35. Naming White Supremacy (and Staying Present Through the Discomfort) with Amy McDonald

This episode is about choosing curiosity over comfort.  In this episode, I had the opportunity to sit down with Amy McDonald to name the system of white supremacy directly, explore how it was built and maintained through U.S. history, and talk about what it looks like to begin deconstructing it in ourselves and our communities.

The opening acknowledges an important truth: this is a conversation between two white women, speaking from one perspective. That’s not a disclaimer to dilute the topic — it’s a reminder to widen the lens. This episode is an invitation to stay curious, resist shutdown, and keep expanding the voices you learn from, listen to, and follow.

Amy shares how relearning U.S. history — especially the Reconstruction era and its aftermath — became a turning point. Together, we explore how identity, belonging, “comfort,” and community have been shaped by white supremacy for generations; how empathy can be conditioned out of communities; and why many people resist naming the system even when they can feel the consequences of it.

We also discuss how algorithms reward division, why in-person conversations still matter, and what actionable steps white women can take to disrupt inherited patterns — not through guilt or performance, but through honest reflection, education, and community-building.

In This Episode, We Explore

• Why the phrase “white supremacy” triggers shutdown — and why staying present matters
• What Amy discovered when she began relearning U.S. history through firsthand accounts
• Amy’s framing: white narcissism vs. white supremacy
• How belonging and identity can be weaponized (and why “community” can become a trap)
• The role of empathy erosion in white America (and why it matters right now)
• Why “comfort” is a pillar of white supremacy — and how discomfort becomes the doorway
• The algorithm problem: why social media platforms reward division and outrage
• Why movements historically relied on in-person organizing and relationship-building
• Practical steps for white women: books, diverse spaces, and learning to leverage power responsibly

Amy McDonald is a podcast host and political organizer-minded educator who uses historical research and systems thinking to help people understand how we got here — and what it will take to shift what comes next. She hosts The Foolish Optimist, featuring interviews with emerging candidates running for office outside the traditional political machine.

Resources & People Mentioned (as referenced in the conversation)

Books

• The Empathy Gap: It’s Black and White — Tammy Triolo
• Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy — Heather Ann Thompson

Creators / Accounts Amy Shout-Outs (verify handles/spelling before publishing)

• Tammy Triolo (also known online as “Delusional Influencer”)
• The White Woman Whisperer
• Portia Noir

Amy’s work

• Podcast: The Foolish Optimist
• Social: @amymaccc (Amy Mac — A-M-Y M-A-

If this episode spoke to you, it would mean the world if you took a moment to leave a review or share it with a friend who needs it. And make sure you hit follow so you never miss an episode of Conditioning to Consciousness.

You can connect with me on Instagram @jesscallahan_, join my Substack community at conditioningtoconsciousness.substack.com, or explore more of my work at jesscallahan.com.

My Back in the Body Nervous System Healing course is now available! Find it here.

Thanks for listening — I’m so grateful you’re here.

Transcript

Jess Callahan 0:01

Hey guys, welcome back to the Conditioning to Consciousness podcast. When I first rebranded the podcast under conditioning to consciousness, it was really important to me to really tackle some of these systems head-on. I think that it's pretty common for people to have an aversion to listening to content about patriarchy, capitalism, white supremacy. You know, it's um some of these words I think really actually make us cringe or they they produce a visceral reaction. That's like, I'm turning off the podcast, I'm turning off the podcast. But like my challenge to you is to stay present, just to tune in and just to like listen with curiosity. I also want to acknowledge before I turn it over to this interview that that we are two white women sitting in this interview talking about white supremacy. My guest today is Amy McDonald, and she is just a brilliant mind on, you know, I found her on Instagram. She's on all social media platforms, and she has her own podcast where she's interviewing like the next group of politicians coming up who aren't part of the system. But through this work, she's really started to understand history through a different lens and has started talking more openly about how white supremacy really is like at the core of so many of our problems. But so many people are just unwilling to look at it directly. And so naming this, that we are two white women having this conversation, just trying to be real about how we can do better, that's just one perspective. I think right now and always, it's really important to fill your social media algorithms and your podcast feed and read the books and watch the movies that are by or, you know, starring people who don't look like you, who don't sound like you, who aren't from similar backgrounds to you, you know, creating space to understand experiences that are not your own and figuring out how to how to just hold space for that and how to just put yourself in other people's shoes in order to really understand the stories of people who have, you know, been witnessing this systemic collapse for a really long time. So I'm really excited to turn the conversation over to Amy right now and just to hear her perspective on how we got here, especially through a historic lens and where we go from here. All right, let's dive in. All right. So, Amy, I have been really excited to have this conversation with you for a while now. I'm just like, I think that we're here today to talk just about white supremacy in general, deconstructing white supremacy in ourselves. And I think it's just so important for people to do the thing that kind of feels maybe uncomfortable. And so um, I'm just I'm really excited. If you could just start us off maybe by telling us a little bit about who you are and how you came to be doing this work.

