UnSuk Zucker is a Korean American cis-gender woman, an amazing advocate, educator, and parent, focused on equity and justice, not only around her but also with a relentless commitment to doing the work within herself. This podcast is filled with raw, heart wrenching and glorious examples modeling vulnerability and transparency as she lives this work as a parent, educator, and professional leader for equity.
In this episode, UnSuk talks about:
- the challenges and joys of being a parent of a bi-racial son both in an effort to disrupt her own internalized white supremacy and externally in community and schools
- unapologetically raising their "rainbow sparkle unicorn boy" as his fullest authentic self with unconditional love
- her fears as an East Asian woman with her family in public
- a story of her son’s white school leader who found humor making a costume of the Make America Great Again hat and a disregard for the harm that caused families of color, immigrants and many other marginalized communities
- the age-old challenge of confronting individual acts of bigotry vs. the systemic process that has allowed the act of bigotry to happen.
- the need for white people to believe people of color and get out of the intellectual ways that whiteness demands the need for perfectly valid experiences to be through an intellectual lens of academia and books in order to have credibility.
These are just a few of the elements of brilliance UnSuk shares today.
We end with a powerful awareness of what leaders COULD do that is simple, but in the hold that whiteness has on our desire for perfection, not easy.