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Why does evidence not become accountability? This episode introduces hegemony and intersectionality to explain how exploitation becomes common sense — and why reform often stabilizes the very structure it claims to change. The workforce crisis is not a labor problem alone. It is a governance problem.

Works & Scholars Referenced

Toni Morrison — “A Humanist View” (1975); Playing in the Dark (1992)

Ruha Benjamin — Race After Technology (2019)

Kimberlé Crenshaw — “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex” (1989)

Antonio Gramsci — Selections from the Prison Notebooks

Audre Lorde — “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House” (1979)

Christine L. Williams — “The Glass Escalator” (1992)

Stuart Hall — “The Problem of Ideology” (1986)

Lea J.E. Austin — CSCCE racial wage gap and workforce research

Films & Documentaries

I Am Not Your Negro (2016)

Inequality for All (2013)

The Take (2004)

Make A Circle (2025) — Early childhood educators organizing for structural reform

You can find the full transcript, citations, and extended reading list at waginglove.org

If this work feels necessary to you, subscribe to the podcast so you don’t miss what comes next.

And if you believe care deserves structural accountability, consider sharing this episode with someone who shapes policy, works in early childhood, or depends on it.

Care has always been here.

The question is whether we will finally build a system that protects the people who provide it.

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This episode traces how care was distributed and governed across race and gender. Indigenous care was removed. Black care was extracted. Latina care governed through precarity. Asian American and Pacific Islander care governed through invisibility and aggregation. Immigrant care governed through legal vulnerability. White women positioned as stabilizers. Men — especially white men — closest to power and furthest from daily care. Care did not randomize. It followed governance.

Works & Scholars Referenced

bell hooks — Teaching to Transgress (1994)

Gloria Anzaldúa — Borderlands/La Frontera (1987)

Grace Lee Boggs — The Next American Revolution (2011)

Peggy McIntosh — “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” (1989)

Maurice Sykes — Doing the Right Thing for Children (2013)

Chrishana Lloyd et al. — Mary Pauper: A Historical Exploration of Early Care and Education Compensation, Policy, and Solutions (Child Trends, 2022)

Leah Austin — National Black Child Development Institute leadership

Lea J.E. Austin — CSCCE workforce equity research

Films & Documentaries

13th (2016) — Criminalization and racial hierarchy

Asian Americans (PBS, 2020) — Immigration and racial formation

Who We Are (2021) — Structural racism in law

Make A Circle (2025) — PBS documentary following early childhood educators organizing for dignity, compensation, and systemic reform

Reflecting on Anti-Bias Education in Action: The Early Years (2021) — Produced by Debbie LeeKeenan & John Nimmo; anti-bias practice in early childhood classrooms

We Still Live Here – Âs Nutayuneân (2011) — Wampanoag language revitalization

Language Is Life (PBS, 2023) — Indigenous language revitalization across tribal communities

Make A Circle (2025) — PBS documentary following early childhood educators organizing for dignity, compensation, and systemic reform

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Early care and education in the United States is not a single system. It is a fragmented patchwork built across colonization, slavery, gendered labor norms, immigration policy, and market ideology. What looks like a workforce crisis is not accidental — it is structural. This episode traces how care became a market instead of a public good, how professionalization reshaped whose knowledge counted, and why sacrifice became embedded in the field’s identity.

Works & Scholars Referenced

Audre Lorde — The Cancer Journals (1980); Sister Outsider (1984); A Burst of Light (1988)

Robin Wall Kimmerer — Braiding Sweetgrass (2013)

Gloria Ladson-Billings — “Toward a Theory of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy” (1995)

Arundhati Roy — “The Pandemic Is a Portal” (2020)

Ai-jen Poo — The Age of Dignity (2015)

Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers — They Were Her Property (2019)

Thavolia Glymph — Out of the House of Bondage (2008)

Lea J.E. Austin — Early Childhood Workforce Index (CSCCE, 2024)

Films & Documentaries

Dawnland (2018) — Indigenous child removal and sovereignty

Stamped from the Beginning (2023) — Racism in U.S. history

The Big Payback (2023) — Reparations and structural inequality

You can find the full transcript, citations, and extended reading list at waginglove.org

If this work feels necessary to you, subscribe to the podcast so you don’t miss what comes next.

And if you believe care deserves structural accountability, consider sharing this episode with someone who shapes policy, works in early childhood, or depends on it.

Care has always been here.

The question is whether we will finally build a system that protects the people who provide it.

Support the show

Send a text

Waging Love is a documentary podcast examining power, care, and governance in early childhood education in the United States. This series explores how care became underfunded, feminized, racialized, and normalized as sacrifice — and why what we call a “workforce crisis” is actually a design problem.

Through history, research, and lived experience, Waging Love traces how Indigenous care was removed, Black care was extracted, Latina care governed through precarity, Asian American and Pacific Islander care governed through invisibility, immigrant care governed through legal vulnerability, and white women positioned as stabilizers within a system shaped by proximity to power.
This is not a story about shortage.

It is a story about structure.

If the system is designed, then change is governance.

Foundational Thinkers & Works Referenced Across the Series

Audre Lorde — Sister Outsider; The Cancer Journals

Robin Wall Kimmerer — Braiding Sweetgrass

bell hooks — Teaching to Transgress

Gloria Anzaldúa — Borderlands/La Frontera

Grace Lee Boggs — The Next American Revolution

Toni Morrison — Playing in the Dark

Ruha Benjamin — Race After Technology

Kimberlé Crenshaw — “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex”

Antonio Gramsci — Selections from the Prison Notebooks

Chrishana Lloyd et al. — Mary Pauper (Child Trends, 2022)

Lea J.E. Austin — Early Childhood Workforce Index (CSCCE)

Maurice Sykes — Doing the Right Thing for Children

Films & Documentaries That Inform This Work

We Still Live Here – Âs Nutayuneân (2011) — Wampanoag language revitalization

Language Is Life (PBS, 2023) — Indigenous language revival

Reflecting on Anti-Bias Education in Action (2021) — Anti-bias practice in early childhood

13th (2016)

I Am Not Your Negro (2016)

Make A Circle (PBS, 2025) — Early childhood educators organizing for structural reform

About This Series

Everything shared in this podcast is grounded in documented history, policy analysis, and lived expertise. This work centers Indigenous, Black, Latina, Asian American and Pacific Islander, immigrant, and other historically marginalized voices in early care and education — not as anecdotes, but as scholarship and leadership.

Full transcripts, extended reading lists, and research references are available at waginglove.org

If you believe care deserves structural accountability, you can support the continuation of this work there.

Support the show