Amy McDonald 3:17

Sure. Uh my name's Amy McDonald. I have been a thousand different things in my life. I've worked in fashion and real estate and music and politics. I've worked on campaigns, but I grew up in the South to parents who were from DC. And uh you might not be able to tell. It doesn't sound like I'm from the South, which caused me problems even as an adult and as a kid in the South. And I just started relearning US history a couple of years ago because I was thinking that something was missing. I was like, I'm missing something. Like I know I'm missing something, and something wasn't taught to me, and I need to like suss it out. And then I heard an American history tellers podcast on the Reconstruction era, and that's when it like clicked. I was like, oh, I was lied to. I like, and and maybe it was people don't even know that we're being lied to. Maybe it's just been passed down for so many years that we think it's normal. And that's kind of when everything started to register. You know, I've always um had a very innate sense of justice. That's something my parents like to talk about for me even when I was a little kid. Uh that was a joke in our house that we were saving money for me to get arrested at a protest or something. Uh and like that started when I was like five. Like, and I was like, I'm in trouble. And they're like, no, but you might be one day. Um and they're like, not for something bad, because isn't that doesn't mean you did something bad. Um, but yeah, I mean, I've I've people ask me when it all all clicked, and I I do think it's a mixture of working in real estate and a mixture of relearning US history, but it's kind of always been there in the back of my mind, like this just none of this makes sense. Uh, and to get to the bottom of it, I decided to read as many like first-hand accounts as I could find, um, specifically from the Civil War into Reconstruction and into like what historians will call the nadir of American race relations, which is the Red Summer of 1919, right after World War I. Um, this is when Greenwood, Tulsa, Oklahoma happens, Rosewood happens. And like, of course, this is when the massive migration happens from the south to the north and all of these things. So it's not just one, it's not just a southern issue, two, it's not just like localized, it's all over the country. And I was like, we're we're missing something and we can't move forward if we don't figure it out.

What do you think that we miss in our education system and how does it contribute to where we stand today?

Jess Callahan 5:42

Yeah, that's a really interesting perspective. And it's interesting too that you were like, I guess, told from a young age that like having that sense of justice was like okay, even if it was like a joke, right? Like you were like, this isn't it's not bad that I want to like speak out in this way. Um so what do you think that maybe this is a loaded question, but like what do you think that we miss in our education? And how do you think that that contributes to like where we stand today?

European immigration as a major contributing factor

Amy McDonald 6:15

Oh, that is a big question, but I love it because I think for most white Americans, business as usual is business as usual. For anyone that's non-white in the United States, it is openly and clearly a very biased system towards white people. It's very white supremacist in nature, and people keep telling me I need to be calling it white narcissism, and I think that's like I think that's a semantics issue, right? I think the way white people feel about themselves is white narcissism, but I think the system that we're under is white supremacy. And so when we don't teach like the truth around the melting pot, right? And in my mind, the melting pot theory is this big lie. But when we when we don't have like honest conversations around the melting pot, specifically in the United States, it's we're not talking about like the harms of white supremacy on white people. And I think that's something that we have to register because in my mind, what's happening in the United States right now, white America has been primed for it for over 400 years. And it starts with European immigrants coming to the United States and changing their name. They change their name, they change the way they dress, the way they speak, they do everything they can to signify to people in the United States who are already a part of the white group, which is, we know, not real, but they do everything they can to signify that they're supposed to fit in because they know if they don't fit in. I'm literally writing a long thing about this right now. If they don't fit in, it doesn't mean like guaranteed death, but it does mean guaranteed violence, right? And we have instances from all across the country where Sicilians are lynched, Germans are lynched, Jewish Americans and Jewish immigrants get lynched all the time, right? The official numbers for lynching is about 5,000. The they say it's close to a thousand of non-black people. Obviously, that number is also a lie, right? We know these numbers are reduced grotesquely. But I think when we look at the European immigrant experience and we talk about how much of their identity they lose to fit in, that is why white America today, many white Americans really struggle building community. They really don't know who they are, they have no sense of identity aside from being white in the United States. So they either turn to something like a religion, like a very organized religion, or, you know, when in 2014 a man comes along and gives them a purpose in joining this group to make America great again, and they get immediate community out of it, they get a purpose and they get their identity all wrapped up into one, it's a nice little problem solver.

Jess Callahan 8:49

Wow. Okay, so I'm a pattern recognizer, but I'm still like this. It's this is still it's like a complicated process to follow. So basically, I think what I'm hearing is like, in in like a summarized way, among many, many, many other like tentacles that have impacted this entire system, that there's a huge portion of people who like their ancestry, maybe dates back to them coming over from Europe. They are white European. They come here. There is immediately an expectation for them to change something about themselves so that they can fit in. So they're sort of they're losing that identity to become American, whatever that means, which leads to like this long-term deterioration of identity. But it's also like this layer of hypocrisy because there's so many people that are like, I'm Irish Catholic and you know, really proud of that, but then also like anti-immigrant. And it just like make it make sense. I don't get it, but this sort of fits in that framing. It's just really like a total loss of identity that has happened like generations and generations in the making.

