#01 / new visions in conversation with Mette Toft Nielsen
“We need to understand what are the power hierarchies embedded in that, what are the sufferings embedded in that and how, even if we can’t decolonize the university or the institutions, can we still make them safer spaces, braver spaces. How can we still make them less harmful for people who are not white, for people who have not adapted to white supremacist culture? How could we make it less white supremacist? How could we incorporate more of, for example, indigenous practices and structures into the educational system? ”
We met in Gorca Summer School organized by Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures Collective. Mette Toft Nielsen is a passionate educator and consultant, focusing on deconstructing the unhealthy power structures rooted in white supremacy that continue to create unequal learning spaces for different groups of children and young people.
AB: I'd like to start with a very simple question: what comes to your mind when you hear the word “leadership”? What arises with images, with feelings?
MTN: I think I am in this sense in many ways affected by the system. So when I just hear the word leadership, what comes to my mind is the very corporate understanding rooted in white supremacist culture. It's about profit, it's about working all the time, prioritizing your job above everything else. But when I get to think more deeply, I would say that for me, leadership is more guidance. It is when you tune in with people in order to understand who they are and where they want to go and what their authentic direction is. It's not even guiding them in a specific direction. It's helping them and supporting them in getting where they want to go, what’s authentic to them. And I think this is what can be so conflicting when we speak about education in general, but specifically when we speak about formal education. Especially in a country like Denmark, where all educational institutions, also universities are funded by the state, so tax-funded. What is leadership in that sense? How do you guide, how do you educate people, when you have such a strong affiliation with stakeholders within government? And I think that's something that we really have to be critical of in Denmark. We haven't had that conversation about how schools and educational systems are indoctrinating.
AB: Relating to what you said about the supporting aspect of leadership - I also worked and still work with teachers, as you know, and I think that they're oftentimes one of the most courageous leaders that I've encountered. We are trying to explore also this idea of what collective leadership can mean. How does it resonate with you, and how would you understand collectivity in this aspect?
MTN: For me, one of the keywords, when we speak of leadership in this way, is authenticity. Leadership is something that's authentic to the people involved. So connection for me is necessarily authentic. It can not be a relationship that is forced. So often at work it is forced: it's colleagues, it’’s clients, its students. It is people that we are forced to engage with. And I think that is so important! If we do not understand the importance of authenticity in these relationships, there cannot be leadership. Then it becomes more disciplining, managing. When we speak of collectivity - there is not necessarily this a superior-inferior or a senior-junior kind of thing. You can also have students that become leaders and can lead and guide teachers. Culturally responsive teaching is focusing on how you can combine what's happening in the school with what is happening outside of the school in a child's life, so that you bring in those tools from outside of the school into the school. And when you do this, oftentimes it's the students who become the leaders of these learning processes. Because they know better. So as a teacher you put yourself in the position of being humble, being courageous, being curious, explorative.
In many schools, and that is being the case more and more often throughout the world, you have white teachers teaching children of colour. You have teachers not engaging with this group outside of the job. So they don't have what Robin Di'Angelo calls “authentic relationships” with these people. They are only teaching the kids and they don't understand what their everyday life is like. What's the reality of the life and world that they come from. What culturally responsive teaching allows is that you can get a sneak peek into that life, you can ask authentic questions, you can put yourself in the position of curiosity and exploration, where you're trying to explore “the why”. What is it you get from these rap texts, why is it that you do this or do that? And you can be creative. I think it's so important, because you include students, and you allow them to be leaders.
AB: So many beautiful and important things you have said now. And it echoes a lot of Freire's work about teachers-students and students-teachers and merging these realities. Building on what you said, I am curious to hear about what brought you into this work and which experiences in your past made you who you are today. I'm thinking about transformational moments, formational moments that bring you to the work that you're doing, which is, as I believe, the work of passion, compassion, and call.
MTN: I think it started when I was in Egypt. I was doing research and I was teaching at Cairo University. And there I met these amazing, young people. It was when I had just finished my master's thesis. They were in the first year of university, so 18-19 years old. It was in the wake of the revolution, they had all these things on their mind. It was amazing, that whole power of teaching, what you could do when you listen to them, and that thing of tearing down the structures that silence them, when they are actually able to have their voice heard, and they're able to show up, to express all of these things that are important for them. I was so amazed by what those voices were telling. So then I realized this was what I wanted to do. I wanted to get into teaching. I wanted to have interactions with young people. And I realized that, if I would do something similar to that, I need to teach in ground school, because if you teach high school, you would have a lot of students who would not have the opportunity to go there.
In the beginning I was also still very affected by the system. I was teaching human rights, how do we counter racism and this old fashioned way of thinking about the civil rights movement in the US.
