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Hey everyone. If you are on LinkedIn, you may have seen posts by two of my favorite accounts: Crappy Funding Practices, which publicly names and calls out the malarkey and shenanigans of certain funders (while occasionally giving kudos to really awesome ones), and The Home for Wingless Unicorns, which publicly names the organizations that do not disclose salary on their job postings, because not disclosing salary perpetuates inequity.
Generally, the feedback to these groups has been positive and encouraging. But once in a while, there’s the predictable “Why are you being so mean to people? Why name and shame?! You’d get your message across so much better if you just offer chamomile tea to people and speak to them in a calm soothing voice while swaddling them up like a baby!”
OK, I exaggerated a bit. But here’s a recent response to a CFP post that called out a funder who gives six micro grants of $500 each, and who discloses on their website that they get over 4,000 applications each round:
“in this situation, a phone call would have done it. Publicly lambasting a single human is against our energy. Sheesh. All of us have had to learn new paths. Let’s lose the self-righteous angle to it all and be kinder. I actually think that this approach is destructive, not helpful.”
First of all, this is not “a single human” but an organization; and second, as CFP points out in its post, this funder wastes approximately $400,000 of the sector’s resources each round, at the conservative estimate of 4,000 applicants spending 1 hour each on the application at an average cost of $100 per hour in grantwriting time. Nearly half a million dollars of sector resources, for $3,000. Sheesh. I need some chamomile tea.
Meanwhile, here’s a criticism of our friends at The Home for Wingless Unicorns:
“The basis of this site is to shame organizations into changing behavior […] correct? Behavior modification 101 is that education and demonstrating positive outcomes are effective tools. Not outing or shaming.”
These types of response are so common and predictable. So let’s talk about Toxic Niceness. There seems to be two types of this unfortunate type of niceness. One is personal, where people can be so nice that they put others’ needs ahead of their own; here are some signs of that, and it’s good we all check, because I do see a lot of this in our sector, with our trademark propensity for martyrdom and all.
But for this post, I’m talking about the other kind of Toxic Niceness, which I’m defining as the “expectation and perpetuation of pleasant, agreeable attitude and behaviors that ultimately work to reinforce the status quo of inequity and injustice.” Here’s how it plays out in nursing, where “niceness” is weaponized to silence nurses who try to change problematic systems.
Our sector attracts nice people. And for the most part, it’s great. There’s already enough assholery going on in the world; so niceness is vital and should be encouraged. But Toxic Niceness is not the same as Niceness, just like Toxic Masculinity is not the same as Masculinity. At its core, Toxic Niceness is a sign of White Moderation, which is what Dr. King warned was the biggest barrier to justice, this prioritization of niceness and civility above equity.
And all of us do it from time to time. We often focus our energy on making sure people don’t feel bad, and that we all get along, than we are on addressing inequity and injustice. Often, there is little analysis of the power dynamics, white privilege, patriarchy, or other factors at play in the situation. And it happens frequently in our line of work. I receive this type of feedback all the time, such as last year, when I said “philanthropy has often become a hobby for the wealthy” and it started a firestorm, where people became super upset at my hurting the potential feelings of unspecified donors and demanded I apologize for being so mean.
A significant part of our work is to find inequitable systems and use whatever means we have to fix them. And to do that, we need to think critically. Before you jump in and use a “niceness and civility” lens to criticize people and movements that are trying to address harmful practices, stop to consider whether you’re engaging in Toxic Niceness. Ask yourself these questions:
1.Whose feelings, comfort, and well-being are you prioritizing? Toxic Niceness protects and benefits people of privilege while negatively affecting people of marginalized identities. In the case of crappy funding practices, it’s usually small organizations who are most affected, and they tend to be led by communities of color. In the case of the $500 grants, it’s often marginalized-communities-led orgs that are most affected, since these small grants are often the only grants they can access. As for not disclosing salary ranges, it will again be candidates who are of color, disabled, LGBTQIA+, women, etc., who will be most affected by the lack of salary transparency. So let’s decide what is more important, the feelings of funders, donors, employers, and others of privilege, or the wellbeing of people and communities who are most affected by systemic injustice?
