention to how Starr code-switches between Garden Heights and Williamson, and notice how it fractures her sense of self. That book is the anchor for this entire conversation.Follow and amplify one Black writer on code-switching and one autistic self-advocate on masking this week. Their voices should be the loudest in this conversation, not ours.We would love to hear from you! Contact us at [email protected] the show

Send us Fan MailIndifference is not neutral. It is the quiet architecture of harm that operates beneath the surface of politeness, efficiency, and "just getting through the day." In this episode of White Women Wake Up, Jonelle and Karen unpack the crushing weight of indifference, starting with Eli Wiesel's warning that indifference reduces the other to an abstraction. Karen shares how indifference showed up in her career when a dean reduced her humanity to a line item, and Jonelle connects the pattern to her own experience navigating medical indifference during an ongoing health crisis. Together, they explore three research-backed theories that explain why indifference thrives in privileged spaces: Construal Level Theory, the Empathy Gap, and Social Baseline Theory, which shows that privilege and self-sufficiency actually train our brains to stop noticing who has no cushion at all. The conversation takes a vulnerable turn when Jonelle names the difference between rest and self-indifference, and how indifference to your own needs can mirror depression. They close with calls to action rooted in proximity, interrupting abstractions, and trusting people's lived stories as truth. If you have ever wondered why not caring feels so normal, this episode names the cost of that indifference and offers a path forward. Banned Book Club: The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, meeting this Tuesday. Hosts: Jonelle and Karen Gutowsky Zimmerman. Subscribe, share, and keep waking up.CALLS TO ACTIONThis week, seek proximity to a life that looks different from yours. Visit a community kitchen, sit in a space where you are the minority, or have a conversation with someone whose daily reality you have never had to consider. Notice what shifts when distance disappears.Catch yourself abstracting. The next time you hear a statistic about homelessness, immigration, or gun violence, pause and ask: do I know one person this number represents? If not, find their story. Read a first-person account, watch a documentary, or listen to a podcast from that community. Turn the number back into a name.Ask yourself: whose weight am I not feeling right now? Sit with the answer. You don't have to fix it today. But naming it is the first step away from indifference and toward empathy.We would love to hear from you! Contact us at [email protected] the show

Send us Fan MailMicro feminism is the practice of small, intentional daily acts that challenge gender norms, like defaulting to "she" for unknown CEOs or crediting women whose ideas get taken in meetings. Karen and Jonelle unpack why this TikTok-viral trend empowers individual white women but often stalls before reaching intersectional action, leaving women of color out of the equation. They explore how patriarchy functions as a system of values rather than a war against individual men, and why moving from micro acts to systemic change is the real work.CALLS TO ACTIONThis week, notice one moment where you default to a male assumption, whether it's imagining a CEO, a doctor, or a sports figure. Pause and ask yourself: where did that assumption come from?Look at one space in your life, your workplace, your friend group, your church, and ask: whose voice is missing from the conversation? Not just 'more women,' but which women?If micro feminism resonates with you, take it one step further this week. Instead of just a personal act, do something systemic: recommend a woman of color for a role, share her work publicly, or push back on a policy that excludes.We would love to hear from you! Contact us at [email protected] the show

Send us Fan MailWhen Karen nearly canceled a family trip because weeks of news coverage had convinced her the airport would be chaos, dangerous, and hostile, she didn't know there was a name for what had happened to her brain. This episode introduces the Mean World Syndrome, a media theory from the 1970s by researcher George Gerbner, confirmed by decades of follow-up studies. The finding: long-term exposure to negative news doesn't just inform us about a dangerous world. Over time, it replaces our actual lived experience with fear.  Jonelle and Karen trace what happens when we walk into unfamiliar, diverse spaces pre-loaded with low expectations, connecting it to two psychological frameworks: the Pygmalion Effect, where positive expectations shape measurably better outcomes, and the Golem Effect, where bracing for chaos helps create it. For white women specifically, a fear-loaded internal story about diverse spaces often surfaces as entitlement, distrust, and preemptive armor that harms the people around us.  The episode also traces how the Murdoch media dynasty engineered sensationalism for profit and how social media continues the same cycle. Karen's O'Hare airport story, where every single person across backgrounds and races showed up with extraordinary kindness, becomes the proof of concept for interrupting the mean world loop.CALLS TO ACTIONBefore your next interaction in an unfamiliar or diverse space, pause and name the story already running in your head. You don't have to fix it, catch it. Notice whether that story was written by your experience or by your media diet.Audit your news and social media intake this week. How many minutes a day are you consuming fear-based content? Set one intentional boundary: a time cap, a source swap, or a documentary swap for a scroll session. Your internal algorithm learns what you feed it.Find one local space where you have opinions but no presence, a school board meeting, a city council session, or a neighborhood association. Look up when they meet and go once. Just listen. When we start hearing the real complexity of what people are wrestling with, the golem effect loses its grip.We would love to hear from you! Contact us at [email protected] the show

