"It's Better Now": How Midwest Niceness Shapes Social Justice Education

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

Abstract

A growing body of research has problematized the notion of “niceness” in education by examining how good intentions and “nice” behavior can actually facilitate inequality (Castagno, 2014; Lewis & Diamond, 2015). We build on this work by regionally situating “niceness” in the Midwest to examine how the cultural behaviors and social norms of Midwest Niceness contributes to educators’ responses to and interactions with racial injustice. While under-researched and under-theorized, the Midwestern United States is commonly associated with its “nice,” “friendly” demeanor. Some have pointed to the source of this attitude as the dominant Scandinavian and German ancestry of present-day Midwesterners and their desire to live by the Golden Rule (Gewirth, 1978). However, along with the desire to always be pleasant, comes a strong avoidance to do anything that could be interpreted as rude, confrontational, or aggressive. This avoidance can unfortunately lead to the negative consequence of Midwest Niceness -ignoring important issues, problems, or shortcomings for the sake of maintaining an agreeable, comfortable environment.

While facilitating a teacher professional development (PD) series addressing issues in Latin@ Education in a suburban Wisconsin school district we started to notice a particular disposition among the white, Midwestern teachers who made up the majority. Having two different facilitators (one from the Midwest and one from Colombia) brought up discussions about regional and cultural differences as well as the idea of Midwest Niceness and how it was performed among our teacher participants. We noted that teacher’s performance of niceness seemed to limit the conversations they were able to have about race, injustice, and inequality. The circling questions in our minds were: What is the role, if any, of Midwest Niceness in the willingness of (white) teachers to engage in meaningful discussions regarding issues of race, injustice, and inequality? Is Midwest Niceness precluding teachers from engaging in deep conversations regarding issues of race, injustice and inequality? If so, how?

Drawing on critical race scholarship (Bonilla-Silva, 2013; Mills, 1997; Omi & Winant, 1994) and using qualitative data gathered during PD workshops, this paper examines these questions and the role of Midwest Niceness in educators’ engagement with and reactions to issues of racism, xenophobia, and inequality. One of the prominent themes that emerged in this research was how our white Midwestern teacher participants consistently minimized issues of race by avoiding racially-charged topics and engaging in colorblind ideology (Bonilla-Silva, 2013). For example, when confronted with direct quotes from Latin@ students in the district discussing the racism they had experienced both during the presidential campaign and after the election, teacher participants employed optimistic discourses (i.e. “It’s better now”) to argue that the racial backlash following Trump’s victory was improving. We view these actions as part of performing Midwest Niceness and connect this behavior to what DiAngelo (2011) has termed “white fragility.” We explore how Midwest Niceness intersects with broader scholarship on race and how it manifests through teacher responses, or non-responses, to discussing issues of power in education.

Authors

• Bailey B. Smolarek, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Giselle Del Carmen Martinez Negrette, University of Wisconsin-Madison