Jamie Lee  0:00  
Jamie, welcome to risky conversations. Why? Because everything that's worthwhile is on the other side of a risky conversation. My name is Jamie Lee, and I'm an executive coach for women and marginalized leaders who don't like office politics. I help them navigate the messy human side of leadership so they can accelerate their career growth without the drama. Today's guest, Dr Christina Alcalde is a Gender and Women's Studies scholar, anthropologist and professor of global and Intercultural Studies at Miami University in Ohio, where she previously served as vice president for transformational and inclusive excellence. She has published widely and speaks nationally and internationally on leadership, inclusion, gender and racialization, gender violence, migration and exclusion and belonging now before we get into today's interview with Dr Christina Alcalde, I have to address the world we're standing in right now. We recorded this conversation in December 2025 before Operation Metro surge in Minnesota became lethal for US citizens. Since the recording, the murders of Keith Porter, Renee good and Alex pretty, along with countless abductions and forced deportations of immigrants, have turned the academic concept of institutional whiteness into a devastating, lived reality of institutional violence. While Christina and I didn't have these specific names in mind during the recording, her insights into how institutions exclude and marginalize provide a vital framework for understanding how we reached this point, and how we might begin to dismantle it. Here's a quick look at what we're going to dig in. In this conversation, we're going to talk about going beyond us versus them, why addressing institutional whiteness is not about attacking people, but about fixing the hidden systems that block everyone from equity, the illusion bubble, why the status quo feels so natural to some people while creating moving goal posts for high achieving women of color, immigrants and other marginalized people and feminist curiosity, how to stop being complicit and start asking risky Conversations. I'm sorry I meant asking risky questions. Take, for example, who actually benefits from the status quo. And we also talk about having agency in the heavy moments like we're in right now, how to navigate institutional hate while holding onto our internal authority and authenticity. And we talk about connecting the dots, how historical exclusions like redlining continue to build the workplace barriers we see today and how feminist coaching plays a role in that. So without further ado, here's the interview with Dr Christina Alcalde. I was thinking about the books that you have written as a gender, Women's Studies scholar, anthropologist professor, and I was thinking, yeah, dismantling, I'm making sure I say it correctly, dismantling institutional whiteness, emerging forms of leadership in higher education. I coach women of color and white women. I coach all the women and dismantling institutional whiteness. I feel like that is a risky conversation topic, but I could be wrong. Tell me more.

Cristina Alcalde  4:21  
Oh, no, you're absolutely right. I think it's gotten riskier. So first, thank you.

Jamie Lee  4:26  
In 2025 it's gotten really risky.

Cristina Alcalde  4:29  
Yes, it's really risky to talk about dismantling anything. Yeah, that has to do with inclusion or justice or equity, and I think even the word whiteness also, I think some folks assume that it's somehow about attacking white people, which it's not, or that it's somehow a binary of us versus them, which it's not right. So the idea behind it really was to identify the structures and the systems that. Impact all of us that don't allow us to have more fulfilling lives, to have more equity and institutions. So this was specifically about higher ed. And higher ed, like a lot of places, there are a lot of inequities, and calling them out can be very risky, and calling them out in a book, can be riskier, but the hope was that as a community, we can actually come together and work towards some change, right? I mean, it's risky to name it, but that's the first step. We can't change anything if you don't name it. So the idea was, let's name this and see how people can engage with some of these structures that have been around for a long time, and they impact, as you said, you know, women of color. They impact really everyone around us, not just women of color, but women of color are specially impacted by many of these structures, whether it's, you know, differential salaries or having to do more emotional labor, and just even naming those things can be risky, just for the individuals, but also for people who have leadership roles, because sometimes right leadership roles are they're more comfortable than they should be. They're not risky enough, because they're about the status quo. And so to dismantle anything, you have to take risks, and that means, as a leader, you have to name things and find ways to work with others to dismantle those

Jamie Lee  6:30  
and we're seeing politically in the year 2025, more push to keep the status quo, to strengthen that status quo than before. But before we talk about that, what is whiteness that you refer to when you say dismantling institutional whiteness, you say it's not a binary thing. It's not an us versus them thing. So then, what is the definition of institutional whiteness, or whiteness.