Send us Fan MailNot all criticism lands the same way. In this episode, Jonelle brings a deeply personal and vulnerable topic to the table. After a TikTok video on white entitlement reached 15,000 views and was flooded with harsh comments attacking her body, she felt nothing. But when commenters questioned her values and intentions, she spiraled into imposter syndrome. Jonelle and Karen unpack why the cruelest comments didn't shake her, what the Sue and Sue Racial/Cultural Identity Development Model reveals about the validation trap, and how to tell the difference between white saviorism and genuine community. They also explore why nuanced conversations about race and allyship can never fully survive in a short-form clip, and why self-doubt in this work is not a sign you're doing it wrong. It's a sign you're doing it honestly.Calls to ActionNotice where your self-doubt is coming from this week. When you question your motivations — in your work, your relationships, your growth — ask yourself: is this doubt calling me to reflect and grow, or is it asking me to shrink and stop? Name the difference.Check in on your validation sources. Are you doing your work for external approval, or from an internal sense of purpose? Find one area of your life this week where you can act on your values without needing anyone to validate them.Stay in community. Real change doesn’t happen in comment sections — it happens in spaces where nuance is welcome. Find one person this week to have an honest, unhurried conversation with. That is where the growth actually lives.We would love to hear from you! Contact us at [email protected] the show

Send us Fan MailChange is not a character flaw. It is biology. In this episode, Karen brings a deeply personal topic to the table: why change feels so threatening, even when we know it is good for us. Drawing on research into the brain's threat response, loss aversion, and the science of neuroplasticity, Karen and Jonelle unpack the real reasons resistance to change is hardwired into us. They explore how routine protects the brain's energy, why imposed change triggers fight-or-flight, and why losing something always feels heavier than gaining something equivalent. But the conversation does not stop at the obstacle. They also sit with the possibility of growth, including what it looks like to shift from a fixed identity to a growing one, and what it means to hold strong perspectives loosely. For white women navigating a world that is changing in real time, this episode invites curiosity over defensiveness.Calls to ActionNotice your resistance. When something triggers discomfort this week, pause and ask: is this a real concern, or just my nervous system doing its job? Name it without judgment.Go outside your circle. Find one perspective this week from someone whose experience is meaningfully different from yours. A conversation, an article, a voice you would not normally seek out.Make one small change on purpose. Pick one habit to do differently this week. Notice the resistance, and do it anyway.We would love to hear from you! Contact us at [email protected] Support the show

Send us Fan MailJonelle and Karen know we all carry a first story. The first thing we were told about a neighborhood. The first image we saw of a person. The first framing of a political movement or a community we had never actually encountered. This episode asks a harder question than most: what if that first story is still quietly running the show?They dig into anchor bias, the way our earliest beliefs become the lens through which we measure everything that follows, often without ever realizing it. They trace how this plays out in the places that matter most: in courtrooms where Black men consistently receive longer sentences, in medical offices where pain goes underestimated, and in the everyday assumptions white women carry about the people and places around them.This is not about being a bad person. It is about being an honest one. Awareness is where the work starts. Action is where it actually goes somewhere.Calls to ActionThink back to one early belief you hold about a neighborhood, a group, or a person. Where did it come from, and how is it still shaping what you assume today?Look up what the Black Panther Party actually did to support their communities. Notice the gap between what you were taught and what the historical record shows.The next time you move quickly to a judgment, pause. Ask yourself: is this my anchor bias talking, or am I actually responding to what is right in front of me with an open mind?We would love to hear from you! Contact us at [email protected] Support the show

