Implicit Bias Topic: Whiteness and Niceness
/Transcript for Podcast Lesson on Whiteness & Niceness with Dr. Castagno
Jenny Woo: Welcome to 52 Essential Conversations. I'm Jenny Woo, and today we have Dr. Angelina Castagno. She is a Professor of Educational Leadership and Foundations at Northern Arizona University and the Executive Director of Just Perspective. Her teaching, research, and consulting focus on equity and diversity in U.S. schools and particularly around issues of whiteness and indigenous education. She previously served as the director of Ethnic Studies and she is currently the Planning Director of the Dine Institute for Navajo Nation Educators. Her recent books include Educated in Whiteness: Good intentions and diversity in schools, and she has also co-edited a volume called the Anthropology of Education Policy. This is very exciting: she has an upcoming book and it will be published before the end of this year, 2019. And it's called The Price of nice: How good intentions maintaining educational equity. Welcome, Angelina.
Angelina Castagno: Thank you. Hi.
Jenny Woo: When I first read your ethnographic study of how systems of power and structure really played out at the local level by looking at two very different middle schools. One that is more predominantly upper class and white students and the other one which is known as "the worst" and are primarily low-income students of color with immigrants. You've provided such richness of concrete examples of racially coded language themes, how teachers' silencing of race, and the conflation of the race and racism concept. I'm so delighted to be able to get you here to interview and unpack some of these concepts. Thank you so much for being here.
Angelina Castagno: Yeah absolutely. I'm excited to have this opportunity.
Jenny Woo: Let's kick it off. Tell me, how would you define implicit bias?
Angelina Castagno: Implicit bias is a concept that psychologists especially talk about and it's really this idea that if we all have a brain, we have biases. It's part of the human condition or human nature to have biases. Biases about anything in life but particularly with the concept of implicit bias, we're really talking about bias around people and groups of people. It's this idea that we have thoughts and attitudes that confirm stereotypes that are present in society and that those thoughts and those attitudes influence how we are in the world. They influence our behavior and our decisions really in an unconscious way. We often aren't aware of our implicit biases or the way that our biases are actually influencing what we do every day.
Jenny Woo: Well said. Certainly, in the case of whiteness and specifically in the context of classrooms that you've been studying, I can see those clumping of implicit bias and very much toward Indigenous people and people of color or behaviors and attitudes. Tell me a little bit more about your research. What is this concept of whiteness in the classroom?
Angelina Castagno: Just to make the link even more direct to start out with. For me, I think implicit bias is a really important concept that has gained a lot of traction on social media and in the popular press. It's a helpful entry point for some people to begin talking about things like inequality and injustice. But my work and my focus are more on this concept of Whiteness and that's because for me I think implicit bias is one part of Whiteness. It's one way that Whiteness operates and is real in our everyday lives. But it's not the whole story if that makes sense. And so that's why I think shifting to this notion of Whiteness can be more effective if our goal is to really address inequity and injustice.
Angelina Castagno: So back to your question "what is Whiteness?" I define Whiteness as the structural arrangements and ideologies of race dominance. And I know that's a mouthful, so I'm going to unpack that. The first thing I want to say about that definition is that racial power and racial inequities are really at the core of Whiteness or the center of Whiteness but Whiteness includes other forms of equity and injustice in the interaction between things like race and gender and social class and language. And so we know that there are inequalities around multiple identity categories and Whiteness really is about how all of those interact together. But again, with race really being at the center. I mentioned in my definition of structural arrangements and also ideologies. I'll unpack out a little bit. When I think about whiteness, I rely on Michael Eric Dyson's framework and he talks about race and Whiteness around three areas. He talks about Identity, Ideology, and Institutions. If we map that over this thing called the Whiteness, identity refers to what we might think of it is--that is I identify as a white person when I'm out in the world, when I'm with other people. Most people probably look at me and what I identify as white. So that's the sort of identity aspect. The ideology aspect is about the sort of beliefs and the frameworks that I have for making sense of my world. We all have ideas, beliefs, frameworks. Some people talk about an ideology as the glasses that you're wearing that help you see the world and understand the world around you. And so Whiteness encompasses many ideological components. And I'll give you just two quick examples: one would be that colorblindness is a good thing. Many of us in the United States, particularly white folks like myself, believe that colorblindness is a good thing in that we should show that we are colorblind and meaning we don't see people's race or we believe we don't see people's race, we don't acknowledge race as a thing, and that's something we should strive for. But that belief--that colorblindness is a good thing--is part of Whiteness, it's part of what allows Whiteness to work. Another example would be that equality is a reality in the United States. If we continue to believe that we have equality in our country and in our communities, then we don't believe that we need to do something to address inequality. That's another aspect of whiteness as an ideology. Finally, the third is the institutional aspect of Whiteness. And by this, we mean that there are policies, practices, laws that reinforce inequalities and injustices around us so we can look to things like the criminal justice system or schooling as prime institutions where policies, laws, practices and are in play every day that reinforce inequality and injustice. So that's that institutional part of Whiteness.
