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- [00:01]
Michelle Mi Jung Kim
To be able to look within ourselves and to admit that no one is coming to save us, that we have to be the ones taking it upon ourselves to change ourselves and the world around us is massively scary. We would rather outsource, right? We would rather donate money to an organization to fight on our behalf. And more and more, I think what people are being asked to wake up to is the reality that, no, it's us, babe. We have to do it. We have to care for one another. We have to build a capacity to sit with discomfort, to sit with the fear, to sit with the grave amount of grief of knowing that the world we want is not here and it's not going to build without all of us taking part in it.
- [01:07]
Lee McGowan
Hello and welcome to the Politics Girl podcast. I'm your host, Lee McGowan. Let's get into it. So I was scrolling Instagram recently, as one does, and I came across a woman named Michelle Mijung Kim who was speaking at the San Francisco Human Rights Summit about how we need to stay human during inhumane times. Her opening line was Fascism is fully here. And she talked about how we have protesters being arrested and our immigrant neighbors being rounded up. But if you go online, you're seeing a get ready with me or buy this new product and it starts to make you feel crazy. She talked about how so many people are collectively severing themselves from the truth because it's just easier. And although she fears a lot of things that are happening right now, the biggest fear she has is for our collective loss of humanity. Everything she was saying just spoke to me, because that's my concern too. I'm having a hard time functioning in a country where it feels like no one gives a shit that we're on fire. So I was so appreciative to Michelle for calling it out so clearly that I asked her to come on and speak with us. Michelle is a Korean American writer, speaker and activist. She is the author of the award winning book the Wake up and the co founder and former CEO of Awaken, a company that led transformative equity and inclusion training across multiple industries. Her work has been featured everywhere from Harper's Bazaar to the New York Times. And she's known for calling out the performative nonsense of corporate DEI to point us back to what liberation really requires, which is discomfort and accountability and a lot more courage. So without further ado, please welcome my guest board member of Asian Americans for Civil Rights and Equity award winning author and host of the I Feel that Way Too podcast, Michelle Mi Jungkim welcome, Michelle.
- [02:46]
Michelle Mi Jung Kim
Thanks for having me. Hello, everyone.
- [02:49]
Lee McGowan
Well, thanks for joining me. I found myself down a major rabbit hole with your work after finding you, and I have to say, you are doing some important work right now, because I think a lot of us are really feeling so lost in this moment, and I just. I was so, so glad to see that. As I was saying in the introduction, I was recently talking about the reality of fascism being here and here. I see you online being like, fascism is actually here. And this collective severing that so many people from that reality because they just can't handle it is striking. And you were saying that your fear is that by severing ourselves from that reality, we actually are in danger of losing our humanity because we're turning it off. Could you speak a bit to that for me?
- [03:33]
Michelle Mi Jung Kim
Yeah, absolutely. So the clip that everybody's watching is from a live recording of our podcast, and something that I been thinking about a lot is this idea of courage and. And how so many people right now are essentially begging people to be more courageous, right? They're saying, stop being so afraid. Be fearless. Be more courageous, because lives are at stake. And I agree with that sentiment. But what I wanted to do is maybe take a step back and actually ask ourselves to. Rather than move straight into courage, why don't we start by acknowledging that we're scared? Why don't we start by admitting that? Actually, I am afraid because I think that acknowledgement alone is what is lacking right now, right? When I talked about how even though I am seeing people getting rounded up by ICE student protesters getting criminalized for standing on the right side of history, what I am afraid of is not only the things that are happening to people of Palestine and immigrants who are all over the world, but what I'm really also afraid of is us collectively losing our ability to stare squarely at the truth. And that includes what is happening within ourselves, too, right? That within ourselves that there is fear, there is immense amount of grief and pain. And yet what I see out in the world is people pretending that everything is going okay, right? When we look on LinkedIn. I don't know if you spend any time on LinkedIn, but it is dystopian, right? People celebrating their promotions or announcing their new course or new book, new project, without acknowledging any of the things that are actually happening in the world. And that cognitive dissonance, I think, does something to our collective humanity, and it makes us more afraid because we feel alone that no one else is seeing this. No one else is seeing that there is fascism People are literally getting rounded up right now off the streets, and yet we are celebrating something that feels so disconnected from the reality. So my call to action, to people, was, let us begin by just acknowledging that we are all feeling this right, that we are in this together. We are afraid together. Maybe that will help us to be more courageous. Maybe that will help us to actually acknowledge that the reality is unacceptable, that we are debilitated by the pain and suffering of the world.
