Kindness is having a moment. Signs, t-shirts, coloring books and even political pundits point toward being nice as a way to solve a variety of contemporary social problems.

This talk with CJ Pascoe will tell the story of American High School, a school characterized by a culture of kindness, a school where a prominent sign states, “There is no room for hate.” A two-year study of the social world at American High suggests that rather than solving social problems, a culture of kindness can actually obscure the systemic nature of inequality, making society-wide problems of racial, gender or class inequality seem like they are individual issues of merit, hurt feelings, meanness, or individual resilience. By examining how this culture of kindness works at American High, this talk will show the limits of this approach and suggests ways we might begin to dismantle systemic inequalities in high school and beyond, with not a culture of kindness, but a culture of care. Rather than relying on surface-level niceness, a culture of care is an approach to issues of power, resource distribution and public morality that centers human needs, vulnerabilities, and systemic disparities rather than relying on individual responses like kindness and acceptance as solutions. After all, if inequality can be systemic, so can care.