We’ve all become aware of the harms that toxic positivity can do in our relationships and workplace settings, but what kind of harm can a culture of kindness cause?
What a strange question coming from a therapist. I mean, aren’t we supposed to be the bastions of kindness in our profession? Isn’t warmth, validation, and compassion the most basic skills we should have as mental health providers?
Kindness is an important value sewn into the fields where we offer professional care. Working in healthcare and education settings, I’ve been acutely aware of how central kindness is to doing our work well, both on an individual direct-care level and working in teams. In fact, sometimes teams’ collaboration and support is what keeps professionals coming back day in and day out to the work.
Furthermore, there is plenty of research that demonstrates positive working relationships, kindness, support, and trust helps us be more productive, assists us in creative problem-solving and enhances our team cohesion.
As I crawl closer week by week into my third Labor & Delivery experience, I pray that I will be met with kindness in my obstetric care. The kindness I will be afforded by my providers helps make the extremely vulnerable experience doable, human, and grounded. I even realize how sensitive I am to the kindness (or unkindness) happening amongst the team of providers, and how when I notice disagreements or tension it actually feels threatening to the patience I will need and sound decision-making I hope I will receive.
Kindness, like most concepts, reflects our social, historical and political contexts. What is defined as kind is a reflection of our culture, our power dynamics, and unfortunately the tools of oppressive systems at play. In the space of race and racism, the culture of kindness comes at a cost. When I’ve entered into organizations and institutions as a racial justice trainer I’m acutely aware when I as a white woman am about to cross the kindness line.
I can literally feel it – my heart starts to pound, heat starts to rise in my cheeks. It’s like my body is telling me “what you are about to say will be threatening to the kindness homeostasis of this group of people.”
The intersection of race and gender is especially important in the culture of kindness for professionals who provide care. Fields in which predominantly white women work – let me be clear: not necessarily lead but work- tend to prioritize kindness. But, hey doesn’t that make sense? We are talking about mental health therapists, teachers, “auxiliary” therapeutic and medical services (dietitians, occupational therapists, speech language pathologists, etc.). Isn’t kindness foundational to the work?
Girls who demonstrate kindness are highly reinforced by adults. I mean, this kind of reinforcement likely happens as early as toddlerhood and most certainly preschool. Upholding a culture of kindness is often met in juxtaposition when girls and women use behaviors that reflect unkindness. For example, girls that don’t honor the kindness, sensitivity or consideration rules are sometimes flagged and don’t even get me started on labeling mean girl behavior in preschool.
Kindness and unkindness is deeply rooted in the history of white women holding the moral and spiritual responsibility of raising children. In Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty, Dorothy Roberts gives us historical context, “…the image of the True Woman was delicate, refined and chaste. Although she was considered physically and intellectually inferior to men, she was morally superior to them.” which struck me as a convenient tool for gender oppression. If one was expected to demonstrate, teach, and uphold morality, then in turn we would be bound to show our morality fully and without exception. Of course, this would leave us as women either: 1) unable to be human and demonstrate moral ambivalence or, 2) deficient in morality (a.k.a. a mean girl).
But how do white women use kindness used as a gatekeeper against racial justice?
Well we tend to forget or disregard who kindness serves best. My heart pounds when I’m about to be unkind to a group of predominantly white women, fearing that by suggesting some of their words may indicate racist perspectives I am being unkind. But, of course like many tools of white superiority, this is quite twisted. The racist perspectives themselves are the true origin of unkindness and I am bringing that to light. My fear of being unkind in itself can be seen as an act of unkindness.
The culture of kindness in predominantly white-women employed fields comes at a cost to racial justice because white supremacy is busy controlling the definition of kindness and exactly who should be prioritized in delivering its resources.
So what do we do in fields where kindness feels like the lifeblood of the work?
We re-define kindness and honor its true complexity.
I was once speaking to another mom talking about struggling with my own self-compassion and self-care in one of the hundreds of areas we struggle with as mothers. She said, “well isn’t this what you help your clients with?” I sort of said something like “Aw shucks, you got me” in the moment, but later I realized that I don’t really see my work like that at all as a therapist. The more I do the work, the more I realize I actively usher people towards talking about the most difficult experiences in their lives and feeling the most difficult feelings they’ve ever felt. Doesn’t sound particularly kind, at least in the way I’ve been socialized anyway.
The real kindness comes with finding my clients where they are at in darkness and fear and walking with them a step further, and then a step further through grief.
The group and institutional dynamics that protect white supremacy are really effective barriers to these kinds of conversations about race and racism in organization. We need to be mindful when the culture of kindness (or politeness) deters us from: 1) talking about race, 2) addressing racist perspectives, and 3) prioritizing compassion for white people’s experiences of tolerating their own moral failure (or their ancestors). And then we need to ask: who do we prioritize who receives our kindness resources?
How can you start to redefine kindness in your organization?
I found guidance in Kindness, a poem written by Naomi Shihab Nye.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
To read the full poem – https://poets.org/poem/kindness