- [06:09]
Lee McGowan
Yeah, that's how I feel, Michelle. Honestly. Debilitated by the pain and suffering of the world. I have a hard time sometimes getting out of bed. Like, I just lie there and I think, oh, God, Like, I can't. And, you know, I think there's people who are like me, who build our lives around knowing what the news is and trying to inform people of what's going on. And I think sometimes we feel like we're drowning in all of that information. And I often say to people, like, if you take in all the news, it's like trying to drink from a fire hose. So the work that I try to do is to fill up a cup of what I think you need to know and then give it to you so you can take it in without it hurting you. But it hurts me. And so I sometimes think, like, okay, how do I function with this? Because I find myself increasingly demoralized knowing how many people are checked out from what's happening, or they're aware of what's happening, but they're choosing not to care. Or worse, they're reveling in the pain of others. I am really struggling with the photos of people, you know, at the Alligator Alcatraz sign or talking about, like, live stream this. It'll be hilarious reality show of these people being eaten by alligators. And I feel. I don't just think it's terrible. I feel it's terrible. I feel it in my body. Like, I have an emotional pain to know that I am surrounded by such ignorance and ha. And I feel like this kind of casual cruelty that we're swimming in now just feels so distressing. And it's hard to kind of put one foot in front of the other to do the right thing. You just kind of want to sit in stasis because you can't believe where you are.
- [07:47]
Michelle Mi Jung Kim
Yeah, yeah. No, what you're saying is so resonant. First of all, I don't know that we can ever truly make people feel less uncomfortable when we are delivering the truth. So even the fact that you are, you know what, you can do is make things accessible to understand, right? Make things that feel so heavily intellectualized feel human. I think that's what we can do. I don't know that we can help people to feel less scared or less painful, right? Because the reality is so horrific and it is painful. And the thing is, there is fear because there's a reason to be scared of speaking out. There is a reason why people are afraid to speak out, even when they know what is happening, even when they know that there is suffering. Because there is a cost to our courage right now. And that's how we know that fascism is here, right? That there is repression because there is a possibility of retaliation and a grave cost to our livelihood. And we are seeing the examples by people who are. Who have been on the front lines, right? So I think just not ignoring the fear aspect and also not deluding ourselves into thinking that the world is favoring those who are standing on the right side of history. That is not true today, which is all the more reason for us to be taking collective risk. And when you talked about this feeling, the embodied sort of experience of feeling immobilized and paralyzed by the casual cruelty of others. I just had a flashback of me going to. To a stand up comedy show with my partner years ago. This was, I think, almost 10 years ago. And it was like date night. We went to go see a comedy show out in San Francisco. I live in Oakland, and the first act was someone who started making jokes at the expense of queer people. And I'm bisexual and I identify as queer. And my advocacy and politicization began in the LGBTQ community. And it was one joke after another making fun of queer and trans people and then women and the misogyny and the rape jokes just kept coming, and people were laughing all around me. And I just looked at my partner horrified, and I just started crying and I had to leave and I had to just sob outside the comedy club. And for me, it was the person who was on stage who was making these jokes that was very violent, right? Like that act of making light, of making fun of others. Oppression is so dehumanizing that that causes real violence in the world, right? That's what translates to more escalated forms of violence. And when I was looking out into the crowd and saw people were clapping and laughing along, that gave me another level of fear of, wow, am I alone in feeling this? Am I alone and feeling so disturbed by what people find funny? And so I think that is sort of the microcosm of what is happening right now that we have different levels of connection to our own humanity and other people's humanity. And when we see people being unbothered by what is happening to a lot of different marginalized communities, I think what we are really terrified of is that we feel alone in this. That when we look onto people that we love and care about, that we are actually in community with not even people online. Right. Who are far right conservatives. That's not who I'm most bothered by. Right. I'm really bothered by my own friends, my own colleagues, people that I'm connected with on LinkedIn. Those people are who I'm worried about. Like, are we on the same page here? Do you actually have the values that I have and do you embody them on a daily basis in a way that makes us connected? And this collective severing of ourselves from the truth is the painful reality that we live in, but that also aids the continued oppression of marginalized people. Because as soon as we dilute what is happening in reality, we begin to pave way to escalated violence and we create this culture of permissiveness where the oppression can continue to happen to those we love.
- [12:34]
Lee McGowan
Yeah, I think your concept of being surrounded by the laughing people, you know, having this on stage and you know there's going to be. You did a lot of work in the DEI world and you did a lot of work with like the concept of woke, which is now, of course, we're anti woke and we're over woke and whatever it is. But this concept of being surrounded by people who are laughing at something, that if you say something and you say this is actually very hurtful to me. This is, it's, it's making fun of people who are marginalized. It's, it's not funny. Everyone would say, well, it's just jokes, like, just stop. You know, you're surrounded. But I think about, like these videos now that go live, you know, on the Jubilee website and you know, where you have a bunch of your. They're platforming white supremacists and fascists and, you know, white nationalists and Christian nationalists. And by putting them out there like that, you're saying there's actually way more people who are like this. Even if that's not true, they often use the same bigots over and over again, but it gives the illusion that there's so many more of them and that their ideas have worth and are worthwhile to hear, that we think it's better that white people are really better. And if you're an immigrant, you really should leave the country, this kind of thing. And they have this new show which is getting a lot of press right now because Mehdi Hassan was on it. You know, it's called Surrounded. And this is what you're talking about, where it's like 2020 white nationalists, and then one person who's going to speak in the opposite. And it gives the illusion that the person who's saying human rights exist or that immigrants are people or that, you know, you can be something other than white and still have value, is the minority and the other people are the majority. And it's just, I think it's, it's. It started off as on Jubilee that we give two different sides an idea to have a conversation. And it's become something that's more clickbaity and Haiti and giving platform to people who really don't deserve. Deserve the platform. But also giving us the illusion that there's so many more people out there who feel that way when that might not actually be the case. You know, you're talking about this idea. I mean, you said it at the Human Rights Summit in San Francisco. You're like, sometimes I just want to shake people awake. Like, I'm not trying to necessarily turn a super hyper mega or someone who thinks that white people are better than black people into believing my ideas. I'm trying to convince my friends to care. Right. I'm trying to convince my friends that. To share in my reality, to say, I'm not making this up and I need your help to fix it. And I think you put it really well when you said, I need to know that you're not okay. Because I'm not okay, because this is not okay. And I think that's so important.