Cristina Alcalde  7:02  
So I think we can approach and I think one way to approach it is to be able to look at the systems that uphold histories that have privileged prioritized whiteness, and see how they've impacted our workplaces, see how they impact our everyday life, and address those issues, right? So to dismantle something that is embedded with whiteness doesn't mean to get rid of white people or to get, you know, it's it means being able to see how some of the structures, it's not based on merit. It's not, you know that there are, for example, in some places, mostly that the leadership structure is mostly one identity. I think it sometimes we assume that it's because of merit, but when we look at histories, and when we look at how people got there, and the privileges that some people have had, it's then we start seeing how it's much bigger than an individual and how good they are, it also has to do with the barriers they faced and how other others haven't faced those barriers.

Jamie Lee  8:12  
Right? My understanding of whiteness, just as you said, it's not about white people per se, but my understanding of whiteness is that it is related to colonialism and colonialist thinking, which is that one race or one subset of people is somehow inherently better.

Cristina Alcalde  8:36  
Yeah, exactly. It's about hierarchies, right? I mean, this is fundamentally about hierarchies, and in our histories, it's often been about white people at the top of those hierarchies, and then that means others below that and not having the same rights and not having the same opportunities, right? So absolutely, I think if we you know, and I think you bring up colonialism, and I think that's critical, because we have to look at things historically. I think sometimes we just think of but today, you know, it's not my fault that so and so that that happened. But it's not about again, an individual and our present. It's about looking at things more holistically, right? And seeing why things are the way they are, and asking those to me, it's also about feminist curiosity, right? It's asking questions about, why, who benefits from that? How did we get to where we are now? Right? Why is it that some resources are concentrated here, and some folks don't have access to those same resources? It's asking those questions. And so I think you know, it's yes, it's also about individuals, but it's about how we've put those inequalities within systems, within institutions now that it's not just because of one individual, it's the whole it's a policies right the way they're written. So it's much broader than that.

Jamie Lee  9:59  
Mm. When I was studying intersectional feminist coaching with Carl Lowenthal, we learned about the history of redlining, which is systematically excluding people of color from from homes from financial resources. And you also see that those decisions impacted neighborhoods. I live in Newark. I live in a historically African American neighborhood. And this is a bit of a bit of a tangent, but I learned that there used to be a Chinatown. I'm not Chinese. I'm of Korean descent, but this was very interesting, very interesting to me, because I'm like, oh, there was a Chinatown. There was a there was an Asian ghetto in Newark, basically. And it turned out the reason why there was a Chinatown in Newark is because the Chinese were excluded in the Chinese Exclusion Act of, I think, 1864 and therefore the people who had already been the Chinese descent, people who had already been living in America, couldn't get housing anywhere, except for, you know, very select, minimally resourced neighborhoods, and so they all congregated in this like two block radius, and now that neighborhood is a parking lot. It's been completely raised and erased. And I spent some time in Detroit over the summer, and I also learned similar things happen to black neighborhoods in Detroit, right? They were systematically just sort of bulldozed over.

Cristina Alcalde  11:50  
And, yes, noticing those things, right? Like, who is, who benefits from that? Right? Like, when we see things like that, like, I think it's important to ask her so, like, who's benefiting from that? And how did, like, how can this change, you know, and how can, and why is it the way it is? And you bring up, yeah, you bring up the exclusion. And just, I just in in my approach to different things, that's what it's about. Exclusion. We exclude others, sometimes to feel that we're better, like, sometimes, you know, we talk about belonging, but I find sometimes it's about excluding others, because if they're not part of this, then I'm definitely part of this. So it's about, like, making sure that I'm in and somehow that means that others are out right, whether it's Chinese descent or African American or Latinx, or, you know, any number of different identities in different moments in history. It's about how individuals are seen as less than and then that somehow justifies violence, right? And it's not a one time thing.