Jenny Woo: This is really, really helpful. I can't wait to dive deeper into that. Taking a step back using this framework: the first research you've done, the ethnographic study has been more than probably 15 years ago. It was around two Middle Schools in an urbanized community. And if we can put on the glasses that the teachers were wearing, like what you've said--the colormutedness, this whiteness concept, and the institution that they were in which was schooling and how predominantly the white teachers had identified themselves and also how they perceived and their attitudes with other students whether it's white or colored. I'm wondering that it's been over 15 years, what's happening now based on what you've been seeing. Have there been changes and if there are what are they? What are the hot spots that you're noticing?
Angelina Castagno: Yeah, that's a great question. The study that my book Educated in Whiteness is really based on, the research itself was done around 2004 to 2006. As you said in an urban area in the western United States. And as I continue to work with schools and parents and teachers and school leaders now in 2019, the key themes I would say are still entirely relevant. There I would say there is two kinds of big things that came out of that research that I think are especially relevant now and they're connected. One is this idea of good intentions. Another is this idea of niceness. I'll start with niceness. Niceness is actually a word that came directly from the teachers and the administrators that I talked to in that study. It's not one that I thought up on my own. In one of my very first interviews in that community, somebody said to me that part of what was shaping their efforts around diversity was a "culture of nice in their community." This often happens in research: at first, I didn't really pay a lot of attention to that phrase that the person said to me. But as I went along in my research and started talking to more people and doing more observations, it continued to come up. It was a theme that was reinforced over and over again. And so that person called it the culture of nice. I've since been talking about it as Niceness. And that is a concept that I think is still so relevant and in part, I think it resonates with a lot of teachers because of this idea of good intentions and that is that most, if not all educators, have really good intentions. They want to do what's best for kids. They want to do what's best for their communities and a lot of their identity and sense of who they are and a sense of professional responsibility really comes from that. It comes from wanting to do what's best. And "making the world a better place." I think though that we can fairly easily fall into this trap of when we have good intentions and we believe we're doing the right thing, it becomes harder for us to see our own role in things that are not so good. Our own role in harmful patterns in schools. Our own role in things that maybe aren't so good for kids or for particular kids in our school. And I think that continues to be very relevant for teachers and relevant for schools today. I still think it's connected more largely to Whiteness. I think that also continues to be very relevant. Now it plays out differently in different communities and it's going to look a little different for different people and in different settings, but the core concepts I think are very applicable still.
Jenny Woo: You know what's funny, it reminded me of this random quote: "It's the thought that counts." In this case, the thoughts are very much good intentions. Yet, what about the action. The thought is not enough. This ties into your research--I thought this was very clever in your study--you began with quotes. The quote is "silence is golden." "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all." Then, you've cleverly juxtaposed it to "silence is indifference." This is very timely, and this actually ties into my case study of a community that I'm about to ask you. This is a quote that you quoted Martin Luther King Jr who said, "He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetuate it." I thought that really sums it up nicely.
Jenny Woo: Let's go into an example of a community because you're right, it's really dependent on the context of how this shows up and is received. Given we're in Black History Month this month, a friend of mine brought up this real case wherein his son's kindergarten, he noticed that they were doing an activity with a lesson about MLK Jr., which included a book that the class made where each student created a page. As my friend started looking through the book with his son, he saw frequent references to light-skinned colored people or darker people, but there was really nothing that was said about whether it's black people, African-American, white people. When he had asked his child about it, it became clear that this was how the lesson was designed, and this reference to black and white was really not explicitly called. What's your thought on that?