Amy McDonald 10:00

I think so. I mean, I've I've heard this from many uh I mean I'll say it right now, look, or two white women talking about the effects of white supremacy on on white people. Obviously, like it's the only thing that I can really speak to because you and I, we are white, right? Like, if that's you know, by the definition of the United States, we are. But like you mentioned Irish Catholics, and you know, for a long time Irish Catholics were not considered American. Uh, they were not white enough to be American. And the way that they found their way and try like entry into it was joining the police force in the NYPD. And that's they were proving to other like none of this is all like in my mind, none of this is conscious, is all subconscious, but in my mind, they're proving to their their fellow Americans and their white Americans that they're willing to do violence and they're willing to do violence against non-white people. Um, because that is even today, don't worry, that's in my PD's way. Uh, but like it's it is uh there's so many different little moments in time where you're like, oh, you're signifying that you're ready to join. And and if you have to do a violence and you have to like make yourself a part of a criminal organization to do it or do a crime with them, then that's what it takes, which is crazy when you like take a step back and you think about it.

Jess Callahan 11:24

So even so where I'm here saying like it doesn't make sense, make it make sense. It actually does. It's just like this deeper connection like happening where it's like you get when you do get like identity served to you on a silver platter, but some of these cruelties or you know acts of violence are all part of it, it's like no there's just not a second thought put to it because finding yourself through identity maybe has a stronger subconscious pull than like not.

Amy McDonald 11:52

That's like the only thing that I can that it can make sense to me, right? Because what what we're seeing now in 2026 is a ton of Christians is purported to be Christians, are not up in arms about families being ripped apart. They're not up in arms around human trafficking, which like five or fifteen minutes ago we had all decided was terrible. Uh that was something like bipartisan support, human trafficking, bad. Um, but now it's like fine, and the only way that I can make sense of it is that this is now their identity, and they have to either live with the cognitive dissonance that their Christian beliefs matter less, or that they're going to just not think as much about what's actually happening because they've found their place, and that's that's that's that's what worries me the most about what's about to happen because at some point MAGA will fall apart and there will be like a extreme fallout from it. Uh like we're talking about deconstruction of white supremacy, they're going to be deconstructing from a decade or longer for some people of what can only be described psychologically as basically a cult.

Jess Callahan 13:10

Right. Well, and there is a there's a dysregulative like function to it too, right? When you live in that dissonance for so long, when you self-betray for so long, it actually does shift your brain chemistry so that the part of you that's like registering empathy and compassion is muted and you don't have the capacity, you're numb, you don't have the capacity to feel the things that like you would need to feel to see like this is wrong, right? Um, okay.

The role of empathy (or lack of empathy)

Amy McDonald 13:41

One of the wait, you were talking about empathy. One of the best books I read last year was by Tammy Triolo. Um on the internet, she is the delusional influencer, but she wrote a book called The Empathy Gap. It's black and white, and she spent a lot of time talking about how empathy was bred out of white America. And that's part of this like subconscious thing, is that's part of why it's hard for us to put ourselves in other people's shoes. I think women have an easier time doing it uh than men do specifically, but um you have to think about it like people in until like I don't know, the 1920s, 25, 1930s, would literally go and watch a lynching happen and come home and eat dinner.

Jess Callahan 14:30

Yeah.

Amy McDonald 14:31

The like I s I when I say the word lynching, my like body revolts. Like I get like chills and I freak out, and the idea that people literally could do that, and they would bring their children. There's there's pictures of children, and so like to have that capacity, and and Tammy makes this argument really great, really well in her book. It's to have that capacity, it's like we can't have that anymore. And we're now from there, we're now what probably three or four generations removed. So it feels normal, but it's not.

In order for us to come together, we have to understand white supremacy… how is this a path that can bring us back together?

Jess Callahan 15:09

It's no, I mean, there's like yeah, physiological response that happens. I mean, it's not like there's still we're we're still watching these things happen on on TV, right? It's maybe not live happening in front of us, but we're still, you know, it's still um we're not meant to witness these things and then go have dinner, right? It takes actual processing to like work through it. Um okay, so you said something recently along the lines of like, in order for us to come together, we basically just have to understand white supremacy. So how like how do you think that understanding it, naming it, working through it is a path that can bring us back together?