Jamie Lee  12:59  
And the insidious part of this institutional whiteness is that it creates the system in such a way that people don't recognize what has happened, and it just starts to feel as though it's just it creates a blind spots, right? If you, if you always grew up in a, you know, nice neighborhood with mostly white people or mostly Asian people, like I did, right? And you don't see people other kinds of people of color, or you don't see disadvantaged people, and so you have a warped image of who they are, like, I remember growing up in New Jersey, and people tell me, don't ever go to Harlem. Yeah, I was taught, I was taught the prejudice,

Cristina Alcalde  13:54  
and it seems natural to us, right? So I mean so much of what we grew up with, and so I'm an anthropologist, but mostly I identify also as an immigrant, right? And so it's about being an outsider. And one of the things that I keep noticing, and even in, you know, the work that I do in gender studies, is about how we're always looking at some somehow something seem natural to something, right? But again, we're not asking who natural for whom, and who's benefiting from seeing that as natural right? It's always it's only those of us, I think, who have had the experience of being on the outside and seeing and being able to see the broader structures right and the systems that we can start asking these questions and like, why is that natural? And it's so difficult, right in the work that you do, too, to just be able to raise awareness about that, because we can work with individuals, but then we also see that it's it's systemic, it's embedded in the systems, and to dismantle those systems and. Yeah, it's so much more difficult, because some things seem natural, and calling attention to them seems like you're attacking someone or and and even worse, if you're seen as a, you know, if you identify as a woman of color or as an immigrant or as a feminist, it's like doubly outsider, triply outside,

Jamie Lee  15:18  
yes, yes, yes, and yes, I like to call it like people don't like it when other people pop their illusion bubbles. I'm thinking about my clients, who are women of color, who are high achieving, you know, they get more done on a Tuesday morning than the average anyone. Yeah, and yet, when they go to their mostly pale, you know, sometimes male supervisors, or even the board of directors, somehow they notice that the goal post just keeps on moving for them, or they're told that, yeah, you're doing great, but something is still missing. Yeah, you're doing okay, but we still want to check this, the one thing and and, you know, it's, it's maddening. I know people call it microaggressions. I like to call it it's, it's an illusion bubble that people don't want to have bursted, that people want to stay inside, because it's, it's comfortable and it feels natural within that bubble.

Cristina Alcalde  16:23  
Yeah, right. So comfortable, just because that way you can also say, Oh, well, I it's all good intentions,

Jamie Lee  16:33  
right, right? They're like, it just feels, I don't know. It just feels natural that you don't get promoted yet. It just feels natural that I'm going to do one more performance review around you, and

Cristina Alcalde  16:47  
you have to prove yourself again and again and again. Right? Yeah, we don't question. Why are you assuming, like, why are you asking me to prove myself again when I've already shown what, like, how much I can accomplish, right? It's this Yeah, and, I mean, yeah, that's exhausting. And again, it's those structures that we don't name and we just we perpetuate them often, right? Whether it's behind closed doors, and we don't speak up when someone is saying so and so they need an extra performance review, right? And we're sitting there and we don't say something. It's like, we're, we're it's also easy to kind of see it happen and not do anything and be complicit in it sometimes. And I think that's part of the difficulty, too, of the heaviness yet subtlety of Yes, microaggressions, yes, that illusion bubble, and beyond that, just people are comfortable. We're comfortable in structures that are highly unequal, right, and full of hierarchies.

Jamie Lee  17:43  
May I ask you a question about microaggressions? Yeah, I learned this phrase some years ago, and it resonated with me because microaggressions imply that the people who are saying comments that sort of land not well, to say the least, right, like you can tell they don't intend, they don't consciously intend to do harm, they don't consciously intend to speak their unconscious bias. And yet it lands like a paper cut, right? And that's why I'm like, oh, micro aggression. Okay, that makes sense, but recently, I got feedback from somebody in an academic institution that there are no microaggressions. There are only aggressions, and I kind of took an issue with this, with this framing, because I, while I can understand that person's perspective, to never diminish the experience of somebody who is marginalized, whether in a school or at a workplace at the same time, I am not a fan of it because it subtly creates this worldview that people who don't know better better are harming us out to get us right, like if people are just doing aggressions, Then it it presupposes a self concept that is already disadvantaged or at harm. And I'm not a fan of that, because it's it doesn't give give the person as much agency to decide.

