What's Up With Karen?!?

A listener recently requested an episode about intersectionality, so here it comes! You're going to love this conversation with Sanjana about intersectionality, the caste system, and whether or not it's connected to racism in India.

If you caught the last episode of WUWK?! you got to hear the story of me trying to receive some feedback on whether some stuff I’d written was steeped in white supremacy and white privilege despite my best efforts to not do that. Let’s just say that I was less than graceful in receiving the feedback, but mostly staggered my way to a slightly less white version of what I had been trying to say. At the end of my conversation with the woman who was giving me (or trying to give me) feedback,...

How do white people learn to be less racist? Well, sometimes it's by being told that we've just said something racist. That feedback always sucks, but what we choose to do with it is what matters in the long run.

Hi and thank you for listening to WUWK?! We’re rapidly approaching the arrival of what I think might be the first ever federal holiday celebration of Juneteenth, seeing as how the house and Senate both just gave approval for making it a federal holiday! With that in mind, I have been pondering how the past, the present and the future all connect around issues of race and racism. But let’s start with Juneteenth…

What do mindfulness and racism have to do with each other? If given a choice between sitting on a cushion with your eyes closed and showing up at a BLM rally, could sitting on your butt actually make a bigger difference in cosmic battle to eliminate racism? I have no idea. But let’s explore the idea of using mindfulness to engage in the battle against racism this week on What's Up With Karen?!

A few weeks ago someone requested a little more content on the idea of white culture or white supremacist culture. This episode focuses on the work of Tema Okun, a white woman who returned home frustrated from a meeting one day and jotted down 15 aspects of what she saw as white supremacy culture at work. And her work just gained momentum from there. So, let’s dig into it a little bit. Last week’s episode I gave you a quick rundown of the first half of those 15 qualities Okun identified....

A few weeks ago someone requested a little more content on the idea of white culture or white supremacist culture. This episode focuses on the work of Tema Okun, a white woman who returned home frustrated from a meeting one day and jotted down 15 aspects of what she saw as white supremacy culture at work. And her work just gained momentum from there. So, let’s dig into it a little bit.

This week on WUWK?! It’s just a bit of pondering about languages that we learn and teach in our schools, and languages that we don’t.

When I first told people about the WUWK?! podcast project, a number of the white people initially involved expressed an interest in hearing more from people of color about their experiences with racism. Maybe because some of us white people didn’t have too many friends who weren’t white to talk to. Or maybe because they it can feel uncomfortable bringing up the topic with the friends we do have. Anyhow, I decided I needed to educate myself a bit more about racism first. But at this point,...

This week on WUWK?! It’s an interview with a woman who runs a non profit organization called Access Opportunity. Their mission is to create opportunities for high potential, low income students who - not coincidentally tend to be primarily people of color. They work with a lot of kids who represent the first generation in their family to college. I wanted help learning to see and identify some of the barriers that exist for kids who aren’t legacy college attendees the way I, my partner, my...

This week on WUWK?! We’ve got an interview with a woman who works as an international adoption lawyer. But before she got her law degree, she got some personal experience as an adoptive parent herself. Also, she was even nice back in high school and how often do you really find yourself remembering people in that way?! Enjoy meeting an old friend of mine - Diana.

This week on WUWK?! We’ve got an episode that focuses on just one conversation with a woman who is one of the people that I use as a role model - she’s a white woman who definitely gets racism and social justice issues on deeper levels than I do. I am just cheesy enough that I have really and truly asked myself from time to time, “what would Pam do in a situation like this?” particularly when contemplating putting my foot in my mouth when I think I’ve just heard or seen something racist. And...

For many years our educational and economic systems stacked the deck using a myriad of systems of oppression so that mostly white people do better on standardized tests. They are more likely to end up in STEM fields designing the software that can define our lives in crazy ways, and - in a really different form of standardized testing, those same white people can intentionally or unintentionally change how football players are compensated for head injures. This week on WUWK a crazy journey...

In the beginning, there was no What’s Up With Karen?! Podcast. There was an idea, and some inspiration, and a lot of spare time. But there was also a root to it all. And this is the story of how it all began.

After hearing Robin DiAngelo talk a bit about modern segregation, I found myself wondering how did neighborhoods get so segregated in the first place? That’s what we're going to explore in this week’s episode on segregation, with a s*** ton of help from Richard Rothstein who wrote The Color of Law. Okay, full disclosure… This episode is basically a book report. I’m new enough to a bunch of this stuff that I’m in no way speaking from a place of expertise, so instead I’m going to try to sum...

This week on WUWK?! We’ve got another 1 on 1 interview for you. Today’s episode is a conversation with a woman who I met through her volunteer work with a non-profit organization, but when she’s not out saving the floundering volunteer boards of the world, Trish can be found at her day job as entrepreneur and strategist for TEEM. Oh, did I mention she is the CEO of TEEM? Since I tend to ramble in these conversations, I’ve tried to cut out most of that so you can enjoy some key tidbits and...

A few weeks ago, I got an email. Well, sort of. Someone wrote to a friend who had suggested they check out What's Up With Karen?! and told them “So far it's interesting but I hope it gets a little more specific.... what actual words should we not be saying in our out loud voices.” And women being women, she passed that dish right on to me with a matching tuper-ware lid, I might add. Thus, we find ourselves here today, on What's Up With Karen?! with an episode I’m calling “Language Matters.”

This episode is a 1:1 conversation with Nia of Mission Launch about issues of race, racism, systemic oppression and of course all things Karen, as they pertain to non-profit organizations.

Are you there God, it's me Karen... looks at what happens when the host has a "Karen" moment and the experience of being called in. White privilege is a key topic, along with day drinking.

Even before I started searching for Karen I found myself wondering about the lack of an obvious male equivalent. Was there no Ken to her Barbie? Are there male Karens, and if so, what do we call them? Join me for an explanation of 5 possible answers to the question Are There Male Karens!