Angelina Castagno: I think that that example is a very common one. I don't think it's an anomaly in any sense of the word. I think as you suggest when you began explaining the example, it can be I think very easily tied back to notions of niceness and good intentions. I think for most of us. When I say us, I mean educators and especially white middle-class educators though not entirely I think that this cuts across race and it cuts across class. It's also very gendered, but it's not always about women. I think for most educators, we think that talking about race or pointing out the race in any way makes us racist. And this gets back to the concept earlier that I mentioned of colorblindness. If I see race or if I talk about race, well I must be racist, and of course, I don't want to be racist. I don't want anyone to think that I'm racist. And the decision, the default ends up being that I silence or I ignore or I put in a little box race so that it doesn't come up in conversation. You mentioned in this example that the lesson was really framed around not being explicit about the racial identities of the people involved and even the ways in and I'm sort of adding to what you said but I'm guessing even the ways in which racial inequality and racial and equity was at the core of Dr. King's work. But it's hard to frame it that way because those are scary concepts. If we begin to talk about racial and equity, then we might begin to feel bad about that or we might begin to place blame, or we might begin to feel guilty about that or the conversation might get kind of messy. As an educator, maybe I'm not real comfortable with that kind of messiness in my classroom. I think it's a very common example in schools. I also think that's a great example of what I would call a missed opportunity. I think that that is such a beautiful opportunity for the kids in that classroom and for their teacher to engage these concepts in a way that is relevant. It connects to the curriculum that they're working on. Kids will be excited in these kinds of conversations at least in all of my experiences. Kids get excited about these conversations. And so it's a real missed opportunity to engage kids in ways that will help them become better citizens, better community members, and more able to engage the people around them in just ways and inequitable ways.
Jenny Woo: Yeah well said. When I heard what was happening, this little scenario from my friend, I asked him I said you know "I can't help notice what is the racial makeup of your classroom?" Because the truth is that in a more heterogeneous community especially for black students, you have no choice. You have to talk about these things especially given the climate today. Whereas in a more homogenous community, perhaps more white predominant school community, you can step aside. It's not in your face, and so just very much as you said, this niceness: we come from good intentions. It's so funny because I usually joke with my friends where I feel like these days, the comedians actually are change agents. They have so much power. And freedom to just name it to label it however you want but in a very cutting way that gets to the elephant of the room whereas especially teachers, I mean I don't know how they do it. When I worked in the class and the schools, there are so many systems that you have to think about from a policy level and to the parent relationships and all that stuff, and so it is a scary concept and we tend to wear the glass of what's P.C. is the right thing to do. So, these amazing teachable moments, we don't even have ourselves. And that's why I'm so excited to bring you on with this podcast. Tell me a little bit more about where can we get these sets of skills or the language to be able to talk about it and feel comfortable about it?
Angelina Castagno: That's such an important question because what I didn't say about your example, but I think is really important is that many, many of us parents and educators don't have either the knowledge or the skills to do this. It's often not of our own fault although I would say we do need to hold ourselves accountable in some ways for this. Your question is great, what can we do. I think in some ways it depends on who it is we're talking about. First of all, we have to see that there are actually inequities and injustices in our communities. For some people, that's very obvious because they experience them on a daily basis or because their children experience them on a daily basis. For other people who have been more privileged and who have benefited from Whiteness and from privilege and from status, they may not really see it. And the first step is to see it. And I would argue that if you don't see it, that requires some reflection about why, because it's everywhere. Part of that self-reflection could include questions like: "What is my own schooling looked like? How did my parents engage me in these conversations or not? What Kind of news sources do I pay attention to? What kind of people do I spend my time with? Is Anyone talking about these issues in my community?" Begin to pay attention to that stuff. Begin to pay attention when people say things that make you a little bit uncomfortable because as a white person when a person of color talks to me about the way in which they have felt like they have been the victim of racism or a stereotype. I get a little squirmy. And so if I can be more reflective about that and ask myself OK why am I uncomfortable with that story. I think that's an important starting point. Educate ourselves and there are many ways to do that. I think if you're a person who feels like, wow I think I do see this stuff. I think I am fairly well educated, then I think the question becomes "OK, well who are you talking to about that and how can you begin to influence the people around you?" Because if I consider myself fairly aware of fairly educated about racial injustice, but I'm not talking to my friends, my neighbors, the parents of the children that my children hang out with if I'm not having those conversations then I'm equally to blame. I need to be engaging my spheres of influence. Beverly Tatum talks about our spheres of influence and we all have different spheres of influence, but we all have some. So how to engage our spheres of influence. So those I think are for people in general. I think if we're talking about teachers specifically, we really have to look to our school and district leaders and say, what are they doing to make sure that teachers are getting the kind of professional development and learning opportunities that they need to better engage these kinds of topics. So I think that's another angle in terms of what people can do.