And then my students in ninth grade were preparing presentations. At one point, I walked around to do check-ins. I did that listening to them: what have you found out? what have you prepared? And one of my students says: “I think that we should do this, and this and this because it's not their fault that they're black”. It was just so clear to me, that the way we teach about racism and inequality is within a lens of white supremacy! We are not changing anything.
It is within the notion of white supremacy, it's white saviorism, and it's still really uncomfortable to be a person of colour in that classroom. So I realized, okay, there's something here that's not working.
And then I had this whole entire journey at first looking into decolonial perspective. After that I went to a more anti-racist perspective. And now I'm looking into white supremacist culture which is a combination of both decolonial and the anti-racist approach.
You cannot have a decolonial approach, for example, and then do a conference in English. That's as colonial as it gets. What I like about the whole notion of white supremacy is that it also allows us to acknowledge that "there are some of the structures within white supremacy that we have adopted". That we've implemented even within anti-racist organizations, even within anti-racist movements, and institutions. And we need to be aware of that. For example, the way I measure something. I'm still struggling with the way I measure efficiency. And quality. It is very tied to the notion of white supremacy. You need to look at yourself. And this was what I found that the decolonial perspective did not do. It did not really acknowledge the fact that we are all deeply enrolled in colonial practices. We are all really benefiting from coloniality.
For example, when we speak of institutions and wanting to decolonize University we cannot imagine what that would look like.
Many people do not want to do that, they do not want to have a decolonial practice, because that would look totally different. And I don't think that necessarily is a bad thing. But I think that what we need to understand is, what are the power hierarchies embedded in that, what are the sufferings embedded in that and how, even if we can't decolonize the university or the institutions, can we still make them safer spaces, braver spaces. How can we still make them less harmful for people who are not white, for people who have not adapted to white supremacist culture? How could we make it less white supremacist? How could we incorporate more of, for example, indigenous practices and structures into the educational system?
So it's not necessarily that we have to decolonize it, but how can we break, how can we dismantle the white supremacist structures? Speaking of schooling and education, these systems are not built for, you know, black and brown people. It's just so obvious why we don't see Black and Brown students being intrinsically motivated because what they are supposed to do is harmful to them.
AB: When you were talking about how you're finding your approach when navigating through decoloniality, anti-racist approaches, approaches that focus on exploring how white supremacy functions, I am curious to hear what lies at the center of your work? What is the core of your work, the values that you are committed to? And how do you know that they are these ones?
MTN: That's a great question. And how would you really know… Authenticity is really important to me. And honesty, in terms of meeting people in an honest way. That you're actually interested in listening to them and getting to know who they are. And that you are true to yourself in your meeting with them, allowing them to be true to themselves in their meeting with you. So you're not expecting them or asking them to be something that they're not. When we speak of education, you need to provide opportunities for people to be their own true selves. You cannot have processes or expectations, where you ask them to give something up in order to please you, to be what you want them to be. I think that can be really difficult sometimes because you also have your own way of understanding the world and sometimes you don't get it.
AB: I would love to hear what is it that concerns you the most about the world that we live in right now?
MTN: I think my biggest concern is that I see more and more turn towards increasing white supremacy, also with the election of Trump. And that people are much more explicit about it. And they don't try to hide it. They're not embarrassed. It's not like they don't want to be connected with that. There are certain things that people say out loud, that you wouldn't say when I was a child. I wouldn't hear things like that. And we see it in Denmark as well, how the whole discourse, rhetoric has changed a lot about certain things that you can just say now, very explicitly, very discriminatory, very racist. And you hear people from every sector say that. Be it politicians, educators, or journalists, or whoever, it's kind of like confirmation. And that really worries me, because we can see both when it comes to hate speech, but also when it comes to hate crimes that it has a huge negative effect. When the rhetoric has been legitimized like that.
AB: Yeah, I see it all over Europe too - people feel that they have the permission to say all discriminatory bullshit, because if our leaders can say stuff like this on TV, and they get support, why wouldn't I say that? I think that the whole world is fearing these elections, because we all know that they will influence what's happening in our respective countries. What's your creative response to that? In a sense, I also understand our work as building bridges and finding connections, and I'm curious where do you see the biggest need to create those?
MTN: I'm actually trying to grow communities more than build bridges. When you belong to a minority group, I think building bridges is such a tough job and it may be draining. For many of us, we do it every day in our everyday jobs, it's part of what we do to survive. So when I do something for my own mental health and for my own passion, my own joy, and my own time, when I don't have anybody paying me, I prefer to use it to nurture myself, nourish and flourish. Create these breathing spaces where you can both feel how they strengthen you, but also where you can have these conversations around how do you navigate these spaces that you're part of in your work life? Or study life? Whatever it is. And I think that's important. I try to create communities among people who work within the same field, but do their own thing.