Cristina Alcalde  19:36  
So both, right, like both the person who is committing the harm and the person who is receiving it, yeah, understanding you correctly, yeah, it's like the the agency. On the one hand, it's an interesting perspective, because it is an aggression. I mean, I my person, like they are aggressions, but we can change things, right, I hope. And so and so, thinking of. Of, is it a microaggression, because it because of the impact, or because it happens so often? Because I'm sure, you know, we talked about, also, folks talk about how it's like death by 1000 cuts, so it's like that already, you know, tells us that it is an aggression, because it's happening all the time, right? And so I appreciate, definitely the perspectives that you've shared about how someone can see it as an aggression, but also the idea that they're all like their aggression is always coming towards us. To me, that also brings up victimization, and when we talk about people of color and women of color and people in margin with marginalized identities, it is important to acknowledge all the violence around us. It's so important. And at the same time, I think there's also the space to talk about resistance and agency, right? And so because there's that's also part of the reality. And if we focus only on this binary of they're the aggressor and we're the victim, then that leaves out the agency of many, many people who are experiencing this and telling their full stories, also about raising awareness about how they resist and how we resist. You know, every day, and I'm saying both day and week, because it depends on the situation, right? Who's Yeah, also we, I think we can all commit microaggressions, and so we have to be really aware of that. And I do think we need to be called out constantly.

Jamie Lee  21:32  
Okay, that's a humbling experience. You know, to be called how constant. I mean, I like you said, you said we and they like you can easily imagine yourself being on either end of that spectrum, as can i And yeah, I don't know if that's because I'm a light skinned East Asian person, and so one of my mentors called me like white adjacent. And at first I bristled at it, but then I'm, I'm like, she's right.

Cristina Alcalde  22:09  
Go ahead. Oh, so much of our identities is how others perceive us. Yeah, that's why I think it's sometimes we can I mean, this is resonating with me and that we can be an either end the receiving end or the human because it's so we can identify a certain way, but depending on the context, there's little control sometimes, in how other people identify us and the expectations they have of us, and therefore what they say about us to us or behind closed doors,

Jamie Lee  22:37  
right, right? But I mean, I was thinking about my unearned advantages at one point, and I realized no one questions whether I'm a safe person to approach. People approach me all the time. No one questions whether I know things. They ask me for directions, even though I'm terrible at directions, you know. And people don't, you know, shirk away when they see me walking down the street. I'm like, wow, that is a huge honored advantage that I have. You know, living still, living in America in 2025 I'm curious. Maybe you can walk us through your journey a bit. How did you arrive at being a Gender and Women's Studies scholar, anthropologist, Professor, coach, writer, how did you arrive at where you are?

Cristina Alcalde  23:26  
Thank you for that question. It's helping me reflect, and I think part of it is I do think my identity as an immigrant has informed a lot of my past so far, and I there's hopefully a lot left still that path. I don't know what directions I'll go in, but asking why things seem natural to others. You know, moving learning English. So I learned English when I was eight, so trying to me too. Hey, see where did you ever agree from? From Peru. Oh, yeah, okay, sorry. I know this is a great conversation.

Jamie Lee  24:04  
I immigrated from South Korea, and I arrived, like, a couple days before I Wait. Was I turning seven or eight? It was just around that. It was just around that age. Well, right?

