I’ve been mulling over an article about the Board of Education race for the past few days.
What a Howard County school board race says about the politics of education, Jess Nocera, Baltimore Banner
The piece focuses on the District 5 school board seat, where the candidates are Andrea Chamblee and Trent Kittleman.
One section stood out.
Kittleman takes issue with accusations that she’s an extremist. As a state delegate, she said, “Primarily I was looked at as a levelheaded conservative but not as a conservative that upset everybody.”
Democrats in the State House can attest to that, she said.
Del. Vanessa Atterbeary, a Democrat, said Kittleman was always cordial and never rude when they served as delegates together.
“She was pleasant to work with but certainly had values that do not align with Democratic values for sure,” Atterbeary said.
There’s a lot going on there.
First, Kittleman seems be claiming that being pleasant is proof that she is not an extremist. Some people do make this mistake (not just in politics but in life) but it is a big one.
How could so and so do terrible things? They are always so nice when I run into them at the grocery store!
Being nice can be purely performative. It can be effective in greasing the skids in political life. But it is not by itself an indicator of goodness, kindness, fairness, commitment to justice, or even good leadership. Niceness is a thing one can put on like makeup or an expensive suit.
Also, it’s hard to say if Kittleman’s colleagues actually viewed her as “not a conservative that upset everybody” because in politics people are not going to say these things to your face. Or they are going to word things very carefully so as not to gum up the works.
That’s why I was surprised to see a quote from Delegate Vanessa Atterbeary. I wonder how many of those colleagues Ms. Nocera had to reach out to before she found someone willing to go on the record. And you will see she has chosen her words very carefully.
“She was pleasant to work with but certainly had values that do not align with Democratic values for sure,” Atterbeary said.
Are we grading her on pleasantness? Atterbeary appears to be saying. Okay, she’s pleasant. But can we talk about values? Because that’s what matters.
I thought a lot about how Black women in leadership roles are perpetually being labeled as “angry” and admonished to be “nicer.” And then I thought about what it would feel like to be Vanessa Atterbeary being asked to pass judgement on a well-connected white woman.
Honestly, I probably don’t fully understand what a minefield that is.
Many of us, most especially white women, I might add, have been conditioned to believe that “niceness” is a positive indicator of goodness. Niceness is a language we have been acculturated to trust. When presented with new or uncomfortable things we so often seize on the way it was presented to us rather than do the work of wrestling with challenging ideas.
If they only hadn’t been so mean, so loud, so angry, so unpleasant…
What matters about who is going to serve on the school board is not who is cordial and never rude. Our schools need board members who are going to work to support and defend the value of public education and who will not actively work to promote policies which will hurt students and families. Someone who claims that they are not an extremist because they can “make nice” on the outside is probably someone who is hoping that you won’t check their record.
You should always check their record, no matter how nice they are.
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