Jenny Woo: I love these steps to see it. And coupled with self-reflection and then to do something understanding your spheres of influence and even the ones beyond and how to connect and bridge that is so important. Well let's talk about, there are so many ways I could go but let's go toward education. One of the pushbacks that I often hear are even for teachers themselves, I don't have enough time to reflect, I can even barely create new lesson plans, and am I enough to even create this ripple of change. Given the systems of how our U.S. education is structured, we struggle on the levers to really pull to make a bigger ripple to really move that needle. I see your point of individually we need to do that. But are there ways where you use you've seen that's really done very deliberately that connected in a way where you really see the ripples of effect?
Angelina Castagno: Yes, before I give you an example of that, I just want to affirm what you said about teachers who do have so many pressures on their time. And I don't want to give the impression that this is easy or that this is something that can happen with a snap of the finger. It definitely is something that takes work and it takes time and it takes resources. I think that is important to acknowledge. This is where the role of leaders really comes in and when I say leaders, I mean it could be people in formal leadership positions such as a Principal or a District Superintendent. But it can also mean people in less formal leadership positions. It could be a teacher or a group of teachers themselves who step up to their colleagues and say this is something important we need to do. I mean leadership broadly.
Angelina Castagno: In terms of an example, there's a school that I've done some work with here locally. And I think that they have really moved the needle on this workaround what I'll call a broadly called DEI, diversity equity, and inclusion work. Some of the ways that they've been able to do this are 1) they have a strong leader in there who believes in the power of this kind of work and knows that it matters for things like achievement and engagement of students. If we're just focused on things like test scores and whether students are showing up to class, those are important concerns, but we can't address those concerns without also addressing DEI kinds of issues. The leader sees that, and he has been able to get those around him to buy-in to that through conversation and through real dialogue about the fact that that is what is needed. Then what they've been able to do is think about OK how does this workaround DEI fold into the fabric of what we do every day. So it's not an add-on. It's not something that like, well on Fridays at 2 o'clock we're going to do a diversity lesson. Rather, let's go back to our standards, let's go back to our curriculum map and what we teach throughout the year and at every grade level. Let's be thoughtful and mindful about how we are folding in DEI concepts and DEI themes. But in order to get to that point in the curriculum, they had to take some time for that self-reflection and education piece. The school leadership team said this is important, so we're going to schedule a time where teachers are paid they're already here for other kinds of staff meetings or whatever it may be, and we're going to devote the time to DEI and we're going to bring in somebody who can help us do that work, which is a very different model than saying like: well, we're going to ask teachers to do this on their own time. Well, we're going to find one day out of the year to do this. It has to be regular, it has to be folded in, it has to be part of the way teachers are compensated. And then, starting with that self-work that self-reflection work and education and then moving it to OK, now what does this mean for what we do with our kids. I think that it is working in part because it's not an add-on. Teachers don't see it as just like one more thing that they're being asked to do but it's embedded and in everything they do.
Jenny Woo: When you mentioned building it into the fabric of education of learning, that is so visually powerful. I also want to tag onto that and say that yes, we need the leadership to be aware to do this work to self-reflect. But I think also individually as teachers and parents we also have as you mentioned the sphere of influence and sometimes it's way bigger than what we think. And even one question may come in and that could really escalate and build up and multiply into the power of numbers. And I've seen this working in a lot of different ways where teachers have really spoken up and the parent. In the example that I had given about MLK Jr. and light-colored and darker colored skin, the parents spoke up. The parent asked the teacher and you can imagine it really just takes off. And if it doesn't, with repetition it will get somewhere.
