ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Race is a HUMAN CONSTRUCT.
Racism is REAL. And it's a whiter person problem.
What truths are hiding in plain sight because we've been taught not to see them?
Today we're diving into a conversation that asks us to look closely at the stories we've been taught about history, race, identity, and ourselves.
We are #LIVEINTHEHIVE with Kimberly Palermo, author of Indoctri-NATION 365, a book that challenges us to examine the ways we have been shaped by cultural narratives and omissions of historical facts - AND - to consider what it means to take responsibility for creating a more truthful future.
In this episode we discuss…
- Kim’s childhood awakening to racism – a story most white people can relate to – the intuitive tug that all was not right or fair, but witnessing no one speaking out.
- At 17, Kim discovered Jane Elliot, the American diversity educator who debunks “the rightness of whiteness”, famous for her Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes experiment, created to teach students about discrimination and racial stereotyping.
- Denial + racism as identity.
- “If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." – Lyndon B. Johnson
- Kim lays out examples of unexamined systemic racism ex: redlining, Jim Crow laws, Mass incarceration as modern enslavement, slave patrols as the origin story of our present day police force.
- What is the difference between indoctrination and education?
- The remembrance we’ve inherited a racist culture.
- Resource: www.Race@Dinner.com with Regina Jackson + Saira Rao
- Resource: Ote Benga – a Congolese human who became an attraction in the Bronx Zoo in 1906.
- The most powerful myth Americans have been taught about race.
- Kim shares the story of adopting a child from Ethopia.
- How to respond to the statement: “I don’t see color”.
- All this and so much more.
Kimberly Palermo holds an undergraduate degree in Applied Behavioral Sciences from UC Davis, with a focus on multiculturalism, and a master’s degree in special education, with extensive training in group behavior and learning.
Kim began her teaching career as an elementary school teacher in Compton Unified School District during the Rodney King civil unrest, where she witnessed firsthand how historical erasure, systemic inequality, and trauma shape communities, and how education can either reinforce myths or interrupt them. That experience profoundly shaped her approach to teaching truth with clarity, empathy, and accountability.
For over twenty years, Kim has worked with people at the earliest stages of learning, including those who have received incomplete or oversimplified versions of history, helping guide them from uncertainty toward deeper understanding and personal responsibility.
She is the author of Indoctri-NATION 365 which reflects Kim's lifelong work at the intersection of education, behavioral science, and history, designed not to shame readers, but to give them the tools they were never taught.
Find Kim:
https://indoctrination365.com/about
https://www.linkedin.com/in/synergyunlimited/
Mentioned in this episode:
This show was brought to you in part by the Magic Thread Media Network. To learn more visit: https://magicthreadmedia.com/
