In this live‑style Daily Ask video, Mike Domitrz greets viewers, explains the purpose of the series (a daily, interactive Q&A), and invites the audience to post questions in the comments about any of his focus areas: recent race‑related videos, sexual‑violence prevention, consent culture, and public‑speaking training (including work with the U.S. military). He references a recent post about feelings and the experience of his Black friends, clarifying why highlighting a specific group does not diminish others and emphasizing the need for deeper, long‑term conversations about systemic transformation. Mike highlights a lesson he learned: the importance of continual learning and speaking out, and he recommends the book White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo, noting he trusts the recommendation despite not having read it yet. Throughout, he encourages viewers to comment, promises to address questions in future videos, and provides instructions on how to subscribe to his live streams. The tone is conversational, supportive, and hopeful, aiming to foster community engagement and collective action toward justice and respect.
Chapters
Hello, hello! It is Monday. This is June 1st, the start of a new month, and we are here on the Daily Ask. And this is where we're doing a video a day, and you can ask questions or I will spark a conversation. It can go either direction. What I'd love for you to do is to ask questions, so I really welcome you. I invite you to ask questions, and all you do to ask questions is put them down in the comments below. I can see them and then I can answer your question. So that's a much more fun way to do this. Now what I'm going to do here is I'm going to just pause this right now because it's playing sound on me that shouldn't be playing. So I'm going to fix that so that doesn't happen anymore. Alrighty, hopefully that fixes it. There we go. So that way we have a direct conversation here. So all you have to do is leave comments right below. I can see the comments. That's a great place to ask a question. Now you notice above you can ask any question you want. It could be about recent videos that I've been doing specifically discussing race. And so if you have questions like, why are you doing those, or questions about that process, you can put those in the comments below. It could be about what a lot of you know that I do, which is working in sexual violence, teaching creative culture of consent and respect, mutual needs in relationships. It could be asking questions about how to be more effective in using our voice in the world and sharing our voice in the world. I do a lot of programs for US military where we train people on how to be better trainers, more effective speakers by using different skill sets. You can ask questions around any of those realms by just putting them in the comments below. And I can see several of you are out there because it tells me there's eyes on me from Facebook and YouTube. It tells me how many, but I can't see who. So even if you just want to say that you're here, you can say, hey, Mike, in the comments. I'll be able to know who's here. And that's great to know that you're watching, that you're involved. That's the whole point of a daily video is for it to be an engaging conversation. Otherwise, I could prerecord this and just pop it up. I don't want to prerecord because I want this to be able to be a conversation. So if you're watching right now, just leave a comment right there. So Deanna, awesome. Thanks for joining me, Deanna. And Deanna did something similar to what we did in that Deanna had a live video feed having a discussion around these topics last week. I think Deanna's might have been the day after ours, and I caught it for a little bit there with Troy and Deanna. So thank you, Deanna, for doing that. I'm going to ask you, Deanna, you can post in the comment. What's the one lesson you've learned from this? Now, Deanna's in Minneapolis. Deanna is married to a very good friend of mine. We're literally born on the same day, same year, the whole nine yards. We didn't know each other at that time. We'd meet each other later in life. And so, but Deanna's right in Minneapolis. Deanna, what's a lesson you've learned from the conversations you've been engaging in? conversations you've been having online. I'd love to hear that. That'd be very cool. So Deanna, please feel free to post maybe something in the comments that you've learned. I think it's so cool that you're here, uh, joining me for this conversation, so I appreciate that. Uh, I did get a question last week that I was ready to answer here today, and that is that I made a post over the weekend. In fact, it was yesterday, and I was talking about Feelings, and that during all this to cry is okay. In fact, if you're not crying after all those pain, that could be more unusual than crying. But there's no right or wrong. I don't want people to feel guilty or shame on how they emotionally react to something by any means. But in my efforts to acknowledge my friends who are hurting, I wanted to. I was particularly. I mentioned my black friends, colleagues, and people I know who are hurting, and I used because I said the word black. Somebody got. Triggered by that in their way and that they responded, why are you making this about race? And it was interesting because I posted many times about things that affect people, many times. But it seems to me when I put— when I said Black individuals, that