White Women Wake Up

Jonelle + Karen
  • 3.0 (2)
  • Self-Improvement
  • Weekly

Naming our inherited bias. Owning our part in the system. White Women Wake Up is a podcast about what white women do with the power we already have. Karen is a Boomer. Jonelle is a Millennial. Same family, two generations. We explore the patterns and bias white women are raised with: be nice, keep the peace, avoid the hard conversation. And how even our best intentions can cause harm and keep oppressive systems running. We start with our own lives and follow the patterns out into education, healthcare, relationships, money and work. Each week one of us brings a topic the other hasn't prepared for. Nothing scripted, no performance of having it figured out. You don't have to get it right to be here. If you're worried about doing this wrong, you're exactly who we made this for. New episodes every Friday. Companion essays every Wednesday at whitewomenwakeup.substack.com. Stay curious, be open & keep waking up!Jonelle & Karen

  1. 4d ago

    Stop Managing How You're Perceived: Cultural Humility in Hard Conversations

    Send us Fan Mail Karen brings the topic. At an event she watched a speaker take a run of critical questions, and instead of the room escalating, it got calmer. A friend who saw it called it humility, and Karen realized she didn't know what the word meant. She traces humble, humility and humiliate to one Latin root, humilis, low to the ground: humility is a lowness you choose, humiliation is a lowness put on you. Then June Price Tangney's 2000 definition, which Karen and Jonelle test on themselves in three parts: an accurate assessment of yourself (Karen, an Enneagram 2, on hearing her own tone back on the podcast), admitting your limitations (Karen: 'I have to remind myself I'm not God'; Jonelle on three years of learning her limits), and forgetting the self, which Karen is clear is not erasing yourself and Jonelle names as the one she struggles with. Cultural humility, from Dr. Melanie Tervalon and Dr. Jann Murray-García's 1998 paper, turns it structural: lifelong self-critique, fixing the power imbalance on purpose, and partnership with the people you serve. Karen says the quiet part: her natural reaction is to think she holds no power, and that is false. Jonelle talks about sitting down with street youth after breakfast as a peer, not a server. The hard case is a conversation about ICE raids Jonelle had two days earlier that didn't go well, where she admits she manages herself not to look like a good person but so she doesn't strangle the person in front of her. The landing is Tangney's paradox: the minute you announce your humility, you've lost it. CALLS TO ACTION Next time someone pushes back on you, notice the moment you start building your answer before they've finished. Just notice it.Name one room where you hold more power than you think you do, and one way to lower it on purpose.In one hard conversation this week, ask the other person what happened in their life that got them to their take, and stop there.We would love to hear from you! Contact us at hello@whitewomenwakeup.com Support the show

    Stop Managing How You're Perceived: Cultural Humility in Hard Conversations

  2. Oct 23

    Indigenous History Was Erased and What it Costs Us

    Send us Fan Mail Jonelle brings the topic after hearing her friend Dr. Liina-Ly Roos speak about her book The Not-Quite Child. Sweden's 1928 welfare promise was that there would be no unwanted children, and the ideal Swedish child was Pippi Longstocking: strong, independent, talking back to what was wrong. Karen read Pippi as a kid who needed to calm down; Jonelle says that is an American read, and in Sweden that courage is the point. The catch is who got the foundation. Sámi and Finnish-speaking children were kept out of Swedish schools and written out of the story. Then the conversation turns home. 87 percent of what U.S. schools teach about Indigenous people is set before 1900, so the lesson most of us got ends in hatred and then goes to absence, as if Native people stopped existing. Jonelle and Karen walk through what the 1900s actually held: federal Indian boarding schools from 1819 to 1969, the Indian Adoption Project of 1958 to 1967 (395 children on paper, thousands in practice), children's hair cut on arrival, and Washington's 2015 law requiring tribal history in schools. Karen, who teaches a design history course, talks about what it takes to face a history you would rather erase, including your own family's. The landing is Jonelle's: it is okay that you didn't know this yesterday. What are you going to do with it today? CALLS TO ACTION Pick one story you loved as a kid, or read to your kids, and look again. Who is the brave one, and who is in the background?Ask your kid's or grandkid's school what it teaches about the tribe whose land it sits on, and whether that lesson goes past 1900.Put one book by a Native author on your shelf this month. We Are Water Protectors by Carole Lindstrom is a good first one.We would love to hear from you! Contact us at hello@whitewomenwakeup.com Support the show

    Indigenous History Was Erased and What it Costs Us

  3. Oct 16

    Re-Release: S1:E21 My Body Is Always Political

    Send us Fan Mail What does it mean to move through the world in a body that’s always political? In this episode, Karen and Jonelle unpack a powerful statement from a Black speaker—“My body is always political”—and explore the privilege of not having to think about how our bodies are judged, policed, or made into symbols. From airport observations to experiences shaped by body size, sexual orientation, racial identity, and physical ability, the conversation dives deep into how systems assign value and meaning to our existence. They confront the discomfort of being white women who’ve been taught to avoid “politics” and discuss how even well-meaning actions—like curiosity or tokenism—can further marginalize others. This episode isn’t about fixing or centering white guilt—it’s about honest recognition, unlearning bias, and doing better. If you’ve ever wondered what it means to be seen, used, or erased by society before you say a word—this conversation is for you. Call to Action: Interrogate Infantilization – Are you observing or truly engaging? Stop making marginalized identities the subject of your education or fascination.Shift Without Centering – Support change without needing to lead it. Let those directly impacted by oppression determine the path forward.Break the Silence Reflex – Challenge the idea that staying neutral is safe. Start talking about how power, privilege, and visibility shape every space we move through.We would love to hear from you! Contact us at hello@whitewomenwakeup.com Support the show