Amy McDonald 15:50

So, I mean, I think classic, uh, classic problem solving is it right here. First, we have to like understand there's a problem. There's a group of Americans who don't think that this is a problem. I think the majority of Americans are unsettled by the fact that the police kill people in the street, that ICE is killing people in the street. We've got people who are super vocal about it, and then we've probably got this like chunk of people in the middle who aren't not comfortable with it, but they don't know what to do. And so they're kind of just resting there. And realistically, the first step is like actually talking about it. And I don't see enough white people talking about this. Um and the thing for me right now specifically is like millennials, Gen Zers, and Gen Alpha are going to feel the brunt of the last like 40 years of of legislation the most. And it's mostly this is gonna be, I don't know how to say this in the way that'll make sense, but it's it's mostly built on exclusion and and making sure that like the civil rights that were passed and all these movements that happened in the 60s are slowly ripped back. And so like even young Gen Xers are feeling it a little bit, right? But it's it's mostly gonna be millennials of Gen Z and Gen Alpha, who if you are not a rich white man, you will not succeed because the system is going to be completely rigged, and it's already been very rigged against us, right? And I think millennials feel this the most because we're the first generation with the really, really, really, really high college costs. We're the first generation that like our salaries are not increasing with home prices. We're the first generation that now we're dealing with that have had to deal with healthcare our entire adult lives, right? Like healthcare is a fairly the health insurance system we have in the United States is like kind of newish and the privatization of it, but that's all built, every single thing that I've mentioned, housing costs, college, healthcare, all of those things have become the way that they are in an effort to exclude people who are non-white and in in the resulting and and and women. The Heritage Foundation loves to exclude women. Um, but in an effort to do all of that, you know, the younger generations of the United States will be flailing.

How do we begin to enact change?

Jess Callahan 18:15

Yeah. But you know, maybe like if if more people are tuning in and like setting higher standards for the people who are leading the institutions that impact our lives, like maybe we'll see some change. But do you think there's an opportunity for people who are on that, like maybe not, maybe not far right, but like the center group of people who hear a word like white supremacy and they cringe, like how do you reach them to help them understand that like this is actually the path to change and unity?

The importance of bringing people together

Amy McDonald 19:08

This is a question I think about every day. Uh I I'm I really struggle with this, right? Because um part of the like where I am just presenting information to the world, and I do try to make it palatable for white Americans, but like a lot of it requires me to like gentle parent people. And I'm not a parent mostly because like I don't want to gentle parent a child, nor do I want to gentle parent adults. But like, you know, part of the like the tenets of white supremacy, and you can find these online, is this like right to comfort, and white people expect the fact that they're allowed to be comfortable all the time, and being comfortable all the time is how you just like feel don't grow. Your brain doesn't change, nothing happens, right? They say as we get older, we try less new things, and that leads to like this level of comfort that like harms our brain, like truly. So I I struggle with that all the time. Um, I'm thinking about a conversation around basically everything that's wrong in the United States. That is going to be a long conversation around that, and then at the end, we're gonna loop it back to white supremacy so I can hold these people for as long as possible. Um but yeah, I mean, that is like textbook white supremacy is that the people are too uncomfortable to talk about something. So we just don't. Yeah. Yeah. It's uh well, like when I first started writing about like patriarchy, I would call it the pea bad word. Like my my kids, I I I have three kids and I I don't like gentle parents. I mean, I like I'm nice to my kids, but you know what I mean? It's it's hard to gentle parent like people, especially if they're not your kids. But like my my daughter used to call like it the F bad word. Yeah. So I was like starting to, I just like started calling it because like you say patriarchy, white supremacy, anything like that, and people are like, oh my gosh, shut down me. Yeah. But it is even like, so this is something that like I've been sitting with the idea of discomfort a lot lately, just um, because I do think that that's like a pathway to being able to reach more people, is like helping them spot how much an aversion to discomfort shapes their lives. And yeah, even um there was a point last spring that it was like one of the first beautiful days. And I wanted to sit out back. Like we have like deer and critters that like come and visit us. And I had like I wanted to sit out back with my dog and just like feel the warm sun on my face. Yes. And I went out back and I was like, oh, the chair cushions are still wet, like almost like icy, like they're just like wet. And um, and I was like, okay, I'm going back in. And and I was like, I got inside and I'm like, no, like that's silly. That's silly. We can either sit and be cold for a couple minutes or we can put something down over it. But like I just like this immediate, it's just such a simple thing. But immediate aversion to discomfort made me bypass something that I that would have made me feel really good that day. But I think that that's prevalent in every aspect of our lives until we start to really like work with it. And so yeah, it is. It's a hard thing. Um, one of the other questions I wrote down for you is basically like, you know, at one point, one of your posts was, you know, you were basically saying, like, I want to do the work of like talking about what keeps us divided, but the algorithms are built for division, right? Like the algorithms are basically gonna reward people who help divide us. Like, what do we do? And I don't know, did you come up with any good uh answers there? I'm like literally at this point debating um a couple of stops around the country where I literally go and I talk to white women at churches. Um because we gotta break through the algorithm hell that we're in. Like we're literally we are in the egg tech hell. Uh that's the only way I can describe it, right? These billionaires are getting richer and richer every single day. We are getting more divided every single day. I do see the algorithmic apps that we're on as a major problem for this, but it's helping them, right? Uh, so it's there's no incentive for them to change anything. I mean, there's no incentive, they're not going to change anything. They don't have any incentive to change what they're doing. Uh, so you know, I just keep thinking about all these other times where people have like created movements in the United States, and this is all before cell phones, it's all before every like everything else, and it's just comes back to one thing it's meeting people in person and having these conversations in a way that cannot be turned off by a billionaire ruling class that is happy to see us at each other's throats. Because if we're at each other's throats, we're not at theirs. Um and that's you know, like that's the that's the crux of it. But like we can't have a conversation around class without having this conversation around white supremacy and and white people have to get ready to get uncomfortable. Because it's not even it's not even their fault. That's the whole thing. At the end of the day, I'm like, this actually has nothing to do with you, realistically. It does because we do uphold it, but like it has to do with the future. Like, what the fuck do you want?

