030: Whiteness and Niceness: How to Talk to Young People about Inequity

In honor of Martin Luther King Jr. day, I'm airing a special series of intimate and insightful interviews with educators and professors on topics related to Implicit Bias. Our seventh topic of the series: Whiteness and Niceness.

In this episode, I chat with Dr. Angelina Castagno, Professor of Educational Leadership and Foundations at Northern Arizona University, and the Executive Director of Just Perspective, LLC. She discusses her research around the concepts of Whiteness and Niceness in terms of inequity and injustice with the interaction of race, gender, and social class.

Here are just a few examples of the many experiential learning anecdotes and definitions covered in this episode:

• The price of nice: how the privilege of “colorblindness” perpetuates social inequity and injustice

• What “Whiteness” means through the lens of identity, ideology, and institution

• A series of self-reflective questions parents and teachers should be asking themselves on race and racism

• Unpacking the definitions and implications in Equality vs. Equity

• Concrete examples of what parents and teachers can do to promote social justice through “sphere of influence”

• Personal parenting examples on how to talk to children about race and racism