suddenly it meant to some people that all individuals don't matter. You can have a conversation about a specific group of individuals or a specific race or gender. It doesn't mean you don't care about all the other races and/or genders. It means you're feeling for a specific group that could be having different feelings than you're having, different versions of those feelings than you're having, because the world can be different for different groups of people by race, gender. It can be very different. That doesn't mean it's the same for all people of a gender or all people of a race, but it can also be different from what you experience. And so to acknowledge one is to not acknowledge the other. I think that's super important to understand. It's not saying that you don't care about the others when you acknowledge one. You see this a lot in our country. People say, well, if I say this matters, then you're not saying that matters. That's not true at all. It's saying that I'm noticing that it appears people aren't acting like this here matters. And so I want to talk about this because it does matter. Right. And that's the difference. That's so important. I appreciate your comment. I want to make sure I can read it. So I'm going to put my glasses on here. They've done 3 meditations for justice. By the way, I love that language too. It's been powerful to bring people together in a quiet space to listen deeply to their hearts and take to the next, next best action. So I love that. Thank you, Deanna. And Deanna, here, here, so everybody can see this, uh, what we're talking about right there is right there. And remember, when you're watching, you can post and then I can highlight the post so we can have this conversation, which is so important. Continue to say we're ready to come together and transform the system for the good of all humanity. Which is a beautiful statement, and that's really important that we take action. Super, super important. And so that's why I want to acknowledge people say, well, why are why are you having these conversations? Because we need to be having more of these conversations to figure out what the right action is for long-term transformation, not just short-term. I know some people are thinking, well, how do we stop the riots? We need to go way deeper than that. Way deeper than that, so that there's never long-term transformation would be that this is never happening in the first place that caused the riots is not happening. That's what long-term would look like, right? And so we need to be having that conversation. That doesn't mean that by saying, "Hey, we want to talk long-term what it's going to take," that we're not saying that what's happening by certain people is wrong. Or when I say certain people, it could be. agitated. It could be professional protesters. There could be lots of different meanings of that, but it doesn't mean that what they're doing is okay, because I'm saying let's look at the deep-rooted version of what sparked all this in the first place, which means we need to take action. Now, speaking of that, I did get a very, a very powerful lesson myself, and that is if I want to figure out how to take the best action, I need to learn more. And I need to speak out more and engage in more conversations. And a few people could be thinking, Mike, this is like the 3rd video you've done in a row related to this topic. All right. Yeah, the 3rd. That's it. The 3rd. That's it. That's, that's the number we're talking about. 3. We realize how small that is, right? Only 3, because I need to learn more. And what I've learned is that there's a certain book that I'm consistently seeing be recommended reading. So I just got it. I'm gonna download it. I'm gonna dive into it. And so I'm gonna let everybody know about it. So if you want to dive into it, you can dive into it too. And it's called White Fragility. The author is— just want to make sure it's pronounced great— Robin DiAngelo. Robin DiAngelo, White Fragility. You can find her name on Amazon. It's available via Kindle. I think it's out right now as far as paperback, but it's also available via audiobook. And several people that I have great admiration for, that I really value their brilliance, their insights, have recommended this specific book. And so I'm sending it out to the world. That's my share today, is the book White Fragility. And I know I'm recommending something I haven't read yet, which I almost never do. However, I really trust these people and the individuals who recommended this book, absolutely trust them. And I want to learn, and I have learned from them. So I want to learn from the book that they recommend. So I hope that's helpful today. That's today's Daily Ask. Remember, all you have to do for me to address a specific conversation or topic is post a question below. Even if you're not watching this live, post the question after. I watch that for the next day's Daily Ask. So please feel free to do that. If you want to know, hey, Mike, how do I find out when you're doing these? Well, these are live on YouTube also, and that's the easier way to do that. If you go to youtube.com/CenterForRespect, /live. You'll see a little picture of a bell. Click that bell and YouTube will notify you when I'm gonna go live. So it's a cool way to do it. It makes it super easy. And until then, I hope you're having a great day. I hope we're all trying to make a positive impact in this world. Thanks for joining me today.