- [15:10]
Michelle Mi Jung Kim
Yeah. I mean, I'm so glad that you said the word illusion that we are somehow surrounded by these, you know, very overt Nazis and fascists who proudly call themselves that. Right. And how dangerous it is for us to platform those types of voices at the expense of so many other voices that need to be heard right now. Right. Like, those are not the voices that we should be centering at all or having to give credence to. And I think that's what it does. When we platform these people, we somehow make those arguments and perspectives just as legitimate as the ones that are opposing it. And I think that is very dangerous. And I think that also shows how important it is that we do practice the courage to speak out and to let people know in our, even if it's just own circles that we do not hold those beliefs that we don't normalize that. Because what I'm afraid of is, you know, and this is the reason why your podcast and people who are doing this type of work is so important, is because the mainstream media often favors what will get the clickbait clicks, what will get people enraged, and what will polarize people. Because it is far more profitable to cater to the most powerful perspective and dividing the rest of us, right? And so having more of us speak out and take up space in the digital realm where we can control our narratives, I think is so critical, because everyday language, everyday people, they have the power to shape our collective consciousness, right? Every time we acquiesce to using words that make the most privileged comfortable, while we expend the safety of the most marginalized, we are shifting the Overton window further away from the truth and further away from the kind of world that we deserve, and we want further away from democracy. So I do think that all of us being able to be responsible for our own spheres of influence at the very least, right? Starting with that and starting with ourselves and being honest about the reality that we are not accepting that is so abhorrent right now, I think does something to the collective psyche and dispelling this myth that somehow we are of equal numbers. Because that's not true.
- [17:38]
Lee McGowan
No, it's not. And I have, you know, we often say on this show, and I often say in my rants that we have to be responsible for our people. Like, you are not responsible to go to Kentucky and convince someone in a rural, like, start at your dining room table. Start at your workplace. Start with your hairdresser. Start with the woman at the, you know, who is working at the checkout counter and says, like, well, this happened. And you're like, actually, that's not true. And you have that conversation over your groceries. You know what I mean? Like, take responsibility for your people. And it's not always easy. In fact, sometimes it's very, very uncomfortable. And I think we need to get more comfortable with that discomfort. Because what we've done is in, like you're saying, in allowing the comfort of the majority, the say, white Christian, straight majority, white Christian, straight male majority, to feel the most comfortable. We are marginalizing and taking power away from all these other groups. And the thing is that people might say, well, that's fine, because I sit in that majority. You're like, the problem is when you take power away from other groups, you're actually just opening the door to remove power from lots of people. Like, it's not going to Serve you. In the end, if we can take human rights or due process or civil rights from one group, because once you've taken it from one group, you're going to end up taking it from other groups. You are not safe with that. Right. Like, I keep thinking about the way we're doing this and how obviously how heinous it is, but it's, it's like everything we counted on and built our lives on in this nation, based on constitutional rights, law and order, morality, is being pulled out from under us. And I'm finding it very hard to get my bearings. But I also want to say, like, listen, if it's being pulled out from this group of people currently, say migrants or trans people or whoever we are targeting, if you're saying you can't get healthcare, trans children in Los Angeles, which is a new thing, they're going to close down that division of the children's hospital in Los Angeles to help under 21 children with any sort of gender affirming care. If you say, okay, these particular children no longer get health care, that doesn't stop with that particular group of children that says, we're allowed to pick and choose who gets health care. We're allowed to pick and choose who. Due process, we're allowed to pick and choose who we round up. Donald Trump just signed an executive order saying homelessness can make you institutionalized. We can just pick you up off the street if you lost your health care or you lost your job, probably because of decisions we made, and we can put you in prison. That's not just going to happen to marginalized people. That'll happen to anybody. And once we open the door to the lack of humanity on one case, we open the door to lack of humanity for everybody. And that's where we're saying we need our people to care about that. We need our people to be aware of that, not just for one community, but for all communities. So we've been traveling a lot this summer and when we go away, our amazing dog sitter stays at our house and I always wash his sheets right before she comes. So she has, you know, clean sheets. But after our last trip, she said to me, what are you washing your sheets in? They smell so delicious. And the answer is laundry sauce. No, I'm not going to tell you that that laundry sauce detergent is going to make your life better because it's detergent. But I am going to tell you that it's going to make your laundry better. I genuinely love this product. Laundry sauce isn't just Premium Laundry Pods. 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- [23:20]
Michelle Mi Jung Kim
