"You Should Be Ashamed of Yourself": Disrupting Niceness in Out-of-School Spaces

• In Event: A Culture of Nice: How Educators’ Niceness Holds Inequities in Place

Abstract

Lorretta (white woman): I protest! You should be ashamed of yourself for trying to shut us down. You have a room full of people in here that are trying to speak and practice democracy…(applause from audience)
Chair of Cartfield School Committee (white man): (trying to interject)…this is democracy…
Loretta: You should be ashamed of yourself, Mr. Kelly. You should be ashamed of yourself, and I will name you by name. (Transcribed from the 6-24-14 Cartfield Regional School Committee meeting)

Drawing from a larger ethnographic study which examines community members’ relationship with existing racial inequities in a high-performing, racially diverse school district, this paper examines community members’ discursive acts of niceness through a racial literacy lens (Guinier, 2004; Winans, 2010). While certain parents, school committee members, and administrators uphold a false, “strong schools” reputation by way of “nice narratives”, others interrogate it, calling into question not only the nice narratives, but also the speakers, as Loretta demonstrates in addressing Mr. Kelly in the opening excerpt. Such interrogation counters the definition of nice, as this process is often disruptive and uncomfortable; acts that are not nice. Community members demonstrate that the act of noticing and confronting niceness provides opportunities to foster racial literacy by unveiling the not-so-nice narratives embedded in the comments. This nice/not-nice discursive combination calls attention to how niceness, and best intentions (Lewis & Diamond, 2015; Castagno, 2014) are sustained through a lack of awareness- a lack of racial literacy. The featured discourse from school committee meetings and other community-wide events uncovers community members’ failure to critically examine race in their decision making processes. This deficit not only sustains nice narratives, but the existing racial inequities in the so-called “strong schools” the nice narratives serve to sustain.

The presentation will feature data from public meeting transcriptions, given the focus on how community members’ discursive acts and actions serve to uphold/resist the “strong schools” narrative. The analysis of participants’ language is informed by critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 1991; van Dijk, 1987). van Dijk (1987) posited that racism is perpetuated through everyday text and talk (newspapers, conversations, television, textbooks, etc.). Critical discourse analysis allows to unpack participants’ discursive practices and notice niceness in action.

To date, the majority of research that draws on or examines racial literacy is based in in-school settings (e.g. higher education settings; K-12 settings; and racial literacy in teacher education). Seldom have scholars examined racial literacy in out-of-school spaces (Author, 2017). This work contributes to this conversation by examining the out-of-school factors that sustain/resist in-school racial inequities.

Author

• Katie Lazdowski