For example, now I've been part of what I took initiative in to try and create a network of people working within different fields but related to education. We are practitioners, we are researchers, we are psychologists, and we are students. So we create this network in terms of - how we can stand strong? And how can we support each other? I think this is my focus more than building bridges also because, in my experience, what I have done for so long is trying to build bridges, trying to explain, trying to get into dialogue, trying to do all these things.
And it's still because white supremacist culture is so strong, even within people of colour, even within gender minorities, even within people who identify in many different ways, who try to break out of the white supremacist culture, the culture is so still so strong. And it's so embedded in so many of us that when you are part of these dominant organizations, or institutions, or business or whatever, groups that are rooted within white supremacist culture, it is so difficult to create a real change. It so easily becomes a performance. Like, we know that in order to get this money from the city, we have to look diverse. To have a black person or a brown person or a lesbian or transgender person, but we don't want to give them any influence over the agenda. So for me these bridges need to be organizations being courageous and willing to say “Okay, now we hire this black person, and we allow that person to have a real influence”. And it has to be authentic! We need to listen, we need to engage in these authentic dialogues. It cannot be just a performative thing, because then we can tick that thing off in the whatever Diversity & Inclusion chart that we signed.
AB: We were talking a lot about the struggles and challenges. I'm wondering, where do you find hope? And how do you practice hope in times like these? Could you tell me about that?
MTN: Yeah, definitely going back to the community and nurturing the self in a way that is authentic to you, that gives you real pleasure and joy. I think taking time out to do that and acknowledging that this is crucial. I just stay home on the weekends and have a friend come over and we're just gonna stay in, order some nice food and read. Just chill. I think this is so important that you do that. And you do it with people that you feel you don't need to discuss these very deep values. So I would say - being authentic to myself, really feeling what is giving me authentic pleasure and what is inspiring me, what is building me up. And what is taking away all that stress that you can feel when you work like this.
AB: What is the biggest lesson that you had throughout your journey or advice for a person who would like to embark on a similar path?
MTN: The biggest lesson that I learned and continue to learn is how I myself, despite the fact that I work with this, and have been studying it both in practice, but also in theory for many years, and am very aware of a lot of structural power dynamics, still fall into the trap, I still realize every day, how this is also rooted within me and how I'm also a product of white supremacy. And how I cannot see myself free of sometimes falling into these traps, where I also execute unhealthy power dynamics, and I also make use of the power that I hold over people. That's such an important lesson to learn because it forces you to remain humble and to acknowledge that you also learn from people who are in a different position from you when it comes to power. That thing of acknowledging that everything is a learning process, and then not devaluing yourself based on the mistakes that you do, but understanding that when you make a mistake, you need to apologize. If you raise your voice towards a child, you need to apologize. When I ask my students to be quiet, and they respond “we were just talking about the exercise”, I need to apologize. When you try to discipline them in an unhealthy way, you need to apologize.
Another great lesson to learn: there are so many things that your students know that you don't know. And you need to find out. You need to put yourself in that position and be like, “Okay, how can I get to know them better?” And this is where culturally responsive teaching is such a great tool.
White supremacy structures are unhealthy to everybody, also to white people, because what white supremacy has done, and we see it in every culture in the West, is stressing people out. It's making burnouts, ruining people. And it has killed the cultures of white people. It has killed authentic culture of being a community.
You can see when there are community groups for black and brown people, how jealous white people become. Can I be part of that? Why can't I attend? Why is it only for black people? Because they don't have anything similar. Because every room is for you as a white person. But it's not tied to culture, it's not tied to community. It's not. Because you have these sores on your elbows and it's just about getting on top. And everybody is competing with everybody.
We need to dismantle white supremacy culture, and we need to do that for everybody. Not just for black and brown people. for everybody. And this is also what I like: instead of just calling it anti-racist education, I like to call it dismantling white supremacist culture, because it highlights that it is something that would benefit everybody. When I work with positive affirmations in my classes, I have white students coming up to me and be like, “Oh, can we please do those again?” They love it.
AB: Would you be open to sharing one grounding practice that helps you stay in balance? Knowing that this is work that is emotionally engaging, and draining sometimes, and sometimes may feel lonely and hopeless.
MTN: My yoga practice is something that really keeps me grounded, and really is where I can calm down and relax. Because it has this body-mind approach that is kind of forcing you to reconnect. What I really love about yoga is that if you are not present, if your mind is not there, you can't do it. You can't fake it. Because if you just think, oh, but I can just do my grocery shopping list in my head while I'm doing my yoga class, you're gonna fall all over the place. I love that about it - it is like the one thing that forced me to do only one thing at the time.
And then I also really like reading. It is for me also nurturing, educating myself. Chilling on the couch with a blanket, reading a book that makes me understand the structures. It is really something that I also find is very, very calming, and really readjusting me into standing stronger in the process.