Yes, yes. And what you're saying is really the saying that all of our liberation is bound up with one another, right? That all of our liberation, all of our struggles are actually interconnected. And I think the more that we realize how interconnected we actually are, I think the better we will be in building real solidarity that feels sustainable. And the way that I talk about, whether it's DEI or equity or justice, is how we talk about our why. Like, why is this important to us? And too often and for too long, we have talked about the why being helping other people, right? Helping those who are less fortunate than us and somehow creating this narrative of charity case. And for me, this work is far beyond charity because of the precise thing that you're talking about. The way that I talk about this work for me is that it's all about all of our collective humanity. I want men to not want to, you know, be patriarchal and misogynistic and, you know, talk about fighting sexism. I want men to fight against sexism and patriarchy, not only because they care about the women in their lives, but because they understand that it's the same force that's caging them into these gender roles, right? That is robbing them of their own ability to be emotional in public or to be able to stay at home with their kids. I want cisgender people to care about trans people, not only because they care about their trans colleagues and friends, but because they understand that the gender roles don't serve anyone, that none of us is safe with these rhetoric. And I want white people to fight against racism and white supremacy, not only because they care about people of color, colleagues and friends, but because white people understand that it's robbing them of their humanity, too, and that all of these things will come back to haunt us in the end. And when you talk about the law and order now being picked and chosen to marginalize certain people, but how it's going to only expand its scope of oppression. That's always been the case throughout history, right? That these systems were inherently built on the foundation of racism and genocide and white supremacy, that these things have always been weaponized against certain groups of people. And we have allowed that for so long that the scope is Just continuing to increase. None of this is new. The scope is just expanding, that more and more people are becoming more aware and awakened because now their rights are under threat. So this has been happening not only in the States, but also abroad. Right? The kinds of issues that we have turned a blind eye to, whether it's what happened in the Middle East, Iraq or Korea or Japan or now Palestine, all of these tactics of imperialism and capitalism are being used abroad and now are being brought to be practiced in our country. So these things that we are experiencing, perhaps for the first time for some people, have been experienced by so many others for centuries at the hands of the American imperialism. And being able to actually connect those dots feels really scary and it's uncomfortable. When I used to do DEI consulting work, equity work in the for profit space, the number of times that people ask me, can you not maybe use the word white supremacy or capitalism? Instead, can we talk about unconscious bias and microaggression? The reason why we are so afraid is because it has an impact, right when we use the most precise language that we have available to us, that causes grave threat to the systems all around us. Because our collective consciousness is what is going to unlock the possibility of broader liberation and reclaiming our power. And so I think that the more we speak and with the kind of precision and clarity that we need to have in order to describe what is happening in the world, the more possibilities we'll have to be able to find the pathway to our collective liberation.
- [27:29]
Lee McGowan
I think people are struggling in many ways with identity. I think identity is one of the biggest problems we have. Whether it's like, what my identity is, what I base my life on, who I think I am. And then if you, if you attack that, if I say, well, I'm a Christian and I say, okay, well, what about this that the Christians are doing? And I go, oh, no, I don't wanna talk about that. Because then it affects my identity. I think this idea of America as the good kind nation, of America as the good guy, as the America as the one who defeated the Nazis and liberated Auschwitz and saved the world in World War II, this kind of thing, when you start to really look at how America has been behaving in the world for literally decades, for generations perhaps, and you start to think, oh, I don't love the look of that. That actually, are we the baddies? You know what I mean?
- [28:18]
Michelle Mi Jung Kim
Like, it is not the good.
- [28:20]
Lee McGowan
I know, and it's like, not the good baddies, the baddies. Like, you know, like. And I think it really messes with people's opinion of themselves, of their identity, of who they think they are, and they would rather not do that. So they have to double down on where the good guy, which means someone else has made a mistake, someone else is the bad guy. I feel like you're trying to tell people in a lot of your work that one of the biggest threats to this horrible system that we're moving into right now that's really based on a lot of the things we did in the past, just supersized, would be a collective awakening of us realizing that things need to change, that we haven't always been the good guy we thought we are. This collective acknowledgement of what's going on and how it's not okay to us because people's power can be diffused or used depending on what we are using in our mind. And I think right now a lot of people are pretending or wishing things were normal. And they're what I would call ostriching. You know what I mean? Like, they would just rather not. They would just rather pretend that we aren't building a concentration camp in the Florida Everglades, right? They would just rather pretend we aren't randomly shipping people to nations they have never been to. They would rather pretend they don't see these videos of people screaming at immigration courts where they have gone to do something legally and now they are being ripped away from their family. We would just go, oh, I, I can't. It, it, it, it messes with my identity for America. It messes with my identity as a good person. It messes with my identity of, you know, us as a good and decent place in the world. So I'm just going to pretend things are normal and I'm gonna put my course up on LinkedIn. But we have to stop pretending things are fine so that we can actually instigate real change. And I often say that I don't like that quote from Martin Luther King Jr. About the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice because it implies that that just happens, that it's just going to go that way if you wait long enough. Whereas bending the arc of the moral universe takes real work on our parts. We have to actually build that track that it goes on. It's not just a train we get on, it's a track we build. And I think that's the thing people don't realize because we've had it, quote unquote good for so long if you look like me and if you don't look like me, you're like, no, we haven't had it good for so long. But we're now we're all in the same place where we go, oh, my God, this is broken now what do we do? And I think what we do is work. Collective acknowledgment that it has to be done.