Angelina Castagno: Absolutely. It reminds me of another element to this and that is the role of parents. Within this school, there is this relatively new, fairly explicit discourse around diversity and equity and inclusion and that is part of the mission and vision of the school. That sort of push has also opened up space for parents to also engage in these conversations. Something that happened recently at a parent-teacher organization meeting, a PTO meeting, is a parent was able to share with that group an example that her child had experienced in the school that was not a happy example around skin color. And that led to this dialogue about OK so as a PTO are there ways that we can support the teachers and what they're doing and also have a different kind of influence. Ultimately, the PTO decided to use some of their funds to purchase a book. It's called Skin Again by Bell Hooks. It's a picture book. They purchase that book for every incoming kindergarten family in the next year with the idea that let's engage families from day one. If this is important to our school, then we're going to engage families from day one around these ideas. We're going to support them because we know not every family, or every family is going to be comfortable in this. But let's give them some resources about how to do that. How can you talk to your child about this book and then have the teachers also circle back around to it so that there's sort of multiple points of engagement with those things? I think that's another just pretty amazing way that parents can also think about how they can get involved and speak up and support this kind of work that is really needed in schools.
Jenny Woo: Yeah. You know, it's so funny. I'll bring this up since we're on this topic. 52 Essential Conversations, this deck of social-emotional learning cards that I've developed. It came out of what I experienced in my research and saw that there was a need to breaking free of what I call at the time colorblindness. With a lot of self-awareness and social awareness discussions and even restorative practices, social circles weren't really addressing identities, dignities, and social power dynamics and privileges for students. And even at home. So that actually was a big anchor to developing these set of cards. And for example, one of the card topics is a privilege. Smack in the face, right in front of you, black and white, it says Privilege and it's a topic. In it, I ask questions and one of the questions is "what is the difference between luck and privilege." It's those conversations that really need to happen that both in school and out of school that transcends "this is my job" or "it's not my job or you're supposed to do it in schools" type of role that everybody deserves that opportunity to reflect for themselves and to engage in that social-emotional connectedness of simple human discussions. I brought this up because very similarly, parents used it as a way of engaging new parents in the community and also teachers, for example, this school in Massachusetts decided to put one in every single classroom and this is starting in Elementary school level to really inject that awareness and peer discussions and one-on-one discussions that both integrating into the fabric of lesson plans but also continue that.
Angelina Castagno: Yes absolutely. And I think you know the more opportunities that people at every age, whether it's students, teachers, parents, young students, older students, the more opportunities that people have to broach those conversations and those ideas the better because unfortunately in this kind of brings it back to in some ways where we started in terms of this notion of Whiteness. Unfortunately, one of the impacts of Whiteness is that we're not supposed to talk about these things. We're not supposed to really see or understand that there is this thing called race privilege or that there are inequities or that schools are set up to benefit certain people. Because if we see those things, then most of us are going to want to do something about it. But that then disrupts the status quo. And so again, I think that it takes a real sort of mindful and purposeful approach to creating those opportunities. I think things like those cards are a really great way to do that.
Jenny Woo: Thank you. I want to use part of our do an exercise of seeing it, building that awareness and reflection. In your research, I just really love how you pointed out this concept of racially coded language. It's one that again ties back into niceness. It also ties into this deficit mindset of finding a better way of calling something but really not calling it out. And in return, it projects your pre-conceived notion of certain populations and it intersects of course with gender and even learning differences beyond race. Tell us more about what it means when you say racially coded language.
