Abstract
Drawing on a 2-year ethnography of “American High,” a working- and middle-class public high school, C.J. Pascoe argues in Nice Is Not Enough that an organizational logic of “niceness” constrains community members from seeing or addressing systemic inequalities. She posits that by emphasizing kindness and insisting that political expressions and protests are inappropriate, American High perpetuates inequalities.
Pascoe introduces theoretical concepts that are sure to be taken up in future research. Comparing the school’s active shooter drills to political protests targeting gun accessibility, she outlines what she terms a “politics of protection” that frames issues like gun violence, gender and sexual harassment, racism, and mental health as external and random rather than systemic or preventable. She also puts forth the “student-citizen”—a student whose rewarded identities let them harness school resources.
Methodologically, the book represents a comprehensive ethnography with prolonged immersion in the life of the school. Leveraging her responses to participants’ realities as an important data source, Pascoe models reflexive feminist ethnography’s eschewal of aloof observation.
We see this in the narrative structure. Pascoe begins optimistically, noting the absence of bullying and harassment. She wonders if this might finally be the “happy book” that she never dreamed possible, given her history as a queer woman who attended intensely homophobic and sexist public schools in the 1980s and 1990s. Watching the school’s first-ever drag show, Pascoe describes the tears running down her cheeks as she takes in a school-sponsored, queer-affirming ritual.
Her initial joy, however, quickly turns sour. At a GSA meeting several weeks later, students learn that the district’s equity coordinator has expressed concern that the event could put participants at risk, especially if conservative community members find out about it. Pascoe shares the club members’ disbelieving anger, writing, “students were being told that an event they created, an event aimed at celebrating their identities and cultural practices, was one that could increase their risk of being bullied or harassed” (p. 44). In Pascoe’s analysis, the school’s focus on kindness and protection from bullying has introduced a new kind of harm and inequality. While other students can effortlessly celebrate their cultures and identities, Pascoe sees the equity coordinator as making this impossible for the queer students in the GSA, albeit unintentionally.
No researcher can stay at a site forever. Thus, we do not learn whether the drag event is allowed to continue. This unknown leads to questions about which events are given weight in conclusions about organizational inequality. For Pascoe, the equity coordinator’s response is a more significant piece of evidence about the school’s organizational logics of niceness (over politics and equity) than the existence of the joyful celebration. As a reader, I wondered how to make room for both. Could the drag show—and the coordinator’s concerns—reflect the existence of different, coexisting organizational logics? Could we analyze these events, not as a clear-cut reproduction of inequality between queer and straight students, but as something more ambiguous?
Pascoe’s impressive scholarship will make this book a must-read for researchers and students of inequality. As such, it provides a valuable platform for self-reflection. Does our understandable urgency about bringing injustice to light predispose us to draw conclusions that overlook complex organizational dynamics and manifestations of progress?
The book also surfaces questions about how inequality scholars appraise research participants. In a chapter brimming with insight into social class and gender, Pascoe compares students who receive praise and recognition from the school for raising $25,000 for a pediatric neonatal hospital unit to those who face institutional challenges as they strive to organize student walkouts and campaigns related to issues like gun access, climate change, and Black Lives Matter. Notably, the groups of students involved in these divergent efforts differ in race and socioeconomic status. Clear inequalities exist in how the school responds to these student-led efforts.
Pascoe goes on to critique the philanthropists for “addressing a social problem in a way that doesn’t challenge social inequalities” (p. 176) and noting that they do not discuss the larger social structures that contribute to preterm births. Pascoe is far from alone in her treatment; the inequality literature often casts privileged participants’ activities as inadequate for not meeting their standards of structural analysis or political engagement. As such, the book provides a platform to critically examine the practice of evaluating participants according to researchers’ frameworks and ideals. More broadly, this raises questions about how researchers conceptualize and assess the nature of inequality in society.
Given its rich methodological approach, focus on gender inequality as it intersects with sexuality, race, and class, and potential to stimulate discussion, this book will make a valuable contribution to sociologists of gender as well as a broad range of classrooms and communities.