Cristina Alcalde  24:18  
Say I was about to turn eight, and I don't, you know, but things at that age, think you I remember it. Thankfully, I was old enough to remember things. But I also very much remember people looking at me and, you know, asking me, also like, Do you sleep with the monkeys? Do you know this and that? And I didn't know. I wasn't able to respond. I remember one teacher, she was amazing, and she would just look at me, and really slowly, she was just, do you want cheese pizza or pepperoni pizza? So very early, I thought, I need to learn how to respond to what I want for lunch in the school cafeteria. But, you know, seeing. How very I was seen as this other. And then we moved around. So I moved around quite a bit growing up. And then, you know, I would ask myself, like, why? We would ask my parents, why did my sister and I have to set the table and my brother had to take the trash out so very early on, about, like, why do some people have to do some things? Why do people speak a certain way? This is the why, why, why. And then by the time I got to college, I mean, this is kind of the very short version. By the time I got to college, I didn't know there was such a thing as anthropology first, but when I found out that there was something called anthropology, I was like, oh, it's about trying to understand why people do the things they do, and really building awareness and being curious and being a participant observer, it's like, yeah, I want that. I can learn languages, I can learn about this. And then through that, I I focused on gender violence for a while, and that's what I focused on for quite a few years, exclusively first, and that was also about understanding hierarchies, exclusion, difference. And I chose to do that first by focusing on Peru, which is where I'm originally from, as a way, also to think of a way to give back, in some ways, to communities that I come from, and within that, I quickly understood and saw how, in what I was analyzing, racism was coming in, even into intimate relationships, how women were being treated by in this case, it was heterosexual relationships by their partners. It also had to do with how they were viewed, not just by those systems outside, but internally, how those very like the racism, the sexism, later on, when I focus on other populations to the homophobia, other things are coming into the most intimate of spaces? Yeah, and so I you know, so Gender Studies is something that has engender really, has been a really important lens for me in trying to understand, again, why people do the things they do, and how we can change things really, once we become more aware of different perspectives. And I started going into administration. So I've been in administration quite a bit too, and in leadership roles, precisely because I wanted to not only write about and teach about and do research on the systems, but also try to try my hand at changing them. And so that's I see all of that as really connected. And so I've had a lot of opportunities to be the first and only into to all these things. And it's and that's also what brought me to coaching. I mean, I think when I learned more about coaching, I worked with an executive coach who was amazing, and I also became interested in supporting others as a coach, because it's a wonderful way, I think, to build our own awareness, to support others in doing that. And even though we focus on individuals, and precisely because we focus on individuals, we're able to also bring in those systems. We're able to provide space not just to acknowledge the weight of those systems, but to think through how to address them. And then when we bring in feminist lenses, then we can start thinking of how to work with others, or how to just, you know, under like, work towards a change that we want, or work in a way that's aligned with who we are, and in a very intersectional way who we are, right, like all these different identities we have, that's my very roundabout way of, You know, I have a, I have a very interesting journey that goes back and forth in different ways, but a lot of different identities.

Jamie Lee  28:48  
Yeah, when you were speaking to your academic experience, you were talking about, you wanted to learn how to change, how to, you know, implement, how to instigate change within systems. And I was curious, okay, how do we do that? And I think at the individual level is also one of the key solutions, because there are no systems without people, without individual people. So makes a lot of sense to me, as another fellow executive coach who, you know coaches through a feminist lens, I feel like I'm speaking to a kindred spirit here and love this. And I'm curious like, what else do you think can be a solution for systematic system level change?

Cristina Alcalde  29:41  
I think definitely working with individuals, as we just talked about, I think also, you know, one of the things that I find that's both really exciting and so challenging is then, when you're in those systems and you have a leadership role identifying the specific policies that are problematic. Work and so not working against them, but working to change them directly. And my experience has been that that is very, very difficult. There's a lot of many more microaggressions The higher you go. It seems that are more invisible to many. But I think that's where we need more feminist lenses, more feminist curiosity, more folks raising awareness about specific policies that make systems unequal, that make system non welcoming, for some folks and for some experiences, right? And I think that's the only way we can undo or make a it's not even about undoing, it's just making it better, right? Yeah, sometimes you don't have to get rid of something. You just have to understand how it got to where it is and adjust, right? And it's whether it's a policy that has to do, you know, in higher ed, with hiring and how we hire, or whether it's about salaries or about mentoring right creating policies that actually speak to people's needs and staff and faculty and students, I think it's just seeing what community we can make at a micro scale and how we can then scale that up while we're naming the different policies in existence that really work against our goals, and I think so much it's like we often have these goals and values and missions and organizations and institutions, but my experience is that we rarely really, very deeply reflect on how our specific policies actually reflect those values. I mean, so many their values of inclusion and like, and we don't really go that deep and ask the difficult questions.