Angelina Castagno: It ties into the notion of colorblindness and it's this idea that we're going to signal race or refer to race without actually naming it explicitly. We're going to call it something different, but most people are going to know what we really mean but we don't want to have to say it because again, that might suggest that we're racist. Even though it doesn't but I think that's the perception. And because we want to be nice, we don't want to make anyone uncomfortable. We don't want to rock the boat at all. We don't want to engage in conversation that might be "political" or not P.C. to refer to something you said earlier. We stay away from it. And I can give you an example. This is not an example from that research project this is an example I've had as a parent myself recently. I have a second grader and a fourth-grader, and my older son came home from school, this was actually back when he was in second grade so this was a couple of years ago now, was right after the election of President Trump. He came home with a worksheet that he had done at school that day. The prompts on the worksheet were about leadership and good leaders and the students were asked to brainstorm ideas in sentences about what makes a good leader. I had seen and one of the boxes that my son had written "a good leader is not racist" but it had been erased and then written over that, he instead wrote something like "a good leader is welcoming of everyone" or something like that. And so naturally sort of being who I am, I asked him about it. I said you know tell me about what happened in this box. And his explanation was well the teacher made me erase that and right this other thing instead. And I said why did she do that? Do you know why she did that? And he couldn't really articulate a reason. I went the next day I went and spoke with the teacher after school and I brought the paper and I said you know I just want to talk to you about this paper that my son brought home. Can you help me understand what happened here? You know I see that he first wrote "a good leader isn't racist." Can you tell me why he erased that and changed it? Her explanation and keep in mind this is right after the election, and so you can imagine most people can probably remember what was going on in the news at the time and a lot of the social unrest that stemmed from that election. Her explanation was that while there were a number of students who had written down a good leader isn't racist and they were kind of getting riled up, and so I felt like the energy in the classroom was getting a little too high. We decided to reframe it and instead talk about how leaders should welcome everyone. And so to me, this was a great example of both silencing talk about race, but also of coded language because when we talk about being welcoming of everyone particularly in that time, we're really referring to what was happening at that time which is that people of color, women, LGBTQ communities were not being honored and welcomed and their voices were not being heard by the formal leader of our country. And it reframes recodes a very strong word "racist" into something that's nicer. It's more palatable. That is also I would say not as meaningful like it doesn't actually carry the same mean late as the word racist does. I think in terms of like what coded language does like what it functions to do, that's it. It functions to really move our attention away from injustice, inequities, oppression so that we don't see those things, we don't pay attention to those things, and then at some level, maybe don't believe they're really problems that actually need to be addressed.
Jenny Woo: This is a great example. And I can really see it in a way when we're being nice, well-intentioned, especially in school in particular. We're trying to buffer, maybe I'll use the word severity, buffer the severity of meaning. It overlooks the depth of really what this means. I also wonder besides niceness or perhaps it's tied to that is also self and competence--that feeling--perhaps it's also because we feel like as educators, parents, that our children are not ready to hear that, to comprehend that. So my question is: when are children ready?
Angelina Castagno: Yeah. I'm so glad you brought this up because I agree with you. I think that is one of the biggest barriers especially for engaging young kids in these conversations is that most people don't think that it's developmentally appropriate. Or that kids are developmentally ready to talk about racism or any of the other -isms. I disagree. To put it really simply. And you know I believed this, and I was familiar with research around this before I had kids of my own. But I think it became even more real when I had my own kids. And I mentioned earlier I'm white. My husband is white. Our kids are white. They're both boys. So we're raising two white boys in this time, in this age, in this country. It would be very easy for us as parents to not engage our children in conversations and in learning opportunities around race and around gender, because frankly if we wanted to be in a bubble and keep them in a bubble, we could do that pretty easily. But we've made a concerted effort to not do that. It's not always easy and I have made plenty of mistakes myself. But I have seen with my own children and I hear from teachers of young children the same thing that kids know these things. Kids notice when people look different than them that there are differences in skin tone and skin color and hair and hair texture and in language and the ways people speak. They don't know that there are stereotypes and negative perceptions associated with those differences until the adults around them and the people around them teach them that. If you have three-year-old in a store or somewhere out and they point out a difference between a person and their mother their father quickly hushed his them, that is a lesson you shouldn't talk about that. That's something bad. And so my approach and not just mine and others as well have been that kids are ready for this stuff at a very early age, much earlier than we think they are. Most of them are eager to talk about it and to understand it. I work with some kindergarten teachers, I've had conversations with kindergarten teachers who have said "yeah, we should be talking to our kids about skin color and about stereotypes and about how kids are treated differently." I live in Flagstaff, Arizona. We have a large population of Latino people, a large population of indigenous people. Issues of immigration and language and missing and murdered indigenous women, these are all very real for our community and kids know that. They know that they see it all around them. I think kids are ready. I Think kids are in some sense born ready. It's really about how the adults in their lives engage them in that. For me as a parent, it's also been about being okay with making mistakes. I think that's true around these issues in general so I think that's true for teachers as well, is being okay with the idea that you might not get it exactly right the first time you talk to your child or your student about it but being genuine is important and learning from those mistakes is really important. And kids then learn from that.