Send us Fan MailHard conversations shape us—yet too often we avoid them, shut them down, or mistake venting for dialogue. Karen and Jonelle take a closer look at what really happens when conflict rises at the dinner table or online, from visceral reactions in the body to the cycle of rehearsed narratives that keep us stuck. They draw on both personal stories and research to show why silence is never neutral and why staying at the table matters. At the center of their conversation is the BRAVE framework: Breathe, Reflect, Acknowledge, Voice values over victory, Exit with intention. Each step offers a way to slow down, stay present, and create meaning instead of more division. Together, they wrestle with how to transform reactive moments into opportunities for understanding—proving that courage in conversation is not about winning, but about keeping connection alive.Calls to ActionTry the BRAVE steps in your next difficult conversation.Notice when you’re venting versus making meaning—pause and reflect.Reflect on one BRAVE step: which was hardest for you to practice, and why?We would love to hear from you! Contact us at [email protected] the show

Send us Fan MailIn this episode of White Women Wake Up, Karen and Jonelle unpack the tension between cultural expectations of “niceness” and the need for authentic clarity. They reflect on how generations of white women have been socialized to prioritize politeness, avoid conflict, and mask their true feelings, often at the expense of vulnerability and growth. Drawing from research on emotional labor and gendered expectations, the hosts explore how vague or coded language can starve opportunities for learning, while clarity—even when uncomfortable—opens the door to deeper understanding and stronger relationships. They share personal stories of grappling with conflict avoidance, the fear of being disliked, and the generational differences in communication styles. Ultimately, the conversation challenges listeners to rethink whether “being nice” is really helping—or holding them back from meaningful justice work and authentic connection.Calls to ActionPractice replacing vague politeness with clear statements in daily conversations.Notice when “niceness” keeps you from being authentic—and ask why.Reframe clarity as an invitation to learn, not a threat to comfort.We would love to hear from you! Contact us at [email protected] the show

Send us Fan MailThis episode examines how white women experience grief when violence, injustice, or loss suddenly feels personal and why that grief often arrives late, conflicted, and emotionally charged. Karen and Jonelle unpack the difference between white grief, identity grief, guilt, and shame, clarifying how these responses can either open awareness or quietly reinforce avoidance. They explore desensitization, fear, and the temptation to retreat into comfort once emotions become overwhelming. The conversation challenges the idea that feeling deeply is the same as doing the work and asks what responsibility follows emotional awakening. Rather than centering white pain, the episode invites white women to notice how grief functions as a doorway into deeper understanding, accountability, and sustained attention. The focus remains on how discomfort can become a catalyst for growth when it is examined honestly rather than rushed, minimized, or used to seek reassurance.Calls to ActionNotice when your emotional response to injustice feels new or shocking, and ask what distance or protection made that reaction possible.Pay attention to whether guilt or shame is helping you stay engaged or quietly pulling you back toward comfort.Practice sitting with discomfort long enough to learn from it, without asking others to carry or resolve it for you.We would love to hear from you! Contact us at [email protected] the show

Send us Fan MailThis episode examines how white entitlement often hides inside everyday expectations that feel neutral, polite, or “just the way things work.” Karen and Jonelle unpack a real-world incident at a shared resort pool where unwritten rules were enforced selectively, revealing how power shifts based on who is speaking. The conversation explores how white women may unknowingly rely on assumed norms to protect comfort, control space, and avoid discomfort, even while seeing themselves as progressive or fair. Drawing connections to microaggressions, inherited social rules, and defensiveness, the episode challenges listeners to notice when clarity is replaced by entitlement and when listening is replaced by self-protection. Rather than focusing on overt harm, this discussion centers the quieter moments where bias shows up through tone, assumptions, and emotional reactions. The episode invites white women to reflect on how unspoken rules shape belonging and exclusion in shared spaces.Calls to ActionNotice where you rely on “how things usually work” instead of asking whose comfort that norm protects.Pay attention to moments when defensiveness rises and ask what feels threatened.Practice listening without preparing a response, especially when power dynamics are uneven.We would love to hear from you! Contact us at [email protected] Support the show