Jamie Lee  31:49  
And we've seen pullback this year. We've seen companies roll back their dei initiatives. We've seen people you know, seen a lot of women, black and brown women, lose their jobs. I saw this post on LinkedIn about how I forget which government office they're, they're, they're rolling back the font change because everything should be Times New Roman, not a sans serif font that makes reading easier for you know, more more groups of people, makes the reading more accessible. So, having said that, I wonder, I wonder that this system level change is so hard to come by because the system is informed by by ideologies that you know, at the root, you know, like when you think about western systems, it's about individualism, it's about capitalism, it's about colonialism, it's about, You know, extraction, whereas when you think about pre colonial societies, right? Or indigenous society, like back in Korea, before the Korean peninsula was colonized by the Japanese and then by the Americans. You know, there was a collectivist philosophy. There was something about, like, interdependent societies, right about about communities, and there's a different way of relating to each other, to ourselves, to nature. And, yeah, I wonder what you think about that. It's like we almost have to reach back all the way back in time to find those instances where we were actually relating to each other without, you know, eroding nature and and diminishing each other in such a system systematic way. And, yeah, I wonder what you think about that, since you are an anthropologist, since you have, you know, studied Peru and other societies and cultures.

Cristina Alcalde  34:08  
I mean, I think goes back to, I mean, what you were saying, you know, I can look at it from different perspectives. And one is just, yeah, the individualist approach that you just brought up. I think we see that in lots of different I see that in lots of different places, yeah, and sometimes we, we don't question. I think part of it is also, you know, going back to exclusion and hierarchies, like you provide this, and I would add exclusion hierarchies to the list that you shared, because it's, it's also very easy to stay in the moment and to say, you know, oh, yeah, we can't change the system. We're going to change the system, but not too much, right? Because even though we're not naming it, oftentimes it's about because what will that do to my position if I let other people in? Isn't that going to diminish me? And so there's so many barriers to actually shared governance into a more collective. Work, and I see that in different cultures, in different societies, in different time periods, too. And fundamentally, what I keep going back to, it's we just somehow it's so much easier to work in binaries, to work in hierarchies, to work in exclusion, right? And whether it's behind closed doors or in front of other people, we keep reinforcing that like I, you know, I think of like you said, how many black and brown women have lost their jobs? How many things have and they're individuals, but this is also about something much bigger, like, who has, who should represent power and and then, and who's who's naming that when those people are no longer in those spaces, are those conversations being had? No, I don't well. I don't think so. I don't think they're the really difficult conversations that actually challenge the status quo and that actually question why we're taking such individualist approaches when they're not helpful for everyone, and why we're why we're taking away things from people who are so accomplished and who contribute so much. Like, we're not questioning, we're just like, oh, you know, it'll be okay, or, well, that's just the way it is. Now, maybe someplace else, at another time, it could have been different, but right now, you know, this is the way it has to be.

Jamie Lee  36:35  
I have a personal question for you, because what you the work you have done, is fascinating, and I'm just curious, how, how do you manage not being heart broken by the history, by by what's happening? I'm just yeah, I'm curious.

Cristina Alcalde  37:00  
Well, I want to first acknowledge that I constantly feel heartbroken. I think it's and vulnerable, and I think that's something that's important for all of us to for. Like, it's taken me a while, and I keep going back to that, that it's okay to feel heartbroken, and yeah, and I go, I get a lot of strengths lately from just the individual relationships that I've been able to build with folks who are also experiencing something similar, whatever that might be at that moment, but seeing also how we are capable of so much more like I've had the privilege of working with Amazing people and to have wonderful people in my life, and friends, and those are still real. And so just reminding myself that that is still real and we are able to change things. We just we have to be able to understand what we're trying to change, why we're trying to change very much. Try to use like evidence based approaches. And there's so much evidence that much evidence that tells us, like, what is what is not healthy. Like, we're living in a time that's not healthy for many, right being, like, excluding and attacking individuals and whole groups and communities because of their identities is not good for those individuals. Of course, it's also not good for society, and so just trying to say we can going back to being a researcher. And I think, Okay, I'm going to do research about this. I'm going to do research about this. Understand how we can approach this with evidence. So it's so it's not only saying, okay, but I don't think this. But let me tell you why I don't think this. I don't think this because there's all this evidence that shows that this is what we should be doing,