    Re-Release: S1:E21 My Body Is Always Political

  4. Oct 9

    Advocacy Doesn't Have a Finish Line: White Saviorism and the Pedagogy of Love

    Send us Fan Mail White saviorism is helping someone and then treating the help as the finish line. In this episode of White Women Wake Up, Karen and Jonelle start with a feel-good story and the one sentence at the end that changed it for Karen. A recent Indiana University grad met Sampson James, a former IU football player living on the street, and raised about $20,000 to get him an apartment. Then he said, "we're all expecting great things from you now." Karen says she has done the same thing: helped, then walked away. Jonelle calls it white savior thinking and toxic positivity. They work through Paulo Freire's three levels of consciousness (magical, naive and critical), bell hooks pushing Freire on his language, and Antonia Darder's pedagogy of love: love as a commitment that holds when it's inconvenient. Jonelle argues most of us are past magical thinking and stuck blaming individuals, from how people pick apart the Cornell 7 case to how white saviorism treats help as done. They talk about waking versus woke, and why advocacy has no checkbox. Topics: white saviorism, white savior complex, toxic positivity, Paulo Freire, critical consciousness, bell hooks, Antonia Darder, pedagogy of love, accompaniment. White Women Wake Up is a mother and daughter podcast about what white women do with the power we already have. CALLS TO ACTION Think of the last time you helped someone. Did you stay in touch after, or did the help feel finished?Next time you hear a feel-good story, ask one more question: what would it take for this to last, and who is still there in a year?Pick one person or cause you've helped before and check back in this week. Not to fix anything. Just to stay.We would love to hear from you! Contact us at hello@whitewomenwakeup.com Support the show

    Advocacy Doesn't Have a Finish Line: White Saviorism and the Pedagogy of Love

  5. Oct 2

    Living the Values You Post About: NIMBY, Moral Licensing and Showing Up

    Send us Fan Mail In this episode of White Women Wake Up, Jonelle and Karen use three named patterns, NIMBY (Not in my backyard), social distance and moral licensing, to look at where good values stop. Jonelle cooks breakfast every week for young people living on the street. This summer a church next door, with Black Lives Matter and get ICE out signs in front, invited the breakfast into its kitchen. Then it ended it after preschool parents complained about sharing a door. The question is not about that church. It is where your own door is. They walk through Michael Hankinson's research on NIMBY voters in San Francisco who back housing citywide and oppose it nearby, the NIMBY gap in Cambridge (80% of voters for affordable housing, 40% of the people who spoke at meetings), Emory Bogardus's 1925 social distance scale, and Benoit Monin and Dale Miller's work on moral licensing. Karen brings her classroom, and the two push on each other about systems versus personal accountability and how liberal NIMBYism shows up at home. Banned Book Club meets Tuesday, October 13 at 5:15pm Pacific: Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson. Register at whitewomenwakeup.com. Topics: NIMBY, liberal NIMBYism, social distance, moral licensing, performative allyship, youth homelessness, accountability. White Women Wake Up is a mother and daughter podcast about what white women do with the power we already have. CALLS TO ACTION Find your own door. Name one place this week where you say yes to people in general and would flinch if they showed up on your street, at your school or in your church kitchen.Before you decide "not here," ask one more question: who are they, what happened to them, and what would it take?Pick one value on your sign or your feed and do one thing for it this week that nobody will see: call your senator, go to a planning meeting, or hand someone a sandwich.We would love to hear from you! Contact us at hello@whitewomenwakeup.com Show Notes: Hankinson, M. (2018), American Political Science Review 112(3)  |  2015 San Francisco exit poll, 1,660 voters, plus a national survey of 3,000+: people who back housing citywide oppose it near them. Jonelle at 11:12 said NIMBY was coined in 2015 SF; the term is in print by June 1980. Einstein, Glick, Palmer, Neighborhood Defenders (2019)  |  Cambridge, MA, 2010: 80% of voters backed affordable housing, 40% of meeting speakers did. This is the 80% Jonelle cited at 11:26. Named in the Playback. Bogardus, E. S. (1925), social distance scale  |  Seven steps, from family by marriage to excluded from the country. Jonelle said 'social distancing' and 'Bogartus' at 25:44. Monin & Miller (2001); Effron, Cameron & Monin (2009)  |  Moral licensing and the Obama study. Be aware: a 2024 registered replication (932 people) found no consistent effect. Not said on air. Copy calls it a named pattern, not proof. Hagerman (2018); Lewis & Diamond (2015); Daniels, Nice White Ladies (2021)  |  School research named in the Playback at 34:20. Jessie Daniels' name dropped on air. Krysan & Crowder, Cycle of Segregation (2017)  |  Named in the Playback. The 47/68/74% neighborhood numbers were not said on air. Brooks, D. (2023), How to Know a Person  |  Accompaniment, Karen at 28:46. Cornell 7: PBS NewsHour and CNN, September 28, 2026; Ithaca Voice, September 2026  |  Civil suit filed September 16, 2026; DA reopened criminal investigation; no charges. Jonelle at 20:47 and 29:19 (said 'Cornell 5', corrected to 7 on air). Support the show