Send us Fan MailThis episode examines a difficult but revealing tension for white women on the path of awareness: why some forms of violence and injustice trigger deeper fear, grief, or urgency than others. Through an honest conversation about white grief, internal bias, and selective emotional response, Karen and Jonelle unpack how proximity to whiteness shapes empathy and fear, even for those committed to equity work. The discussion explores how defensiveness and unconscious self-protection can limit how fully white women engage with ongoing harm experienced by marginalized communities. Rather than framing this as shame or failure, the episode invites listeners to notice these reactions as data. The conversation also turns toward imagination as a necessary practice, not as denial, but as a way to move beyond fear-based narratives and dehumanizing systems. By naming discomfort, questioning internal algorithms, and resisting avoidance, white women are invited to deepen accountability and expand their capacity for humane, intentional response.Calls to ActionNotice your emotional reactions to news and stories this week. Pay attention to what holds your attention longer and what you move past more quickly.When defensiveness or discomfort shows up, pause instead of explaining it away. Ask what fear or protection might be underneath.Practice imagination intentionally. Choose one issue that feels overwhelming and ask what a humane response could look like if fear were not driving the narrative.We would love to hear from you! Contact us at [email protected] the show

Send us Fan MailIn this episode of White Women Wake Up, Karen and Jonelle examine how historical narratives are shaped by power, protection, and selective memory. They explore how whitewashed history sustains comfort for white Americans while erasing violence, exclusion, and exploitation experienced by marginalized communities. Through examples ranging from wartime sexual violence by American soldiers to the exclusion of Black women from feminist movements, the conversation highlights how hero narratives obscure harm rather than confront it. Karen and Jonelle unpack the emotional resistance that arises when long-held stories are disrupted and reflect on how defensiveness functions as a form of self-protection. Rather than seeking guilt or collapse, they invite listeners to sit with complexity and to recognize that growth requires holding multiple truths at once. This episode challenges white women to question what they were taught, notice what was omitted, and consider how historical discomfort can become a catalyst for awareness rather than avoidance.Calls to ActionNotice moments when historical information triggers defensiveness and pause before dismissing it.Revisit a familiar historical narrative and ask whose experiences are missing.Practice holding complexity by allowing admiration and accountability to exist together.We would love to hear from you! Contact us at [email protected] Support the show

Send us Fan MailIn this episode, Karen and Jonelle explore the idea of the “watchful dragon,” a concept borrowed from C.S. Lewis that describes the unconscious inner protector guarding our sense of safety and identity. This inner defense often activates when our beliefs feel challenged, especially in conversations about race, change, and belonging. Through personal stories, including a charged conversation in a cab and reactions to harmful rhetoric online, they examine how fear, rather than hatred, frequently drives defensiveness and withdrawal. The discussion highlights how cultural conditioning and inherited narratives shape what feels comfortable or threatening, even when we see ourselves as kind or inclusive. Instead of treating defensiveness as failure, Karen and Jonelle reframe it as useful information, a signal that something deeper is being touched. The episode invites white women to notice when self-protection replaces curiosity, and to consider how staying with discomfort can open pathways to learning, accountability, and meaningful growth.Calls to ActionNotice your own watchful dragon this week. When you feel defensive, pause and ask what belief you are protecting.Practice curiosity over correction. Try responding with “tell me more” instead of shutting down or pushing back.Reflect on how fear manifests in your conversations about race, identity, and change, and consider what growth might be possible if you remained with the discomfort.We would love to hear from you! Contact us at [email protected] Support the show

Send us Fan MailIn this episode of White Women Wake Up, Karen and Jonelle unpack the growing conversation around the “male loneliness epidemic” and ask a harder question: who is being asked to carry the emotional labor of fixing it? Moving past media narratives that frame men as victims and women as the solution, they explore how loneliness affects everyone and how patriarchy limits emotional literacy, especially for men. Drawing parallels to the exhaustion BIPOC women experience when asked to educate white women, the conversation reframes loneliness as a systemic issue rooted in cultural expectations, not individual failure. The episode challenges listeners to examine where accountability has been misplaced, how emotional labor is unevenly distributed, and why empathy without responsibility leads to burnout. Rather than centering blame or guilt, Karen and Jonelle invite white women to notice familiar patterns, sit with discomfort, and consider what real accountability looks like in relationships, allyship, and personal growth.Calls to ActionReflect on where you may be absorbing emotional labor that is not yours to carry and name one boundary you need.Notice moments when discomfort triggers defensiveness and ask what accountability, not empathy alone, requires of you.Join the conversation by sharing how this episode reframed your thinking about loneliness, allyship, or responsibility.We would love to hear from you! Contact us at [email protected] Support the show