Jess Callahan 24:23

Yeah, yeah, it is. It's I love that idea though, like just like getting people being in front of people. I think um I had the opportunity to sit at a vigil the other week, and it was put on by a church in my town, and it was like, I haven't I haven't been in a church in a really long time. Yeah, I was uncomfortable honestly walking into the church. I was like, is this do I want to like stay? But but you know, the top like it was a it was a vigil um after Renee Good was murdered, and so it was like coming together for a a good reason, a common reason. I was like, okay, I can like share the space, share the energy with these people. And it was just so calming. It was like there was just this group of it was mostly people older than me, much older in some instances. And it was just like, well, of course we would be here. Where else would we be? And I'm in a town that's very divided, and so it was like I feel like there are so many audiences like that that like really would just be open to it. And it's that like ripple effect that you don't need to reach 50,000 or 100,000 people each time. You know, if you if you sit with a group of 15 or 20 people even, like and you reach them, that there's a much deeper ripple effect.

Why change can feel so slow

Amy McDonald 25:39

Exactly. And I I think that's it's it people are like, oh, it's too slow, it's gonna take too long. I I don't know, man. I I feel like the way that our country is right now, either we deal with this right now or we're gonna be looping back to it in like five or ten years. But the that means like I think I guess I'll put it this way. I think another thing that I find to be characteristic, oh my brother's dog is running around me, um, that I find characteristic of specifically like white-led movements in general, is that people think like, great, we'll do this and we'll get it done.

Jess Callahan 26:18

Yeah.

Amy McDonald 26:18

And it's never like that, right? Especially in the United States, right? But every single group of people who have fought for rights has had to continuously fight for decades and decades and decades, and then people get mad and they try to roll those rights back. That's the era we're in right now, is the rolling the rights back era. Uh, and I just I think people think it's a one and done thing, but it's like, no, there will always be nefarious people among us, and we just have to remember that like the people who care about other people are louder and more they might not be better funded, but we are there's more of us, which means there's more influence as long as we all like speak up and and work together.

Jess Callahan 26:58

Yeah, it I think there's such a there's such a um almost like expectation that like some voice, someone is gonna come to save us and fix this, or there has to just be my head move.

Amy McDonald 27:12

Oh, it's drive. Well, so I mean, for a while there it was like it's gotta be Gavin Newsom. And then for a while there, everyone was like, ah, the Trump Trump Epstein files will drop. Therefore, everything will be fixed. And I was having conversations with people in every single aspect of my life, being like, You're putting too much weight in these files, nothing will change. And people are like, you are just being a pessimist. And I'm like, I'm not a pessimist, I'm an idealist with a pragmatic rising. Like, I firmly believe that good will beat out evil, but right now, the position that we are in, the reality of the situation, is that a lot of people aren't gonna give a shit. And it's because it goes back to that identity being wrapped up in their purpose of making America great again, whether they're doing anything active or not. It's it's I don't know if Trump knew what the psychology was behind it when he started it, but it's working very well. It is working very well. Yeah, I think that that exists. Sorry to interrupt.

What is the work of white people and white women right now?

Jess Callahan 28:10

No, no, no, I think that this is this is the work though. Like, I think it's working in a way that like people don't want to admit that it's working because it's not like the Epstein files dropped and now we're like, okay, get rid of him and everyone else. But like it's the people are sitting, the people are rising up, and but that's not a fast process. Like we're in a moment where people are tuning in more, so there is opportunity, for example, to go to different places throughout the country and have conversations because you have a more attentive audience at least, I think. But it still comes down to us making a choice on an individual level to do the work in our own lives, which could actually like shift the trajectory of things. So, okay, in this moment then, like, what do you think is the work of white people and white women? Like, what why is it so important that we do fill in the blank right now?