    Living the Values You Post About: NIMBY, Moral Licensing and Showing Up

  6. Sep 25

    The Impact of the Excuses We Make: Not All Men. Not My Husband. Not Me.

    Send us Fan Mail Jonelle brings the anger she has been carrying since the outcry over Lindsay Clancy, and the double standard underneath it: six men killed their families in the United States during the weeks of that trial, and none of them stayed in the news. She runs the numbers on what the patriarchy costs women, from 84.2 percent of pregnancy-related deaths being preventable to marital rape not being a crime in every state until 1993, and Karen pushes back on whether patriarchy is a value system or the men who uphold it. Then the episode turns. The anger white women feel toward men is the anger Black women feel toward white women: 77 percent of white employees call themselves allies to women of color, and about 10 percent of Black women agree. Macklemore lost a stadium tour in September for saying two words on a stage for people who cannot pay him back, and Ed Sheeran chose what he called neutrality. Most white women are the Ed Sheeran in that story. Neutral is not neutral. It never was. Jonelle closes with what it looks like in real life: the mastermind facilitator who never thought to build an all-women group, the pronouns on your Zoom name, and the bully on the street you would tell your kid to stand up to. CALLS TO ACTION Put your pronouns on your Zoom name and your email signature this week. It costs you nothing, and it is a cue to the person in the room who needs one.Catch one moment this week where you call it "staying out of it," and write down who paid for your quiet.Say one thing out loud in a room where it costs you something small, and tell nobody you did it.We would love to hear from you! Contact us at hello@whitewomenwakeup.com Show Notes: The numbers in the first half of the show came from the CDC's Maternal Mortality Review Committee, from Donna Hoyert at the National Center for Health Statistics, and from Arthur Mirin at the Journal of Women's Health. The way we use the word misogyny comes from Kate Manne's book Down Girl. The finding that hostility towards men is the highest in the least equal countries is from Peter Glick, Susan Fiske, and 14 colleagues; 8,360 people across 16 nations reported that hostility towards men is when men have complete control. The Macklemore and Ed Sheeran reporting is from ABC News, Variety, Rolling Stone, and Antonio Pequeno at Forbes. In the 1976 case that was brought by Emma DeGraffenreid and 4 other Black women against General Motors. Additional information from Madeline Heilman, Merrick Osborne, and Minda Harts. Support the show

    The Impact of the Excuses We Make: Not All Men. Not My Husband. Not Me.

  7. Sep 18

    Re-Release S1:E6 The Fight for Safe Spaces in Education

    Send us Fan Mail In this episode of White Women Wake Up, hosts Jonelle and Karen explore the complexities surrounding a policy requiring teachers to inform parents if students disclose their gender identity or pronouns at school. This mandate, embedded in a California mental health bill, has sparked debate over balancing student privacy with parental rights. The discussion highlights the unique challenges faced by transgender and nonbinary youth, particularly in households where disclosure might not feel safe. The hosts also examine how this policy intersects with existing protections like Title IX and broader questions about mental health, safety, and trust in educational settings, offering a nuanced look at this multifaceted issue. Call to Action Educate Yourself on Policies and Protections.Foster Open and Safe Dialogues.Advocate for Student-Centered Policies.We would love to hear from you! Contact us at hello@whitewomenwakeup.com. Support the show

  8. Sep 11

    You Know Gloria Steinem. Now Meet Dorothy Pitman Hughes.

    Send us Fan Mail Karen 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 ACTION Pick 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 hello@whitewomenwakeup.com Show 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

    You Know Gloria Steinem. Now Meet Dorothy Pitman Hughes.
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Ratings & Reviews

3
out of 5
2 Ratings

About

Naming our inherited bias. Owning our part in the system. White Women Wake Up is a podcast about what white women do with the power we already have. Karen is a Boomer. Jonelle is a Millennial. Same family, two generations. We explore the patterns and bias white women are raised with: be nice, keep the peace, avoid the hard conversation. And how even our best intentions can cause harm and keep oppressive systems running. We start with our own lives and follow the patterns out into education, healthcare, relationships, money and work. Each week one of us brings a topic the other hasn't prepared for. Nothing scripted, no performance of having it figured out. You don't have to get it right to be here. If you're worried about doing this wrong, you're exactly who we made this for. New episodes every Friday. Companion essays every Wednesday at whitewomenwakeup.substack.com. Stay curious, be open & keep waking up!Jonelle & Karen

Information

  • Creator
    Jonelle + Karen
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    100
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 White Women Wake Up
  • Show Website
    White Women Wake Up