- [30:47]
Michelle Mi Jung Kim
I think that work is really hard, right? Like you're talking about that. To be able to look within ourselves and to admit that no one is coming to save us, that we have to be the ones taking it upon ourselves to change ourselves and the world around us is massively scary. We would rather outsource, right? We would rather donate money to an organization to fight on our behalf. And more and more, I think what people are being asked to wake up to is the reality that, no, it's us, babe. We have to do it. We have to care for one another. We have to build a capacity to sit with discomfort, to sit with the fear, to sit with the grave amount of grief of knowing that the world we want is not here and it's not going to build without all of us taking part in it. And I think that takes a lot of hand holding and a lot of community support. And it doesn't happen overnight, unfortunately. And to your point about people being really afraid of seeing the us for what it is and the history, the real history, triggering so many people, right, that it triggers so many people that we would rather sanitize a history, sanitize the truth and criminalize. Truth telling in some cases, shows how difficult it is to actually build up that capacity to sit with what is to sit with ourselves. I mean, we've been taught from a very young age to believe in this good, bad binary, right? You're either a good person or a bad person. You're either a villain or you're the hero. You're either a racist or you're not. You're either a sexist or you're not. And we are terrified of being categorized as a bad person because we know what happens to those bad people, right? Mia Mingus, who works on transformative justice, talks about this all the time, where we are inundated with these messages of good guy and the bad guy. And of course, we are terrified of being categorized as a bad guy because we know what happens to those people in the movies. In real life, they get disconnected, they get shamed, they get criminalized. That's what we see. So of course we're going to fight, fight tooth and nail to defend ourselves and defend our morality. But as soon as we release our grip on this one dimensional identity, that allows us to expand what is possible within our humanity. That allows us to actually hold space for the multi dimensional nature of who we are. Which then gives way to the fact that we are all capable of causing harm. But that also means that we're all capable of repairing and transforming. So when I talk about, you know, waking up, right, the, my book called the Wake up, it's not just about us waking up to the reality, reality of the world, the suffering of the world that many have been sleeping on, right? So many people who just learn about an injustice that they didn't know because they didn't have to experience it, have this moment of, oh my gosh, look at this, look at what is happening, look at what has been happening. And we end up focusing on just waking up to the reality of the world. But what it also requires is for us to wake up to our own selves, wake up to our own capacity to change. Wake up to our own power, our own privilege, our own complicity in the systems of violence that we have been observing for a long time. And that requires a lot of courage to be able to then sit with the fact that, oh, not only is there suffering in the world, I have also been complicit in perpetuating that in many ways. So that then takes us to be. That takes a lot of honesty, a lot of courage for us to then take responsibility for our own actions, our own beliefs, and our own influence in the world.
- [35:00]
Lee McGowan
Yeah, I mean, I should tell people that your book is incredible. The full title is the Wake Up Closing the Gap between Good Intentions and Real Change. And I feel like the book in many ways is about how as we become more aware of social injustice, many of us want to move towards positive change. Once you become aware that something terrible has been happening, you're like, okay, well, we need to change that. But sometimes even with the best intentions, we blow it, right? We don't fix it, right. Or we say it wrong, or we, you know, we're like, we go to our one black colleague and we're like, so listen, I want to help with black people. And they're like, oh my God, get out of my face. Right? Like, we're the worst. And then that makes us feel uncomfortable because we took this step forward and then we blew it. So then we retreat, right? And then the movement suffers. Like, I, I find that like we're seeing a blowback now on this concept of DEI itself. And that gives people an out to stop Growing, to stop changing, to stop evolving. Like we're not doing that DEI thing anymore, right? When DEI has been actually shown to improve workplace, to improve, to improve outcomes, right? I feel like we're almost in a pendulum swing back before we were done swinging forward, right? Like we didn't finish the whole rotation. We didn't get all the way to being woke. We sort of got halfway and now we're swinging back to anti woke, right? This idea that woke needs to die. That woke lost the Democrats the election. But I don't think that's it. Because obviously being woke, being aware of how different people go through life or different people experience the world, that's a good thing, right? It makes us more connected, more empathetic. It gets us on the path to understanding and to open to real conversations that might make real change, positive change in the world, but it also gives us the opportunity to, as I said, blow it, to screw up, to suddenly become some sort of weird performative ally rather than stand with people in real solidarity. And I think often people who look like me, white, straight people. Because we don't have a lot of experience with ourselves not being centered. We keep bringing marginalized groups problems back to us. How we screwed it up, you know, how we feel bad that we didn't notice or how we didn't understand, which I think must really annoy marginalized people because it's like Jesus. But also I think it must be quite exhausting to continually try to educate us, or worse, make us feel better about the fact that we didn't notice that you were suffering. Does that make sense? 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- [41:01]
Michelle Mi Jung Kim
Yeah. Oh, yeah, that makes sense. And I think we see it everywhere when you're doing DEI work. And yeah, you know, for me, the problem with the way that we have been talking about DEI is once again, it's seen as work that we do to be good people, that we do this out of the goodness of our hearts. Right. And we're not actually talking about the insidious ways in which we are all ensnared in this system of oppression that is impacting everybody to different degrees. And I think that then situates a lot of white people as wanting to either be saviors or as like, charitable people who are doing things out of the goodness of their heart rather than because they understand that they are one, complicit in upholding these systems of oppression, but also two, that there is a cost to themselves too. And in the corporate space, the rhetoric of DEI has been wrapped up around this idea of, well, you know, DEI is good for the bottom line. It's, you know, more divers. Companies tend to be innovative and more profitable. And while that may be palatable to a lot of people in the corporate space, and we have been taught to talk about things like that, yeah, we're.
