White People Work

My conversation with Silvia Ahn charts her upbringing as a conservative Korean American evangelical, and the process of transformation by which she has come to live out a deep spirituality of liberation and solidarity with marginalized communities. Silvia recently completed a master's degree in social entrepreneurship and tells a fascinating story of her own journey about how her own learning abou...

Join my conversation with my friend and colleague, Jovanie Smith. Jovanie is a black Haitian-American woman who lives in Atlanta, Georgia. Jovanie shares about the significance of her family in building up her strong sense of self, and reveals some of the wisdom and lessons about how to thrive in the midst of spaces that don't always honors the fullness of who she is. 

In this episode, Scott interviews his long-time friend, Alex Hsu. Alex is a Taiwanese American man who is a theatre actor in the San Francisco Bay Area. Alex leads the conversation into discussing whiteness through the lens of how it intersects with toxic masculinity, and about how that intersection has shaped the journey he has needed to walk to be true to himself as an Asian American Queer-Ident...

Join me in sitting at the feet of my friend, Abner Ramos. Abner is a Honduran immigrant to the US who after graduating from UCLA, moved back the East LA Area to work begin what has now been an almost 25 year dedication to advocating for underresourced students and communities. Not only does Abner's hard-won wisdom flow as he speaks, but he gives powerful invitations to take activism from social me...

Welcome to season two of White People Work! In this episode, I interview my long-time friend, Mark Yim. Mark is an attorney in the Los Angeles area, and shares in detail about his experience as a Korean American immigrant. Mark leads us into discussion about Asian American identity, and the complexity of the Asian American and immigrant experience. Join me as I learn from Mark, and let his experie...

In this episode, in addition to starting out with my own confession of the realities of being on this journey of taking responsibility for my own character formation as a white man, I interview the insightful Brandi Miller. Brandi has an incredibly popular podcast of her own--Reclaiming My Theology--and she and I have been friends for the past 10 years or so. Brandi shares about her experience of...

This week I interview my friend, Larissa Marks. Born and raised in rural Maui and now living on Oahu, Larissa is a realtor and a spiritual director. Larissa is a fifth generation Chinese American woman who has done a lot of deep work to come to a powerful sense of her own personal and ethnic identity. You can also learn more about her land-rights-advocacy work for indigenous Hawaiian folks at www....

Join me for the first published interview of my friend, Eddy Ekmekji. Eddy is an Armenian American immigrant, grew up in Lebanon and immigrated to the US at age 10. He's a thoughtful soul who knows how to navigate in and out of the white world in the US, and as a result has deep perspectives that we can learn from.

This is the first episode in the second season of White People Work! I've spent the last couple months in a new season of learning, teaching a class, and interviewing a number of friends of color about their perspectives on whiteness, white people, and their experience of life in the US as folks of color.

In this final episode of the first season, Scott shares about what it looks and feels like to have whiteness come close to home. As he processes the death of his father, Scott looks at the ways that the culture of whiteness shaped his family of origin and contributed to both his parents' declines, and then broadens out the danger of the "pioneering spirit" that's such a core part of whiteness. Als...

In this episode, Scott illuminates the most common problems with white progressives, even while identifying himself as one. This episode is targeted at folks who tend to identify as white progressives and is designed to hold a mirror up to their most common blind spots toward the end of being consistent between values and actions.

In this episode, Scott does a deep dive on the issue of intent versus impact. This is a very common complaint of folks of color about white folks. Often white folks want to be assessed on the intent of their words, actions, or choices, yet in contrast, folks of color are often more focused on the impact of those words, actions, and choices. 

In contrast to the last two episodes, which featured common practices that injure folks of color and common pitfalls white folks fall into, this episode is a proactive expression of cross-cultural practices that are healthy for white people.

In this sixith episode, Scott goes into some of the pitfalls white folks can fall into as they grow in racial awareness, and how to avoid them.

In this fifth episode, Scott lays out the eight common practices of white folks that injure and alienate folks of color. Additionally, he lays out why it's so important that this isn't a list of do's and don'ts for white folks--and what's wrong with that--but that it comes from a place of deeper engagement with wanting to discover our part to play in opposing racist systems.

In this episode, Scott pushes into the implications of the deeper definition of whiteness, exposes the directives of whiteness, and charts a path for getting out from underneath it. If you can make it through this episode, then this podcast is definitely for you!

In this episode, Scott goes deeper into the history of the formation of whiteness and race, including the historical impact of scientific racism and eugenics and how they continue to shape the unconscious conditioning of us who are white, today. This episode includes Scott's deeper definition of whiteness, why it's so troubling, and what white folks need to come to terms with if they are to be hon...

In this second episode, Scott defines whiteness and goes into the history of race that is crucial to understand if white folks are to truly understand themselves. It's this history that shapes how we understand ourselves as white folks in the US, and that shapes what so many friends and colleagues of color understand about us that we don't often understand very well, ourselves. This is part one of...

Welcome to White People Work, helping white folks understand ourselves and take responsibility for our presence in the world. My name is Scott Hall, and this is the introductory episode launching my first season of content. In this episode, you'll get a sense of who I am, and why I feel this podcast is important. Enjoy!