262: Farewell 2024, Hello 2025

12/31/24 • 23 min

Tomorrow, we’ll be wishing our loved ones “akemashite omedetou gozaimasu” - or, Happy New Year, in Japanese. If you’re a long-time listener, you know that DEI work (or whatever we’ll be calling it going forward) is personal to us. We’re both the daughters of a Japanese immigrant parent and a white American parent each; the ideas of multiculturalism and difference are embedded in our DNA, and we were raised to have respect not only for our own diverse histories, but those of all others in the world - after all, we’re each only one of 8 billion people in the world, and you bet that everyone has their own story, their own way of living, thinking, and being in our society.

On top of that, let’s be clear about our chosen families. Misasha is married to a Black man and has two very multiethnic sons who are Black Japanese, and white. We’ve spent years laying the groundwork to help you understand anti-Black racism, deconstruct the model minority myth, and more. Let us be clear - we do this work because if even one person reading, has an a-ha moment and changes their actions, or talks to someone about something they learned here which changes *their* actions - so Misasha’s boys can come home safe at night, or so you make decisions that might potentially improve or even save the lives of children who look like them - then we will have been successful. Sara is married to a white Canadian man and has two teenage girls the world presumes to be white. Doing the work to challenge our own assumptions about other people matters to us because not everybody is what they seem. Standing against anti-immigration sentiment matters to us; understanding the link between systems of oppression that hurt not only Black people, but neurodivergent people, females, and so many others is critically important to us as well.

So far, we have hosted 262 episodes of the Dear White Women podcast because helping people listen, learn, and act differently to help uproot systemic racism is what we need to make the world truly equitable for ALL of us - this is the foundation, the work starts here. And we cannot do it without your help.

In 2025, we’ll be speaking to organizations - schools, companies, ERGs, and more - about two topics we think are critically important at this point in history:

Why equity and inclusion matters now more than ever - the psychology of belonging
How to have difficult conversations.

If you have groups you think would benefit, or know people who could hire us in their organizations, please connect us. You can reach us at [email protected] anytime.

What else to listen for:

Reflecting on the most surprising and memorable parts of 2024
Our thoughts on the kakistocracy - the Economist’s word of the year meaning, the rule of the worst.
And where we go from here in 2025...

In 2025, we’ll be speaking to organizations - schools, companies, ERGs, and more - about two topics we think are critically important at this point in history:

Why equity and inclusion matters now more than ever - the psychology of belonging
How to have difficult conversations.

If you have groups you think would benefit, or know people who could hire us in their organizations, please connect us. You can reach us at [email protected] anytime.

What else to listen for:

Reflecting on the most surprising and memorable parts of 2024
Our thoughts on the kakistocracy - the Economist’s word of the year meaning, the rule of the worst.
And where we go from here in 2025...

Previous Episode

261: How I Stopped Being a Model Minority, with Anne Anlin Cheng

Today’s episode seems to be addressing this question: does politics show up in our everyday lives? Maybe even in our most intimate relationships?

And while a lot of folks may be saying politics doesn’t impact me, I don’t do politics... we think the actual answer for most of us in this country is a resounding YES (in fact, we’ve recorded whole episodes and written whole book chapters on this very topic!). Yes, politics impacts our daily lives, including being in our marriages, our parent-child relationships, and more.

We’re privileged to have this conversation with someone who took the chance to use her voice in a new way - moving from academia and diving bravely into personal essays - in order to help us all hear one person’s journey confronting the Model Minority Myth that so many Asian folks in America are impacted by, and inspiring us along the way.

What to listen for:

The challenge in determining where the forces that shape us end, and the “real us” begins - especially when it comes to deconstructing the Model Minority Myth, or even untangling ourselves from notions like the American Dream
How politics shows up in our most intimate relationships - including marriage
Examples of how white folks can show up, or not, for issues around multiculturalism
Where our education system is having to go to meet the population where they are when it comes to talking about politics - we’re now back to discussing civility, empathy, what it means to be a citizen, and the common good

About our guest:

Anne Anlin Cheng was born in Taiwan, grew up in the American South, and is the author of three books on American racial politics and aesthetics. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, the Los Angeles Review of Books, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. Cheng is the 2023–2024 Ford Scholar in Residence at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. She is a professor of English and a former director of American Studies at Princeton University and lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

Next Episode

263: How Are You Trump-Proofing Your Life?

We’ve arrived in 2025, and assuming President-Elect Trump is inaugurated, this means he will be the first president to take office convicted of felony crimes. And since we know that an organization’s tone is often set by its leadership, we can’t help wondering: how will we see Trump’s leadership impact the culture of the United States, and how will this play out in our collective futures?

Let’s be real about where we are in this moment in history, courtesy of the Atlantic: “According to a report last year by the Varieties of Democracy Institute at the University of Gothenburg, in Sweden, when it comes to global freedom, we have returned to a level last seen in 1986. About 5.7 billion people—72 percent of the world’s population—now live under authoritarian rule. Even the United States, vaunted beacon of democracy, is about to inaugurate a president who openly boasts of wanting to be a “dictator on day one,” who regularly threatens to jail his opponents and sic the military on the “enemy within,” and who jokes about his election being the country’s last.....Many Americans understand today what political exhaustion and complacency look and feel like. But the dissident is the one who hopes against hope.”

We can’t imagine it’ll be particularly easy, but we do believe we have reason to hope. Hope is the consequence of action, and is often self-fulfilling (we act, we hope, we act some more). This is why today, we’re asking you this: How are YOU Trump-proofing your life?

What to listen for:

Putting self care first - like, REAL self care - and the story about Sara’s thunderclap headaches
How to stay informed while keeping your sanity
Necessary mindsets, including trusting yourself, grieving, choosing your lane / letting go of the rest, getting real about power - and asking ourselves what we’re willing to sacrifice (comfort, convenience, or more) to stand up for what’s right
Simple example: Do you believe fact-checking and real people are important parts of social media platforms? If so, will you get yourself off Meta’s platforms?
A reminder not to reinvent the wheel, but find and support organizations doing the work with your time, money, and energy. Here’s a list to start with - let us know what organizations you support and we’ll add them to our list!

Connect with Us!

A reminder not to reinvent the wheel, but to find and support organizations doing the work with your time, money, and energy. Here’s a list to start with - let us know what organizations you support and we’ll add them to our list!

To give us input on what you want from our newsletter, and/or share your Asian immigration stories, reach us via email at [email protected].

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