2.What are the power dynamics involved? Funders, donors, employers, political leaders, etc., have more power, and it is vital we hold those with power accountable. Toxic Niceness assumes everyone has the same level of power and privilege, which is seldom true. And without acknowledging the power asymmetry, it demands those with less power and privilege to be agreeable and pleasant, and this expectation is in itself a form of inequity. Before you ask people to be “nicer,” reflect on who holds power in the situation, who is calling for change, and what risks are involved for either side. Often, those with less power risk losing their job, promotions, reputation, etc., while those with power may have their feelings hurt but experience little to no consequence. You can either support the people and movements trying to address inequity, or you can help protect those with disproportionately more power.
3.Are people punching up or punching down? Toxic Niceness is particularly activated when humor and satire are used as tools to call out injustice, so let’s talk about a concept related to the above point. Among comedians there is the notion of punching up versus punching down. Punching up is when you make fun of those who have power and privilege, whereas punching down is when you ridicule people and communities who are already marginalized and at a disadvantage in society. Good comedy punches up; unfunny, often racist, misogynistic, ableist, and transphobic comedy punches down. Sure, CFP and HWU use humor, including the former occasionally granting out the “Golden Poo Award” for particularly egregious funders. But these movements punch up, because again, funders and employers hold more power than the people and communities their actions are affecting. Niceness is called for when people are punching down; it is toxic to demand it when people are punching up.
4.Are there personal attacks or are people just calling out crappy behaviors? There seems to be a lack of differentiation between ad hominem attacks and valid feedback on behavior. Neither CFP nor HWU calls anyone names or questions their motives or engages in any other personal attacks. If you ever see Crappy Funding Practices post something like “Hey XYZ Foundation, you’re a doo doo head! And you’re only forcing nonprofits to print out ten paper copies because you hate trees and want to destroy the environment,” then you are valid for stepping in and asking people to be nicer, because personal attacks are beneath all of us; the same with assuming people’s motives. But if it’s “Hey XYZ Foundation, requiring 10 printed copies of the grant application helps to kill trees and is bad for the environment and it makes this puppy sad,”—this focuses only on behaviors, even if it uses humor—then maybe stay out of it.
5.What labor are you expecting and whom do you expect to do it? Doing all the nice things to keep the peace and ensure the feelings of people and organizations of privilege are not hurt requires both physical and emotional labor. The colleague above suggests calling that funder and giving them feedback instead of “shaming” them on LinkedIn. Who has time to do that? That would require researching the org, finding the right person and their contact information, calling probably a few times, talking to them, giving them resources, following up, etc. And besides, people of privilege often have fragility and defensiveness, so there’s going to be some emotional labor of comforting them, reassuring them they’re not bad people, etc. Who is paying for these hours? Or is once again expected that people, especially people of marginalized identities, do labor for free?
6.Has the “nice” approach been effective? If all it took was some random person calling up a funder on the phone and that funder magically stops whatever harmful practice they’ve been doing, or if all it took was an email to an organization to tell them they’ve been perpetuating inequity and they’d say “Oh goodness, thank you kind stranger, we’ll adopt a policy to disclose salary on all our job postings from now on!,” movements like CFP and HWU wouldn’t have needed to be formed in the first place. But “being nice” and speaking with a soothing voice hasn’t worked. It’s been decades now; this is not the first time people have brought up these issues. With research and data. With warm smiles and gentle hand holding. Yet we still see these same destructive, inequitable practices. So we need to try some new approaches, including being more assertive and calling orgs out publicly by name.
7.How are your own identity and privilege affecting your thinking? People who engage in Toxic Niceness on average tend to have more power and privilege, which affects how they think and act, sometimes in unconscious ways. For example, the majority of the people who got on my case for saying philanthropy has often become a hobby for the rich were white colleagues, while most of those who were in strong agreement were colleagues of color. Examine your identity and privilege, because they are relevant. If you find that the people calling out inequitable practices are of societally marginalized identities—women, trans people, disabled people, neurodiverse people, low-income folks, front-line staff, etc.—and the issue being addressed tends to disproportionately affect those group, and you are not of those identities, then maybe do some more research and self-reflection before you jump into fray and lecture people to be nicer or whatever. Reflect on how often you call for niceness when marginalized people are being attacked, and whether you only step in when people of privilege similar to you are the target.
In general, we should strive to be nice to one another. AND at the same time, we need to recognize all the dynamics involved in advancing equity and justice, including power, privilege, white supremacy, unpaid labor expected of marginalized people and communities, and how effective being “nice” has been. Niceness becomes toxic when it does not take the above factors into consideration. And in that case it is not just eye-roll-inducing and annoying, it is perpetuating and inequity and injustice.
And I’m sure we can all agree that perpetuating inequity and injustice is not very nice.