Send us Fan MailIn this episode of White Women Wake Up, Karen and Jonelle dive into the complexities of authentic allyship. They share personal stories of confronting privilege—one involving the pitfalls of colorblindness in a multicultural workplace and another about shifting deep-seated biases in personal relationships. Through these reflections, they ask tough questions: Are their efforts performative, or are they truly dismantling privilege and oppression?Acknowledging their privilege as white women, they emphasize the need for self-examination, meaningful action, and amplifying marginalized voices. This raw, vulnerable conversation reminds listeners that growth is messy but necessary for real change.Three Action Points:Challenge Personal Biases: Reflect on how biases shape your perspective and commit to ongoing learning.Move Beyond Guilt: Channel discomfort into meaningful action, like supporting marginalized voices and leadership.Engage in Hard Conversations: Practice discussing privilege, bias, and race in safe spaces to build the skills for real change.We would love to hear from you! Contact us at [email protected] the show

Send us Fan MailThis episode introduces a space for honest conversations about self-reflection, personal growth, and navigating privilege. We’ll unpack inherited biases, foster accountability, and explore ways to deepen understanding through open dialogue.Here is a summary of this episode:Different Life Perspectives: A millennial and a baby boomer share their unique experiences and lessons learned as they navigate privilege, bias, and personal growth.The Journey of Growth: Focusing on the importance of asking tough questions, leaning into discomfort, and unlearning old patterns to foster both personal and collective growth.Building Connections: Creating a welcoming space for listeners to reflect, share stories, and explore new ways of understanding themselves and the world around them.Performative Activism: Learning about how some of our past actions may not be as helpful as we think.We would love to hear from you! Contact us at [email protected] the show

Send us Fan MailIn this episode, Karen and Jonelle dig into the rising wave of book bans and why they matter for anyone committed to waking up. Using their own childhood favorites and foundational reads as starting points, they explore how stories expand empathy, reveal hidden histories, and interrupt the narrow narratives many white women inherited. But with thousands of books banned in recent years across forty-five states, a small but powerful group is restricting student access to diverse perspectives and reshaping culture through fear and paperwork. The conversation examines how book bans confuse opinion with fact, silence marginalized voices, and weaken our ability to understand systems of oppression. Karen and Jonelle ask what is truly at stake when stories about race, gender, grief, and identity disappear from classrooms and libraries, and how white women can step into deeper responsibility for protecting access to truth and representation.Calls to ActionChoose a banned book to read this month and share one insight that expanded your empathy.Ask your local school board or library how book challenges are handled and how you can support equitable access.Talk with a friend or family member about a book that shaped your worldview and why its story still matters today.We would love to hear from you! Contact us at [email protected] the show

Send us Fan MailIn this episode, Karen and Jonelle explore why stories of generosity often stop at the surface. Using examples from holiday giving, volunteer work, and media narratives, they examine how white culture celebrates the ladder that helps someone climb out of a difficult situation while rarely naming the systems that dug the hole in the first place. From incarceration debt to credit barriers to the everyday realities of youth experiencing homelessness, they unpack how individual “bad choices” are often shaped by structural forces. They discuss the discomfort white givers sometimes feel when praise replaces accountability and how real allyship requires understanding the full story behind poverty, imprisonment, and inequity. This episode invites listeners to continue giving with an open heart while also examining the policies, voting habits, and cultural narratives that make generosity necessary in the first place.Calls to ActionReflect on a time you offered help. What parts of the story were missing from your understanding of the system behind the need?Learn about one policy in your city or state that directly shapes housing, incarceration, or poverty, and share what you discover with someone in your community.Support an organization that centers dignity and systemic change, not charity that reinforces stereotypes.We would love to hear from you! Contact us at [email protected] the show

Send us Fan MailSeason 2 opens with a new way to approach growth. Instead of rigid goals shaped by productivity culture, Karen and Jonelle introduce their Bingo Card Intention Framework, a playful system for staying engaged in long-term bias work without shame or burnout. Inspired by a year of learning, discomfort, and community conversations, they explore how shifting from “goals” to “intentions” frees us from perfectionism and opens us to curiosity, joy, and accountability.The Bingo approach encourages listeners to choose a mix of personal, relational, and justice-centered commitments. From reading banned books, supporting BIPOC-owned bookstores, and studying one issue of systemic oppression in depth, to amplifying listener stories, collaborating with other podcasts, and building community through a book club, this episode reframes personal growth as something compassionate rather than punishing. Season 2 begins with imagination, play, and a renewed commitment to waking up together.Calls to ActionMake your own 2026 Bingo Card and choose intentions that stretch you without shaming you.Tell us which intention from our list resonated most and why.Nominate a BIPOC-owned bookstore or creator for us to feature this season.We would love to hear from you! Contact us at [email protected] the show

