'Nice' and racist

In a review in Teachers College Record of Angela Castano's Educated in Whiteness: Good Intentions and Diversity in Schools, Lisa Mazzei writes that Castano critiques how educator engagements with race have become inconspicuous, normal, and "nice." The book problematizes discourses of race in U.S. schools, and illustrates how well-intentioned diversity-related practices solidify inequity and reinscribe whiteness as the norm. Castagno attributes some of these policies and actions to a desire by educators to be seen as fair and to treat everyone equally. Counterintuitively, this fails to account for difference and leads to inequitable practices. The effects of race-related silences -- use of language coded for racial meaning, explicit ignoring of students' race talk, and active silencing of students around issues of race -- are often anything but nice. They may be considered nice for those who wish to resist confrontation, but they affirm racist attitudes. Mazzei writes that in her work with preservice teachers, mostly white and mostly female, these young women have been taught, both at home and in school, to be "good girls." True equity will not arrive as long as teachers -- especially "nice" white teachers -- remain unaware of socially constructed attitudes and fail to see that an examination of whiteness has a place in racial discourse. More

Source:  Public Education News Blast

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