Jamie Lee  38:43  
right, right? I just got this email from an economist in my inbox, and he was showing how net immigration is going down, not surprisingly, in America. And the comment was very simple but profound to me, it was with lower immigration, we will see impact on housing prices, wages and labor. So we'll have you know the housing house prices won't go up as much as there aren't as many people. We'll have more labor shortages because immigrants have been still continue to carry the burden of so much labor that most people don't want to do. And there was one more I just forgot what I said, housing labor and wages, and therefore wages don't go up as much for the rest of the people.

Cristina Alcalde  39:48  
Yeah, and it's so much easier to demonize, right? And people that actually, actually understand the evidence like you just laid out, it's much easier to just, in broad stroke, say, No. This group is just horrible. We're just going to scapegoat, and I feel like that's what's happening a lot, scapegoating and sensationalizing and painting people in really broad strokes and just stereotypes. I feel like we're back to that, to just stereotyping, but with really very real and horrible consequences for individuals and for families and for our communities, and so much so that there's just think the amount of fear is just Yeah, it's it's prevalent, which is really sad given like how much individuals contribute, and how much you know, as immigrants do contribute, and how much immigrants are part of this country? Yeah, every time I look at the news, just like, oh, yeah, yeah,

Jamie Lee  40:51  
I find it challenging to read the news. And just like you. I try to like, okay, let's not get distracted by, you know, by the political headlines. Let's, you know, let's focus on the here and now, the people, the community that I have in real life, whom, by the way, are, of course, many of them are immigrants or children of immigrants, because America is a nation where children of immigrants, really, yeah, yeah. I'm curious we're seeing this trend. And one more question about trends that we're seeing, birth rates are dropping, and I just read again, evidence based. It's not just, you know, those headline countries like South Korea, where I'm where I'm from. It's not just Japan. It's like South America. It's even Europe and parts of Africa. And of course, America, like all around the world, not surprisingly, women are choosing not to have children? Yeah. I'm just curious, from your vantage point as both a feminist and anthropologist, what do you think of this global trend

Unknown Speaker  42:14  
of dropping the trend being

Jamie Lee  42:19  
declining fertility rates?

Cristina Alcalde  42:21  
Yeah, yeah. I think it's happens for different reasons, which I'm not clear on, but I think it's as we have declining fertility rates. I think it's important to ask again, why and where are the resources for people, whatever decisions they make about their own fertility. And I think just looking at the trends, understanding why are there these trends, is really critical, because it's it different populations and different communities are differently affected. And so I we want to be really careful. I want to be really careful of painting anything with broad strokes, and I don't know, yeah, why? Some fertility rates are going down and in some places and not I do know. Yeah, I'll just say that, because there's a lot in the news too about,

Jamie Lee  43:11  
got it, okay, yeah, one thing that I have read is that, and I read these from like, financial investors. One of the reasons is because the infant mortal mortality rate has gone down, income has gone up, contraception has improved, right? And because babies don't die as often during childbirth, people naturally have less of them, like, oh, wow, that's really fascinating correlation that I

Cristina Alcalde  43:45  
Yeah, even think about that is, and I think how, also people's decisions are going to have to do with how they see the world around them, how safe it is for, you know, and also, who can have children and who has who Given how many rights under attack right now, right who is protect, who feels protected and who feels safe enough to be able to do that, I think is important to consider in that too, and then, yeah, yeah, yeah, which is also lots of inequality there as to who has resources, and whether to healthcare or to being parents or, you know, to resources for their children.

Jamie Lee  44:25  
Is there anything else I haven't yet asked that you would like to have asked or you would like to share?