Amy McDonald 29:04

Oh my gosh. Well, so white women right now, we have to like break out of this white woman myth. Um, I think we are all held captive to some extent of this myth of a white woman. And this is like the woman that has um, you know, every single white supremacist group has waged a war over. This is the woman that summer of 1919 was started, which is, you know, 37, I think it's 37 cities have racial violence and it's all white against black Americans. It's right after World War I. There's a massacre in Arkansas. Um, this is the same thing that causes Rosewood and Greenwood and all of these places to be attacked by white people is defending the white woman. And if you are a white woman, white woman, you know that it's impossible to be the perfect white woman. No matter what we do, we lose because the perfect white woman doesn't fucking exist and the goalposts are always fucking moving. But that is coming out of that's coming from white supremacy. And I am seeing a lot of women, whether they know it or not, buck the standards, right? Whether it's women standing up and saying, I'm not having kids, that is very, very, very not perfect white woman of you. Um or like even getting divorced. I mean, obviously it's much more normalized now, but like people are like, Oh, why are divorces so high? And it's like, well, for a long time, women were trapped with men, not just based on the law, but socially, right? Like for white women, it was the the goal of us is often find the white man, attach yourself to him, and and then you'll be happy, then you'll be complete.

Jess Callahan 30:41

Well, and the system is built then to keep her reliant on him. And so, yeah, even if you even if you want to separate yourself in that way, like you literally have no means of doing that, like historically, and and today that shows up, but it does, it does.

Amy McDonald 30:57

So, I mean, I'm I'm watching a lot of white women already do the work, even just by I and this is one place where I think the internet has actually been really fucking great because I see women every day, white women who are like, I like that outfit, I'm gonna try it. And then they post an outfit of the day which is completely different than anything they've ever worn before. And like, even doing that, just that is starting to train your brain to say, hey, it's okay. I'm allowed to take up space, I'm allowed to be bigger, I'm allowed to be louder, I'm allowed to not police other people for doing what they want to do and for having fun. Um like ever since I was very little, I've been told I am too loud, too passionate. I've been told I smile too much by other women, specifically white women. And I'm like, God forbid a girl be like remotely happy in the face of fascism. Um, but like I it's it's releasing the need to like police other people and like also living your life. I'm about to do a video where I start like you could be a good white woman, or you you could be a good white woman or you could live your life. Because I don't think people register how much it controls us.

Jess Callahan 32:05

Seriously, like I was I was creating a piece of content earlier just about like the scripts that shape us and tell us like you know that that you are too much or that you um, you know, we override our need for rest. But even as a woman, like how am I dressing to make sure that other people feel comfortable? Like if I want to leave my hair with no makeup on and like dark circles under my eyes, like fine, you know, like I yeah, yeah. There's just um, but I think what you named is also being okay with somebody else, just living their truth too. That's a really hard thing for people to do, to be like, your situation, I don't understand it, and it doesn't fit within my like current frame of knowledge, and so it's wrong. It can't be right, it can't be valid because I don't get it. And and I do see a lot of people building more capacity for that, not just trying to press people.

Amy McDonald 33:00

I see, I see both sides of it, right? I see people like getting more tolerant, and then I also see like a distinct scent of resentment. Uh, and this comes specifically again from white women, and I do believe it's because they're trying to live up to that ideal that is perfect, that is not attainable. Uh, and then they get mad. And I see I can like like resentment's one of those really complicated emotions that it just festers over time, and it's a lot of it has to do with the fact that either you're in a position that you regret, or you've done things you regret, or you haven't done things that you regret, and you're watching people do things that you really want to do. Uh, and I think I see that a lot with white women as well. And I'm just like, I just want to be like, free yourself. Like, fucking go skydive, do whatever you want to do. Like, I don't know.

Jess Callahan 33:49

Um even just say, I wish that I could go skydiving. Like, that's we releases a lot of that tension that makes you have to like knock the other person down for going skydiving.

Amy McDonald 33:59

It's crazy, it's just like mind-boggling to me. I and I see, but I do see both sides of it. I see both growth, and I also still see a lot of resentment. And I do think that's part of the cognitive dissonance that we see in the women of MAGA right now. Um, specifically ones that like probably wouldn't be there without their husbands. Uh, you know. And then I'm like, oh, I think you might just be mad because you know you could be living this life, but you have chosen to align yourself with someone who doesn't want you to. You're trapped, essentially. Yeah. But not really. Like you could But not, but like you are, you're you're in the trap, you're trapped in the iron cage of your own fucking mind. I mean Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jess Callahan 34:41

So, okay, what are like three things that a white woman can do now to like just do better? And maybe that means like to be a better ally or to work within their own worlds to just continue to dismantle the system. Like three things.