- [42:17]
Lee McGowan
Seeing it through the realm of capitalism, which is how we, like, we can say DEI is good because it helps with profitability as opposed to, we can see DEI is good because it actually helps with community and.
- [42:26]
Michelle Mi Jung Kim
And everyone. Yes, yes, exactly. And I think that has also been a really dangerous trend because it, one, commodifies people of color and their experiences. And two, this is only as useful as long as it profits our bottom line. And then two, it also somehow make people into believing that when we work on dei we're going to get profit right away, which is not actually true. If that were true, so many companies that do not have diversity or equity and inclusion would flop. But that's not what's happening. People who have majority white people in the workforce are thriving. Google, Facebook, Meta, you know, all those companies that are top 10, 50 in the world are doing just fine with the majority white people leading the company. Right. And in leadership positions. So I think it becomes really dangerous when we start to expect social justice outcomes to come from a why that's rooted in capitalism. And I think that the much more sustainable why that's going to actually keep the investment in these initiatives is once again going back to how does this impact all of us and how does this impact the kind of vision we have for the world and the livelihood and the level of freedom and safety that we all get to have? Because right now, it's not just DEI doesn't just make the marginalized people, people of color, women, suffer. It's actually coming from the throat of everybody, anyone who is opposing white supremacy, anyone who is getting in the way of capitalism. And so, as I said before, the scope is just continuing to increase. And we need to be able to recognize when we are getting comfortable with the narrative that we can do away with something because it only impacts the few. That's just not true. And that's not what happens in reality.
- [44:20]
Lee McGowan
No. And Michelle, you know what's so funny, because I've been thinking about this a lot lately and I'm just formulating this concept, but like, you know, we're hearing so much about AI and how AI is going to take our jobs and how AI is going to do all these things that humans did. And I think, here's the thing, we have been pillaging the earth, the coral reefs, the rainforest, the animals, treating them like commodities. We can butcher all these animals because we want to do this. We can cut down this rainforest because we want to build this. We can destroy the ocean because we want to do this. And now I feel with AI coming, we're turning our eye on what humans we can butcher and get rid of. Because we don't really need these guys anymore because we need profit again. That this certain group of people, you know, for a long time it was humans. Humans are benefiting. So who cares about the oceans or the forests or the animals? But now it's like, well, which humans will benefit? Because, you know, we have these tech giants talking about humans as biofuel, and we're not sure if humanity should exist and which humans belong at the top. And I think this is what we're saying. It's like, you start with marginalized, you start with a small group, but it, it keeps getting a smaller and smaller circle to who matters, who gets to count, who lives in this next world that we're going into. And that's why we have to expand our groups. Not because it is financially viable, but because it is the collective that will be able to fight back. Whether we are gay, straight, black, white, brown, you know, it doesn't matter. We collectively have to fight back in a way that, say, the cows couldn't, the coral reef couldn't speak up for itself. We are now the coral reef. We are a sentient coral reef saying, you are killing us. You know, and I feel like that's kind of where we're at right now. And I, I, I don't know if I sound like an insane person, but I feel like the group that counts is getting smaller and smaller.
- [46:14]
Michelle Mi Jung Kim
Oh, yes. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, and I think what happens is throughout history we have fallen into the trap of seeing each other as the enemy and fighting for scraps that we've been given. Right? How often do working class people blame white working class people, blame immigrants for taking their jobs when billionaires are buying their third, fourth private jet? Right. How often do East Asian people who were afraid of anti Asian hate crimes blame black people for hurting our cause, when in reality that is not represented in numbers, Right. During the anti Asian hate crimes, studies have shown that the majority of hate crimes were actually being committed by white people. And yet in the media, what was portrayed was that it was black people who was hurting Asian people. So we're constantly falling into this trap of seeing each other as the enemy rather than really looking up at the systems and those who have created and who are controlling the systems. And so I think we have to build the collective consciousness once again to be able to spot the right enemies. And those enemies are always going to be the structural oppressive systems that are pulling all of us down and having us fighting for scraps and cutting each other's throats rather than looking at the right enemy and looking up at the people who have the most power, who have the most resources, who are refusing to acknowledge the amount of hoarding that they're doing that is causing immense inequity in the world. And I think at the very basic core, foundational level, social justice for me is about human lives. And it is built on the foundational belief that all of us, even the people that I disagree with, are worthy of dignity, safety, freedom and joy simply because we exist, simply because we are on this earth together. Not because we have earned it, not because we have proved it. And everything that I do is about protecting that truth, right? That we are all worthy of those things simply because we are human. And what centuries of systems of oppression in history tells us that this is this foundational truth that the systems of oppression want us to deny. We are constantly being told by these systems that no, no, no, certain people don't deserve it. You have to work for it. If you speak up, you don't deserve safety if you are black or brown or an immigrant or if you're undocumented or if you're a criminal. You don't deserve dignity. You don't deserve freedom. And so somehow we have been internalizing this false narrative that some people deserve safety and dignity while some people don't. And I think it's incumbent upon all of us to actually return to the truth that we're all deserving of all these things because we are inherently deserving of them. And what does it take for us to actually protect that truth and protect the inherent knowing that all of our liberation, all of our safety, all of our dignity, all of our joy is actually interconnected and that we cannot heal any of us, not me, not you, not our collective trauma, if we are not changing the conditions that are traumatizing us in the first place. And I think at the root of this work of equity and justice, social justice, is about our collective healing, our collective reclamation of our humanity and acknowledging the need for it and changing the conditions for it and taking responsibility for changing the spaces all around us and taking responsibility for our own front lines so that we can actually create the kind of world that we all deserve and that we need.
