The Slate Race and Identity feed features new episodes from a variety of shows in the Slate podcast network. From One Year, to What Next, to A Word...With Jason Johnson and more, you’ll get informative and thoughtful reporting and analysis on the many ways race and identity shape the world around us.
On today’s episode, host Kate Lindsay is joined by comedian and writer Youngmi Mayer to talk about a controversy that’s divided TikTok: How should Asian people feel about white people in Asian grocery stores? That’s the question creator Madeline Qi didn’t even mean to ask when she posted her now-viral video, which resulted in call-outs, doxxing, and, ultimately, a conversation too nuanced for TikTok. Youngmi’s attempts to make sense of the discourse on her Substack ended up going viral on Instagram, so she came on the show to share what people misunderstand about the controversy, and how her own experience being mixed white and Asian contributes to her perspective.
This podcast is produced by Vic Whitley-Berry, Daisy Rosario, and Kate Lindsay, with help from AC Valdez.
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20 Dec 2025TRANSCRIPT
Amicus | The Forgotten Lawsuits Targeting Trump’s Worst Abuses
In mid-March of 2025, ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt and his colleagues started hearing that the Trump administration might attempt a flagrantly lawless publicity stunt, involving migrant men, secret flights to El Salvador, a notorious gulag, and a total disregard for due process. Despite getting word that something was about to happen, and rushing into a Saturday night hearing, and then securing a TRO from DC judge James Boasberg, Lee and his colleagues were unable to prevent more than 250 men from being renditioned from Texas to the CECOT torture prison in El Salvador. The legal cases spawned by the dramatic events of March 15th 2025 haven’t gone away, indeed they are reaching crucial milestones in the courts, raising foundational questions about the abuse of statutes and what it means to defy court orders. On this week’s Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick is joined by the ACLU’s Lee Gelernt who is litigating these cases, to discuss the very high stakes of a set of cases that may have fallen off your radar in the shuffle.
How these cases play out will dictate much of what happens for the rest of Trump’s term in office by answering democracy-defining questions such as whether the antiquated and radical wartime powers of the Alien Enemies Act can be unleashed on people the government deems enemies domestically, whether court orders are actually directives the Trump DoJ is bound to follow, whether the district courts can require Pam Bondi’s justice department to assist in the finding of fact, and whether the ancient legal concepts protecting liberty of due process and habeas corpus have the force of law in Trump’s America.
If you want to access that special 50% promotion for Slate Plus membership, go to slate.com/amicusplus and enter promo code AMICUS 50. This offer expires on Dec 31st 2025.
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18 Dec 2025TRANSCRIPT
What Next | Why Antisemitism Is Everywhere
It’s not that antisemitism ever went away, but it’s still jarring to watch people spread its oldest and most vile tropes on social media in a way that would’ve been unthinkable ten years ago.
Guest: Isaac Saul, politics reporter in Bucks County, Penn., author of the Tangle newsletter
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Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, and Rob Gunther.
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Inside a recent episode
ICYMI | Side-Eyeing at H Mart
Published 20 Dec 2025 · Transcript excerpt
[…] I'm not sorry. I can't stop doing it like I just side -eye every time I see you there. What are you doing here? And so she ends this with an anecdote that kind of softens this initial you know very very Gen Z way of telling a story which is she herself is mixed white in Asian and she was side -eyeing a woman who she first was like oh your white person in Asian grocery store and then she realized that person was also mixed and it was kind of like Spider -Man meme. And then she came closer and closer and I saw this moment as we're both side -eyeing each other where we both got closer and closer and closer meeting in the middle of the aisle and we both realized that the other person is Wajian. […]
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