Jenny Woo: That in itself, just this whole role modeling of learning together and being curious and wanting to develop oneself and making mistakes is okay. I Mean that in itself is such a great lesson and role model. And so I really love that you mention this. And it reminded me of a friend who's probably 40 something. And this is all scary and new to us. I actually didn't really know too much about it until I started doing this type of work at Harvard. And that friend she was telling me she's like "you know, I mustered up the courage and I asked my co-worker." I said, "do you prefer me to call you black or African-American?" And the coworkers like "well I've never been to Africa. I was born here so please call me black." And everybody is different. They have different preferences, but the fact that you're aware and you're open-minded enough and humble enough to ask these questions, and perhaps even asking in the presence of your child I think is great role modeling. And going back to where you said you know I think we don't do it early enough because we feel like our children are innocent. We're tainting this. But it reminded me through your answers this innocence is could shift into ignorance. And that shifting, it just happens.
Angelina Castagno: Yeah. And I would add that that that "innocence" is also part of Whiteness and part of privilege. Parents of children of color many of them often talk about how they don't have the privilege of not talking to their children about racial profiling or about police brutality because their children could be victims of that. By not having that conversation, they're not doing their job as parents. For me as a parent of two white boys, I've tried to think of also what does that means for me. Well one thing I think that means for me is that I also have to talk to my children about that because if they're in a situation where they're with a friend or they see something they need to stand up to that and they need to stay with their friend or they need to speak up for that because that's a role that they can and should be able to play. If I want to maintain my child's ignorance around these kinds of things, then I could be contributing to the harm that another child in our community faces down the road.
Jenny Woo: Yeah. And this reminds me of well what can parents do. Beyond just educating your own child, especially you for white families, you can care about other people's children, whether it's in your rights, other rights and it's really the sense of community instead of being perhaps so individualistic which does also promote that sense of ignorance.
Jenny Woo: This is great. And I want to use this opportunity to do another teaching moment for all of us. Another concept you've mentioned is the conflation of different languages or concepts. In this case, I think while it is similar to code names, but this is perhaps even more severe where we're confused by two concepts. I want to talk about is the confusion between what equality means versus equity. And I think again, you know it's OK to make mistakes because I'm seen very well educated educators using certain graphics to describe the differences between equality and equity, and there's been a lot of debate as far as this image of two people trying to look over the fence and they're on different heights of stools to highlight what equality means or equity or every get everybody gets what they need. But, then there are controversies around that graphic and itself and depicting the accuracy of equity. So why don't you tell us in simple terms the differences between the two? What are those two words mean?
Angelina Castagno: For me, equality is really about sameness and equity is about fairness or justice. Just to reiterate what you started out with. It is so common for us to conflate those two to use them as synonyms. Equality and equity, but they definitely are not synonyms. This is important for a couple of reasons. Perhaps one of the reasons that are most important is that if we are striving for what's right, like for fairness and justice, then to do the same thing to provide the same thing across the board is not actually going to get us to where we want to be because we live in an unequal society right now. We may say that a sort of long-term goal, an end goal is equality that folks are treated the same. They have access to the same resources. That may be a long-term goal, but we are not yet there and that's evidenced in plenty of research and statistics that we have lots of inequalities in our society. In order to address those inequalities, we have to take an approach of equity that is we have to think of strategies and approaches that are most fair and most just given the situation or the conditions that we currently have. And that usually means unequal approaches. It usually means that where there is the most need, that's where we need to put the most resources. But that is very uncomfortable in this context of Whiteness where we value equality. We value sameness. To say that we're going to do things differently makes people a little uncomfortable. I think that's often why we end up with the confusion or the conflation between those two concepts.
