Nice
The more I listened to the podcast series, ‘Nice White Parents’ the more my faith in the word ‘diversity’ has changed. It’s a ‘nice’ word, often used to help privileged people feel like they are improving problems created by them, their governments and their ancestors.
The podcast follows communities and parents in New York. But there’s an imbalance of power here in the UK too. In New York, white parents wanted diversity, but black parents wanted better facilities, equal funding, smaller class sizes and more accessible application processes. It’s not the same thing, and it’s not covered by ‘diversity’.
I’ve visited a local London school where the headmistress had recently changed the names of the school houses to include more women and people of colour. I wonder how many schools have houses with all-white male names? It’s the tip of the iceberg.
I have resolved to be very careful with using the word ‘diversity’. It does not fix things. Examining my life, white privileges and unconscious biases feels like a hugely important and urgent piece of work, and since June 2020 I have been sharing some of this with my instagram community.
Nice White Parents is a brilliant 5 part series from the podcast "Serial," which is now part of The New York Times, presented by Chana Joffe-Walt.
‘Nice’ was featured on Print & Pattern blog in June 2021 https://printpattern.blogspot.com/2021/06/designer-yellow-tiger.html
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