Send us Fan Mail ​​In this anniversary episode, Karen and Jonelle look back at one year of conversations, discomfort, learning, and unlearning. They revisit the heart of their work: examining how inherited biases shape everyday choices, relationships, and assumptions. Together, they explore how humility, listening, and self-awareness changed them more than they expected. What began as a plan to teach quickly became a journey of becoming more honest about their blind spots, cultural conditioning, and the emotional habits that surface when things get uncomfortable. They discuss the tension between wanting to fix, wanting to comfort, and actually learning to listen. They also share the importance of consuming stories and scholarship from women of color and expanding their sources beyond the dominant narratives they once defaulted to. This episode marks a year of waking up and sets the tone for a new season of intentional, grounded growth.Calls to ActionReflect on one belief you carried into the year that has shifted through listening, learning, or unlearning.Commit to one new practice in the new year that disrupts an old pattern, especially around bias or comfort.Share this episode with someone who is beginning their own journey of seeing the world with clearer eyes.We would love to hear from you! Contact us at [email protected] the show

Send us Fan MailIn this episode, Karen and Jonelle dig into the uncomfortable truth behind accepting people as they are. What starts as a conversation about expectations quickly becomes something more personal: why we struggle to accept the real people in our lives and how much grief sits beneath that struggle. Karen introduces self-discrepancy theory by E. Tory Higgins—the gap between who we are, who we wish we were, and who we believe we ought to be—and how those inner narratives spill outward, shaping the expectations we place on others. Together, they examine projection, disappointment, resentment, and the chronic stress that builds when we refuse to release the stories we’ve created about people. Through humor, honesty, and real-life examples, they explore the grief work required to let go of imagined versions of others so we can relate with clarity, compassion, and accountability.Calls to ActionReflect: What version of someone have you been holding onto—and are you ready to release that story?Reframe: Notice where projection shows up in your relationships and practice naming what is yours and what is theirs.Reset: Choose one belief or expectation you inherited from family, culture, or faith and ask whether it still serves your relationships.We would love to hear from you! Contact us at [email protected] Support the show

Send us Fan MailIn this episode of White Women Wake Up, Karen and Jonelle explore how decades of movie tropes have quietly shaped our collective ideas about gender, race, and relationships. From Casablanca to The Goonies, they trace how stereotypes—women as “simps,” men as “bros,” and people of color as caricatures—still echo through modern storytelling. Jonelle reflects on her “classic movie challenge” and what it revealed about how media cultivates bias, while Karen connects these patterns to today’s advertising and political imagery. Together, they ask: What happens when the stories we love teach us to normalize inequality? And how can we reimagine representation to build empathy rather than enforce hierarchy? This candid mother-daughter conversation invites listeners to become more conscious viewers—ready to critique what’s on screen and choose what stories deserve our support.Calls to ActionReflect on a favorite movie—what stereotypes does it reinforce or resist?Diversify your queue and your watchlist: seek films created by women, BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and other underrepresented cultures.Start a media swap—invite friends to share films that challenge your usual point of view.We would love to hear from you! Contact us at [email protected] the show

Send us Fan MailThis week, Karen and Jonelle dig into what it really means to let people be—without needing them to think, act, or believe like us. Karen shares how a moment at church triggered deep discomfort around conversion culture and her own lifelong urge to “help” others align with her values. Together, the two explore how white women are often taught to equate goodness with agreement and acceptance with control. They look at why authenticity requires boundaries, why curiosity can feel risky, and how moral certainty can quietly turn into moral policing. In a culture that rewards comfort and conformity, this conversation invites listeners to practice a slower, more courageous kind of connection—one rooted in respect, not rescue. Calls to ActionAsk yourself: When do I try to align others with my values instead of learning from theirs?Practice acceptance without agreement—curiosity over conversion.Notice when “being right” starts to feel safer than being real.We would love to hear from you! Contact us at [email protected] Support the show

