C.J. PascoeAug 16, 2023
It’s publication day for Nice Is Not Enough! Nice is Not Enough tells the story of American High School. It also tells a story about America itself. It’s a book about how systemic inequalities get made to look like individual ones and how to counter these inequalities with a politics of care. https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520276437/nice-is-not-enough
Nice Is Not Enough

This provocative story of contemporary high school argues that a shallow culture of kindness can do more lasting harm than good. Based on two years of research, Nice Is Not Enough shares striking dispatches from one high school's "regime of kindness" to underline how the culture operates as a Band-Aid on persistent inequalities.

University of California Press
Show threadC.J. PascoeAug 16, 2023
American High is a school full of the “sweetest people you will ever meet,” people who will, as one mom told me, “accept the bejeesus out of you.” It’s a school as hallway signs tells us, where there is “no room for hate.”
Show threadC.J. PascoeAug 16, 2023
But it’s also a place where repeated appeals to and pronouncements of love and kindness can obscure racial, class, gender or sexual inequalities, topics labeled as too “political” for school.
Show threadC.J. PascoeAug 16, 2023
Instead racial, gender, class or sexual inequalities get addressed as if they are individual issues of bullying, hurt feelings, merit, individual effort or resilience.
Show threadC.J. PascoeAug 16, 2023
At American High dangers, threats or harms to young folks are framed as external, random and individual, not necessarily as preventable, systemic or related to social inequalities. I call this approach a “politics of protection.”
Show threadC.J. PascoeAug 16, 2023
A politics of protection means that young folks have to endure annual active shooter trainings but are punished for participating in a nationwide walkout for gun control reform. A politics of protection also means that straight/cisgender boys are allowed to do drag for laughs at high profile fundraisers but queer youth are curtailed in their ability to stage a drag show because they are told that this kind of drag might lead to bullying.
Show threadC.J. PascoeAug 16, 2023
A politics of protection can help us understand how inequality works, even at a school full of “the nicest people in the world.”
Show threadC.J. PascoeAug 16, 2023
Inequality is the way students say racism is “sugar coated” such that some white students can wear Make American Great Again hats at the annual MLK Jr. assembly, but other students struggle to mount a Black Lives Matter display.
Show threadC.J. PascoeAug 16, 2023
Inequality is the way that girls are left on their own to enact a “girl power feminism,” an individual gendered resilience with which they confront the daily onslaught of symbolic, discursive and physical gendered violence they face in and out of school and online.
Show threadC.J. PascoeAug 16, 2023
Inequality is the way that the class status of some students comes to look like individual merit rather than economic privilege through popular school rituals like the Mr. Eagle Pageant, an annual fundraiser.
Show threadC.J. Pascoe
I get that Nice is Not Enough may sound like it is a sad story about inequality. But it’s not, I promise!
Aug 16, 2023 at 2:29amWeb
Show threadC.J. PascoeAug 16, 2023
Much of my time at American High was spent with youth activists and their adult allies who, together, created space and demanded possibilities for a more just and equitable organization, and indeed, society.
Show threadC.J. PascoeAug 16, 2023
These youth activists and allies are calling for a “politics of care,” an approach to issues of power, resource distribution and public morality that centers human needs, vulnerabilities, and systemic disparities rather than relying on individual solutions like kindness and love.
Show threadC.J. PascoeAug 16, 2023
The story of American High is a story that is bigger than this high school. It is a story that tells us something about America itself and the way we rely on individual solutions when systemic ones are needed. After all, if inequality can be systemic, so can care.
Show threadJoanna PepinAug 16, 2023
@c_j_pascoe Congrats!! What an important topic. 🥳
Show threadC.J. PascoeAug 16, 2023
@CoffeeBaseball Thank you!!