- [50:15]
Lee McGowan
Yeah. And it all comes back to this idea of who we are as a nation, because if we are honest with ourselves, we built the nation on the backs of people. We built the nation on the destruction of the indigenous. We built the nation using slave labor and immigrant labor. And that's an ugly truth. And you have to kind of acknowledge that truth to move forward from that truth, to unite as a group. It's one of the reasons, before you go, that I wanted to talk about your podcast, because your podcast is called I Feel that Way Too. And it's a way of collectively connecting us again by saying, like, it doesn't matter if you look like you or you look like me or you have my background or I have yours. You. You identify as queer, identify as straight. It doesn't matter. We often have the same existential questions. We have the same fears, the same dreads, the same, you know, seeking of courage. And you, you know, you go through that in your podcast. It's a way of connecting us all, you know, like, what keeps you up in the middle of the night? You know, probably a lot of us have the same things that we think about over and over again. And I think you're hitting on really important questions, but you're also trying to address an increasingly Isolated world and finding community in it. Does that feel fair?
- [51:28]
Michelle Mi Jung Kim
Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. We live in a world that insists on isolation, that we heal in isolation, that we mobilize in isolation. Somehow we get rid of the fears in isolation. And that's just not how change happens. In my life, there's been so many times where I've been scared to do anything remotely courageous. And oftentimes people think that us looking to the leaders is what gives us courage. People who are. Who seem fearless. Right. That's what gives us courage. But that's not been true for me in my life. What's given me courage over and over again is knowing that there are people to my left and right who are just as scared. But we're doing it anyway because we believe in something bigger. In the last episode that just aired our finale for the season, I shared this anecdote of me participating in my first direct action for Palestine. And I was so scared because we were all risking arrest. And I knew that that was a very likely possibility, but it was at a point where I just couldn't deal with the cognitive dissonance that was happening in the world and within myself. And the media was gaslighting us. People around me were being silent, and I just felt like I had to do something, otherwise I was going to go crazy. And so I decided to go do this direct action that was very scary. I was trembling the whole time. And one of the organizers started leading us in a chant, and she said, I'll say a phrase and you repeat. And the chant went like this. The chant said, don't worry, I got you. And then we'll repeat, don't worry, I got you. I feel that way too. I feel that way too. We'll get through together. We'll get through together. We'll make our way through. We'll make our way through. And we were all holding hands in this big warehouse and chanting. As soon as those words were dropped, I feel that way too. I started sobbing. I was weeping. And in that moment, I realized I was holding so much anger, so much grief, so much pain, so much loneliness, that really what I needed to hear was, I feel that way too. You're not alone in this. We don't know the answer. We may not know how to make this change overnight, but just knowing that I am not the only one feeling all these things and feeling this much pain in my heart, that gave me the courage to be able to go through with the potential arrest, potential, you know, whatever, Right? The potential escalation of physical Violence, police brutality, whatever that was, simply because I knew that all of us were in it together. And for me, this podcast, I feel that way, too, is about, ultimately, courage and community, that. But none of us can practice courage without each other, and we need to build conditions in which we can be more courageous. And we have to show up for one another. And one of my favorite teachers, Mia Mingus, says we can only truly practice courage when we are afraid. And, boy, are we afraid right now. And I think that there is a lot of possibility when we allow ourselves to sit in the discomfort of fear, sit in the discomfort of the possible retaliation and the cost of our courage, and to be able to then continuously tune into what it is that is grounding us, what it is that is keeping us in community with one another and using that to fuel us. And oftentimes, underneath the fear is not just anger and pain and suffering, but actually underneath the fear is deep, deep love that we have for one another. The reason why we hurt. The reason why I'm afraid is because things are happening to people that I love. Things are happening to humans that I love and I care about, that I know, deserve dignity and freedom and safety. And all the work that I do may look like it's being fueled by anger and righteous rage, and sometimes it is. But underneath that righteous rage is actually this expansive love that we have have for one another. And me wanting to keep you safe, me wanting to keep other people safe, and knowing that we all deserve so much better than this. And to me, people being in touch with their own fear, their own discomfort and pain, and being able to sit with it long enough that they can actually recognize what is actually undergirding, that fear and pain is the key to our collective action, that our. Our collective desire to keep each other safe is stronger than the desire for other people to harm us and to rob us of our humanity and dignity, that there is more of us actually wanting to do the thing that protects one another, than there are of people who are trying to rob us of that safety and dignity that we all deserve. So that's really what I wanted to communicate with this podcast. It's not that I am the most courageous, fearless person in the world. No, it's that I am just as scared. And I think that we can do it together because we're all feeling the same things, and we are wanting and we're dreaming of a possibility, dreaming of a world that we all deserve. And that there is a pathway, right? That at every site of oppression is actually also a Site of resistance that everywhere I look, look, there are people who are waking up every single day and mobilizing and doing something about this horrible reality we live in. And that we are somehow able to envision the world that we actually deserve. And people are building it everywhere. We just need to pay attention and join them.