Send us Fan MailDual-language preschools were created to celebrate cultural and linguistic diversity, yet many are now being reshaped by privilege. This episode looks at how programs once designed for shared language learning have become popular among affluent white families, driving up costs and limiting access for others. Karen and Jonelle explore how good intentions—wanting children to experience another language—can unintentionally reinforce inequity when opportunity becomes exclusive. The conversation broadens to question the systems that turn inclusion into advantage, urging listeners to think about who benefits and who gets left out. With honesty and care, they discuss what it means to make education more equitable, how privilege can be redirected toward fairness, and why genuine inclusion requires more than participation—it requires protection of access for everyone. Calls to ActionReflect on how privilege influences your education choices.Advocate for equitable access in your local schools.Support bilingual programs that prioritize community inclusion.We would love to hear from you! Contact us at [email protected] Support the show

Send us Fan MailThis week on White Women Wake Up, Karen and Jonelle take a hard look at the tradwife movement—a social media trend romanticizing “traditional” homemaking while quietly monetizing it. Behind the pastel aprons and vintage aesthetics lies a contradiction: many of these so-called traditional wives are entrepreneurs, influencers, and podcasters profiting from the very labor they claim to reject. The hosts unpack how this rebranding of submission as virtue hides real work, reinforces privilege, and distorts what choice and empowerment truly mean. They connect the dots between invisible labor, authenticity, and justice—asking what happens when women sell an illusion of simplicity that depends on hidden help and economic security. Ultimately, the conversation calls for honesty about work, partnership, and privilege—and challenges listeners to uplift women who labor, lead, and create with integrity.Calls to ActionSupport women-owned businesses with transparency and authenticity.Name invisible labor—your own and others’.Empower women by celebrating real choice, not curated illusion.We would love to hear from you! Contact us at [email protected] Support the show

Send us Fan MailThis week, Karen and Jonelle explore how language shapes awareness—and accountability. What many call “food deserts” are not barren by nature but by design. Coined by activists like Kerry Washington, the term food apartheid more accurately names the systems that segregate communities from affordable, nutritious food. Together, they unpack how profit-driven zoning and racialized neglect turn low-income neighborhoods into nutritional dead zones, driving higher rates of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. They also wrestle with the discomfort of language itself: when does naming inequity awaken understanding, and when does it alienate those who most need to listen? Moving from empathy to action, Karen and Jonelle challenge listeners to recognize how bias, economics, and convenience feed injustice—and what personal and collective responsibility looks like when nourishment becomes political. Calls to ActionRethink your language—replace food desert with food apartheid or food segregation.Support local initiatives improving access to fresh, affordable food.Reflect on how your shopping, voting, and advocacy choices shape food equity.We would love to hear from you! Contact us at [email protected] Support the show

Send us Fan MailKaren and Jonelle explore a term that’s been circulating in activist spaces—white women apathy. But as they dig deeper, they realize the issue isn’t indifference, it’s burnout. Many white women doing diversity and justice work feel emotionally drained, unsure how to keep showing up when progress feels slow or unseen. The hosts challenge the idea that exhaustion equals disengagement, reframing it instead as a signal to rest, re-evaluate, and reconnect with purpose. They discuss how shifting personal definitions of value—from external validation and numbers to inner growth and community—can rekindle motivation. Apathy, they argue, often hides a deeper grief about unmet expectations and collective fatigue. The real work is learning how to sustain commitment without centering self-pity or retreating into comfort. Calls to ActionAsk where burnout, not apathy, is blocking your engagement.Redefine progress through small, steady acts of growth.Re-commit to justice work with compassion for yourself and others.We would love to hear from you! Contact us at [email protected] Support the show

Send us Fan MailIn this episode of White Women Wake Up, Karen and Jonelle explore the concept of psychological safety and why it matters in both personal relationships and professional spaces. Drawing from research by Harvard professor Amy Edmondson and examples from workplaces like Google, they discuss how true safety means creating an environment where people can admit mistakes, share concerns, and disagree without fear of humiliation or punishment. Karen shares raw reflections from her own classroom and leadership experiences, while Jonelle highlights corporate lessons that reveal how trust is built through consistent actions rather than empty promises. Together, they unpack how psychological safety is not about avoiding conflict but fostering spaces where vulnerability deepens trust, accountability grows, and diverse voices are welcomed. This conversation reminds us that building safe spaces—at work, at home, or in community—requires intentionality, humility, and courage. Calls to ActionReflect on a recent mistake—how did you respond, and did your environment feel safe to admit it?Ask someone in your community what safety looks like for them, and listen without defense.Commit to one action this week that builds trust through honesty and accountability.We would love to hear from you! Contact us at [email protected] Support the show