Nice White Women

For many of our listeners, and certainly in conversations among friends, we talk about how one of the most dangerous figures we've encountered within the university are nice white women, and I don't use the word dangerous lightly. A lot has been written about the exaltation of white womanhood and especially the collusion of white women in settler colonialism, imperialism, and more.

This happens in all sorts of institutions, and of course in academia. Tears, gaslighting, gatekeeping, civility, appropriation, extraction, exploitation. All of these done with a smile and under the banner of care. These are all things that come to my mind when thinking about the ways in which nice white women can be such an obstruction to the flourishing of so many of our listeners.

Our guest this week is well positioned to talk through these dynamics. Dr. Willow-Samara Allen is an Associate Professor at Royal Roads University. Her research examines reproductions and disruptions of settler colonial socialization in public sector work, antiracist and anticolonial pedagogies and methods for critical adult learning and collaborative leadership, as well as the subject-re/making and complicities of white settler women, and the micro socio-political spaces of multiracial families.

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