Amy McDonald 35:02

I'm not an expert on this, but I have been thinking about it a lot. I think if you're a parent, you need to be lining those bookshelves with books by um women authors, by black American men and women, by indigenous men and women, um, and making sure that your kids understand like real history. You don't have to tell them the worst parts of it in second grade, but they do need to understand that like we, our country, is a result of a really big goal to subjugate people based on race in perpetuity, right? Like, and to break people's hearts, minds, bodies, spirits, and souls. And that's everybody in the United States. I I firmly believe that like white American souls, for the most part, we're still very broken and and um we need to work on that ourselves. Uh, but I think I think stacking the bookshelves is a good place to start. I also need parents to understand that like you need to find diverse spaces, even if you're in I think that's a huge thing for me. My parents moved to sh North Carolina, Charlotte, from New York. My dad had been getting his master's in New York, and we immediately became very close friends with one of the only uh black families in town. So they were like, first of all, you know, they had three kids and they three of the kids matched our four kids perfectly. But second of all, like we had just moved from New Jersey, uh, like Hoboken, New Jersey, New York City, like we didn't, we weren't used to being around all white people. It was weird and we didn't like it. So I think making sure that your kids are in spaces where they are multicultural and they're in places where they're going to meet other people so that later in life, when someone says, ah, well, you know, insert trope about any sort of demographic year, they can be like, actually, no, you're incorrect. Like, you're just saying that because you don't know any of anyone in that race or anyone in that class or anything like that. And that's that like broadens kids' horizons from like day one. Um, and then white women need to understand their power. This is the thing that's been irking me the most. White women's victimhood is unbelievable. We have actually so much fucking power, and most white women refuse to tap into it. Uh, and this is again part of the like you talk about patriarchy a lot, I talk about white supremacy a lot. We have an amalgamation of patriarchy, white supremacy, and capitalism all like Frankenstein together. Um, I personally do think that it is the white supremacy that is the biggest problem, and then everything else kind of falls underneath it. But white women have a ton of power. And if you don't believe me, look at any like uh look at the fucking moms for liberty. They're changing the way we teach in schools, they're changing the books we read. The daughters of the Confederacy did the same thing. So if you are a white white woman who like thinks you have no power, I need you to take like 15 deep breaths and realize how much bullshit that is. And you have the power to you have the power and the privilege. You have both of it. Like it's not just pure raw power, you have a little bit of both, and you can leverage that in a lot of ways, whether that is building community in your neighborhood or just working towards whatever your community really fucking needs and making sure that it is inclusive of everybody in the community. It's not just for the rich middle school, it's for all the middle schools, right? Uh, things like that. That's good. Really long-winded answer. No, I I really struggle to get under three minutes for Instagram.

Amy shares more about her role models and inspiration

Jess Callahan 38:33

Yeah. Oh, um, yeah, I I imagine. I mean, because it's so loaded. There's so much, um there's just so much here. There's so much that we like because there is so much, even just like your con your mention of like white supremacy and patriarchy and all of it like being related, but it is like there is sort of like a tiered doctor of just like how it how it falls in. And it's hard, especially for people who aren't like pattern spotters, to be able to like make those connections right away. I think once you do make the connections and once you stretch your mind to be able to like see it, it's more clear. But yeah, um, I think we I think you can't unsee it once you see it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I agree with you completely. Yeah. Yeah. Once you once you genuinely do start to, it's like this is connected to that, which is like, but then it's kind of overwhelming because you're like, oh my gosh, everything's really broken. How do we change it? And then it comes back to like the things you said, right? Tune into what you can control in your own life and in your own community, you know? Um, yeah, I don't know. So okay, who who um who are your like role models?

Amy McDonald 39:40

Like who are people that you follow for inspiration or oh man, I there are so many, so many women that I follow on the internet that I'm obsessed with. One, I already mentioned the delusional influencer, Tammy Triolo, author, speaker, writer, all the things. Um The White Woman Whisper, one of my favorites. Uh she helped she she helped point out things and like kind of make connections that I thought I knew, but I wasn't sure. The Portion Noir, she is, I think it's her name is the Portion Noir. It might just be Portion Noir now. She's really fabulous. There's this woman that I just recently started following who I forget her name. I can give it to you. Um I'm gonna say it's like Sydney, but that's not right. She's another black woman who talks about like the intersection of pop culture and race and um feminism, and it's really like really interesting, and just like one of my favorite because you're talking about pop culture, it feels like light and breezy, but then you're like, oh shit, all of this makes sense, you know, the way that we're we treat people differently, or even just like they're casted differently, even though their talent is no different, and that kind of thing. It's very interesting. Um, I can get you her name. And then as far as like authors go, I mostly spend time in like historian books and things like that. One of the things that I spent a lot of time learning about last year was prisons uh in the United States. So I read um The Attica Prison Uprising, which is a Pulitzer Prize winning book. It's called Blood in the Water by I always forget her name. I follow her on Instagram, she's rad.

Jess Callahan 41:20

Uh I'll add, I'm gonna add these in the show notes. Well, yeah, we'll look them up and we'll add them.