- [57:22]
Lee McGowan
I connect with that so wholeheartedly. From a place of anger and furiosity is sort of where this project I'm in took off. But it really comes down to the fact that I think we deserve better, that I love humanity, that I want a better world for my child, that I want a better world for other people's children. That it really comes back to love and respect. That even if you start from a place of anger and frustration, that it can come back to a place of love and connection. And I'm so glad you're doing this work and I'm so glad you joined us today. And please tell people how they can follow what you do and follow you in the future.
- [58:03]
Michelle Mi Jung Kim
Yeah, no, thank you so much for having me and having this conversation with me so you can read my book the Wake Closing the Gap Between Good Intentions and Real Change. Tune into the podcast. I feel that way too. I think it is truly one of the most honest and hopeful projects I've ever worked on because of the stories that I've been able to share and the people that I've been able to interview. And then you can find me on social media, on Instagram, ichelleca Kim Kim, you can connect with me on LinkedIn if you want to break through the cognitive dissonance, because I am just don't.
- [58:35]
Lee McGowan
Pitch you a course.
- [58:37]
Michelle Mi Jung Kim
Exactly. Just come connect with me on LinkedIn if you feel despair as you're scrolling through LinkedIn and you can find me on my website, www.michellemijungkim.com I really hope that people don't give into cynicism in this time. I know there's a lot of fear and pain, despair and jadedness and cynicism about what is possible. And I think that is exactly what these systems of oppression is banking on us to have. That they are banking on our collective delusion, collective fear, collective silence. And in this moment, I think we can all tune into our own collective humanity and be sturdy enough to handle it, build the capacity to sit with the discomfort and fear and also practice hope as a discipline. Mariam Kaba is one of the of activist that I admire a lot, who's an abolitionist who talks about the importance of using hope as a discipline and building hope as a practice, it's not just going to come to us. We're not just going to become hopeful one morning waking up while doom scrolling it's going to happen. We're going to have hope because we're practicing it. And that requires us to look at what is actually happening in the world. Right? Tuning into the movement, tuning into the people who are being courageous enough to do the work on the front lines, but also the frontline being anywhere you are. So I hope that people can tune into the hope, practice hope and continue to show up over and over again for yourself and each other in this very disorienting time. But also a time of immense possibility.
- [60:08]
Lee McGowan
Yeah. Sometimes a phoenix comes from the ashes.
- [60:12]
Michelle Mi Jung Kim
That's right.
- [60:13]
Lee McGowan
Thank you so much for joining us today.
- [60:15]
Michelle Mi Jung Kim
Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure.
- [60:19]
Lee McGowan
So that was Michelle Mi Jung Kim reminding us that we can't keep pretending things are normal when we know they aren't. That we need to collectively wake up to what's happening, to how we got here, to the ugly and scary that we've allowed to flourish and find the courage to stand against it. That we must hope for something better, but we must also acknowledge it's not coming if we don't work for it. Right now, people are not being rewarded for standing on the right side of history. And there's real reason to be afraid of speaking out. But we have to do it anyway. We have to do it even if we're afraid. In fact, as Michelle says, we can only truly practice courage when we are afraid. I want to thank Michelle for joining us today and you for caring enough about our humanity to be here now. Stop fighting each other and turn your attention to the systems who are actually oppressing us. Only then can we see true change. Until next week. PG out. Before you go, I just want to thank the premium members of this podcast and encourage you, if you're not a member, to consider supporting my work. The independent media space is more important than ever as we try to bring you truth in a world of propaganda for power. If you see worth in what I'm doing here and you want to support it, please consider becoming a member of PoliticsGirl Premium by going to politicsgirl.com and signing up app. You will get this podcast ad free along with my rants sent directly to your inbox. So even if my work is silenced on social media, you will still get access to the truth. There is a link to sign up in the bio of this episode but also@politicsgirl.com. and as always, please like and share this podcast so we can grow the audience because the more people who have access to real information, the faster we can change the collective consciousness to something better. As always, thank you so much for your time and support. The Politics Girl podcast is written and performed by me, Lee McGowan and produced and edited by Happy Warrior Entertainment. All rights reserved.