Cristina Alcalde  44:36  
I think I'm loving this conversation. I think we had a really great conversation. Yeah, you know, thinking of, I think, just thinking of how bringing feminist curiosity to whatever it is we do and like, whether it's to our personal lives, whether it's to coaching, to leadership or to research, how that can really be useful, and it's. Not, you know, feminism and feminist curiosity. And it's not about only women can do this, but it's about, again, it's about being able to see things a certain way and asking certain questions and looking at systems. And I think that's really critical, but it's difficult to do. So I'm just, I'm, you know, I'm curious, like you asked, you asked earlier, about my trajectory, and I would just say moving forward. I'm really curious as to like, how we can continue to explore that, because we have more inequities rather than fewer moving forward, so how we can actually approach feminist perspectives and feminist concepts in a way that allow us to do that. And I think more and more I see a lot of also, and it's either good or bad, but it's just post feminism. So somehow, the idea, you know, that we don't have to fight for these things anymore, because it's all good, and we've, we've reached, you know, like post racism and post feminism. And I think given where we are now and the experiences people are having, I think it's important to look at those feminist lenses, look at inner things intersectionally, and look at the systems to be able to address them, now more than ever. And so sometimes, when I hear things like, oh yeah, we no longer need feminism or feminist approaches, or we live in a post feminist or a color blind or a post racial world, it's, it's concerning. And so I think, you know, I'm, I'm curious, and I'll probably do some more research having to do with that moving forward.

Jamie Lee  46:32  
I mean, for me, when I hear you say that it's, it's important, because it helps you understand why you think a certain way, why you even have these urges to judge yourself if you, you know, put on an extra pound or, you know, why? Why? When I was back in, I was vacation in China, and people wanted to put bleaching cream on my screen, on my skin, you know, like, like, oh, I can understand that, you know, I can understand why this is happening, and sometimes it can be maddening and heartbreaking, but it also allows me to see where I have that individual choice, right? And I don't know if this connects at all, but perhaps even with declining birth rates, you know, it's like we have more choice over where and how we direct our attention, focus and time,

Cristina Alcalde  47:30  
yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think I don't know, yeah. I think for for some Yes, right? I think some don't necessarily have those choices, yeah, because of everything around us, and again, I think we're also at a point where some choices and some people's rights are being questioned more and their attack so but I think that awareness that you brought up right is is really critical and helpful, whether it's something that's happening to us or to others, just that awareness of, yeah, how our histories and how our societies have built these spaces that we're in now that are not just about us as individuals. There, we have to be aware of the histories that come with this and our own responsibility.

Jamie Lee  48:21  
Yeah, where can people go to learn more about your work, about your coaching practice?

Cristina Alcalde  48:26  
Yeah, so I have a web page now, so proud of it, and I have something there, so I'll be able to share that. I think it's just Chris alcalde.com So, and I have stuff about my research and my books there, and then things having to do with coaching and consulting too. But yeah, in my LinkedIn page, I'm always happy to connect to folks.

Jamie Lee  48:48  
I will make sure to add that in the show notes. Chris alcalde.com Yes, and your LinkedIn profile, yes.

Cristina Alcalde  48:55  
Thank you so much. I've really enjoyed chatting with you.

Jamie Lee  48:59  
Same here. Thank you so much. Thank you for listening to this episode of risky conversations with Jamie Lee as Christina and I discussed dismantling institutional whiteness requires us to move beyond individuals and look at how we resource or under resource our communities and in light of the recent violence in Minnesota, it's more important than ever to support the students and families directly impacted by these systemic disruptions. There are students and families who can't get to work, who can't get to school right now. So if you are looking for a concrete way to stand in solidarity with community, communities that are taking a stand for each other, taking a stand for plurality, for interdependence. I encourage you to donate to support our St Paul Public Schools Community Fund. And you will find the link in the show notes. And this contribution goes directly to families in St Paul Minnesota communities, and it will help them receive immediate and direct support so that they can pay rent and groceries. And as always, if you are a leader ready to navigate the messy human side of leadership with more courage and less trauma, and to do it from a grounded feminist perspective, I invite you to learn more about my coaching services, and you can come on over to Jamie Lee coach.com j, A M, I, E, L, E, E, C, O, A, C, h.com, please remember that self advocacy, when done with clarity and care, is an act of service. And until next time, keep Having those risky conversations