Amy McDonald 41:25

But but like it's it's one of the most detailed books about five days of a prison uprising you could ever imagine. And then of course there's like almost 40 decades of getting the the state of New York to admit they were wrong. Um and it's yeah, it was just like an unbelievable experience, especially diving into the prison system, which I always knew was fucked up, right? Like I've unknown that, and then we have literally an amendment in our constitution saying, you know, slavery goes away unless we can profit off of it in a private prison. That's not I'm paraphrasing what the 13th Amendment says, but basically it says, yeah, if you're in prison, you can still be a slave, and that has turned into an incentive for private prisons, which is something that we feel the reverberations of in every single community. I mean, truly. So um, yeah, it's been a very interesting couple of years just like reading so much, and I kind of just pick themes and and dive into them, and then I I oh one other woman that I'm obsessed with, uh, Keandria. She I mostly follow on threads, but she is a really good person to like look and look towards and listen to if you are trying to figure out how to like use your skills that you already have to change things, right? So she was the woman that dove into the code of the go send give send go um fake like racist go fund me. Uh they they allow racists to raise money, and it was the woman who called the little kid and and word who raised almost a million dollars, and she dug into the code to figure out some anomaly that like kind of got the money frozen for a bit. I don't know if you remember that. It was last year, I think.

Jess Callahan 43:16

I I don't. I feel like the news cycle I'm so fast. In person, yeah, but there's some like massive things that I'll be like, I have no clue how I missed that. Yeah. You can like something that happened yesterday is already old news. It is. And that all and that's all. This is all it's guess what?

Amy McDonald 43:33

It's all connected.

Where can we find you? And Amy's merch drop.

Jess Callahan 43:33

Yep, yep. By design, I know. Yeah. Oh, it's yeah. Wow. Um, okay, so if somebody wants to find you, where is the best place to find you?

Amy McDonald 43:44

I'm a podcast host. I host a podcast called The Foolish Optimist, which is very different from what I'll everything else I talk about, but we're interviewing candidates running for office and I have super important. Super important, super exciting. It's so diverse. It's like It's mostly people who've never run before, so it is a massively young group of people. I say young up to like 55, because if they are 55 in the United States government, they are fucking young. Sad. Um, but just like a really, really great group of people, young people, men, women, non-binary folks, trans folks, um, veterans, just anyone you can think of. And so that's anywhere you get your podcasts except for Audible, because I hate Jeff Bezos. And then I'm on pretty much every social media app as Amy Mac, A-M-Y-M-A-C-C-C. Awesome. And and that's yeah.

Jess Callahan 44:38

And and um by the time this posts, your merch drop will have already happened.

Amy McDonald 44:45

But everyone should check out your new merch inspired by I can I I can tell you how this happened because it does actually oddly relate back to white supremacy. Um, and you'll you you can't tell anyone because you're gonna know before everyone else. But this woman named Heidi called me a deranged banshee, and I thought it was so funny because like I just haven't heard the word banshee in probably a decade and a half. Yeah, and this woman, Heidi, uh, has her the years that her family came, she's a white woman, but she has the years her family came to the United States in her bio. Uh, and I realized through our conversations, and when I say conversations, I mean her like screed of posts. Like, just I I told her if she was gonna keep posting on my page, she needed to use punctuation because I just was like, I can't read this, I feel like I'm having a stroke. Um, but she got really mad because I was telling people to shit on the daughters of the Confederacy. Uh and yeah, I mean, she screamed at me and told me that I couldn't talk about that war because my family hadn't been around that during that time. And I was like, well, actually, the majority of my family was. I don't put it in my bio because I'm not a fucking weirdo. Um, so yeah, that's that's coming out. You can buy that. It's gonna be like hats and mugs. Um I'm trying to figure out the mugs. The mugs have been causing me problems, but it that that'll be there's three different types of hats because I like hats, so everyone else has to wear a hat. Um, but yeah, that'll come out February 7th on my birthday.

Jess Callahan 46:13

Amazing. So yeah, this will um this will post just after that. So if anyone is listening, you can now go and find the merge and get it. And yeah, we can all match. It'll be fun.

Amy McDonald 46:27

Just so, so silly. But yeah.

Jess Callahan 46:30

Cool. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you so much for being here. I think that I I know I've learned a lot. I'm gonna have to go back and listen to some of the like historical points that you mentioned. And like, I'm gonna go back and do my research. I'm not familiar with all of them. So I'm just grateful for an honest conversation about a topic that can be uncomfortable for some people, and also just like the opportunity to stretch my own brain more. So thank you.

Amy McDonald 46:53

Thanks for having me. I'm not used to uh being a guest. I feel like I there are literal moments where I was like, did I just black out while I was talking? Because I'm just like so not used to talking like this. That's so sad. That makes me so sad. Um, but yeah, thank you so much. I appreciate it.