Jenny Woo: I'm going to provide an example. It's not as relevant but I think it paints somewhat of a picture that as parents what we can do, even small step practice in understanding the difference between saying this and really everybody getting what they need and that could look differently. This is not rooted in of course historical oppression but as a parent of three children, you can imagine that there's a lot of sibling rivalry and when you buy something for one kid you bet you're going to hear from the other kids that "Mommy, how come I don't get this. How come I'm not doing this." Right? Us parent we get really stressed out. As a new parent at least for me especially having twins, I feel this guilt like I need to make sure that I give everybody the same. And of course, if I don’t, I'm going to hear it. A lot of the new parents especially are kind of in that framework of mindset. But I think even parenting in general what it has taught me is that it's okay to really emphasize what is it that each person needs to be based on their context. I think you know well this is not a direct example, as parents, we can start to shift our mindset and think about what fairness really means and to be able to communicate those languages to the children, the sister or brother that's not getting the same thing and help them understand why.
Angelina Castagno: Yes, absolutely. I'll give you another example of this. I have mentioned I have two kids and they're less than two years apart in age and they're both boys and so you know the younger one often wants the exact same thing and wants to do the exact same thing that the older one does and has. A great example that we're sort of struggling with at the moment in my house is bedtime. Our younger son believes and is very vocal about the fact that he thinks he should have the same bedtime as his brother. When we explained to him well your brother is older and so we are going to allow him to stay up a little bit later than you, his immediate response is "well that's not fair." And this is a phrase that we hear a lot from our children. To build on what you said, if as parents we can take that opportunity to say "well it is fair, I understand you don't like it. It's not the same but it's fair because your brother is older, and he doesn't need quite as much sleep as you do right now." That to go along with what you said I think begins to instill an understanding of fairness so that when it does come to something that is more charged, although for a child bedtime is pretty charged right, but you know something that maybe has to do with gender or race or social class or whatever that there is already that framework built-in of what fairness is and that it's not always the same thing as sameness.
Jenny Woo: Very good. Well, I want to leave us with one last question. You also do research related to Indigenous people. In fact, you're serving as the planning director of the Dine Institute for Navajo Nation Educators. And this just reminded me of this article that I read around Thanksgiving of last year by Shawn Sherman who is a native American himself and it's an amazing chef who won the 2018 James Beard Award for Best American cookbook. And you wrote this beautiful article deconstructing the misconception that we have about how to celebrate Thanksgiving and the food that involves it. He titled That Thanksgiving tale we tell is a harmful lie. We can also do to think about say, this year when we celebrate Thanksgiving or incorporate your concept of niceness in remembrance. Really to honor the depth in naming the depth of what has happened. What can we do?
Angelina Castagno: Yeah. The story that we typically tell about Thanksgiving is a very nice narrative. It's about community and coming together and sharing food and all of these sorts of nice themes. And it also is about Whiteness in the sense that it ignores and it fails to even acknowledge the role of colonization and of genocide and of the incredible harm that has been and continues to be inflicted on indigenous communities and on tribal nations across our country. I think it's very relevant in fact. In terms of what can we do, I think the answers are very similar. The first step for most families is to educate yourself about Thanksgiving. For all of the negative things associated with our ease of access to information these days, I think one of the positive things is there's really no excuse for folks to not be educated about a holiday like Thanksgiving. If you have Internet access, you can educate yourself about this. When you're educating yourself about this, really center the voices and the stories of Indigenous people and indigenous communities and tribal nations themselves rather than the voices of others and to really hear what they have to say, hear that historical narrative from them but also hear about the ways in which generational trauma continues because of those narratives, hear the ways that communities do celebrate Thanksgiving in different kinds of ways and what that looks like. And then I think we can ask ourselves within our own families what does that mean for us and what kinds of conversations should I have with my children or with my partner or with my parents about this holiday and about what do we want to have it mean for us.
Jenny Woo: Thank you so much. I've gotten so much out of our conversation. If I can sum it up as far as we can do: see it, hear it, feel it, use it, say it, and do it. I love that. Thank you so much for being here.
Jenny Woo: This interview has been super helpful and Angelina works with schools districts nonprofit and other organizations also as an Equity consultant, so if you would like to learn more about how to address the issues we've talked about today please contact her through the website: http://www.justperspectivellc.com. Her contact information as well as website will also be posted on my website: http://mindbrainparenting.org. Thank you for tuning into 52 Essential Conversations.
