Nice White Parents
4.3/5
Critic Rating
5.0/5
Listener Rating
If you want to understand what’s wrong with our public schools, you have to look at what is arguably the most powerful force in shaping them: white parents. A five-part series from the makers of Serial and The New York Times. Hosted by Chana Joffe-Walt.
Critic Reviews
Score: 4
Jake Miller • The Educators Room • Sep 14, 2020
"The fact that there are only 5 episodes leaves plenty more to be desired. It seems as if there could have been at least double the number. And while the podcast gives a microphone to the often unheard Latinx and Black parents, additional episodes could’ve helped to round out the whole perspective."
Score: 4
Lars Odland • PodcastReview.org • Sep 9, 2020
"Nice White Parents provides an overdue contrast to the normal framework of research about racial education disparities, which asks how schools and teachers interact with Black parents and students. The podcast has its shortcomings, but its interrogation of white parents is fresh and necessary."
Score: 3.8
Sarah Larson • New Yorker • Aug 31, 2020
"...the most distinguishing sound of “Nice White Parents” is Joffe-Walt’s narration, which is abundant, direct, and full of zingers. The show has an astringently self-critical quality of wanting to straight-talk “nice white parents” into taking action, but in doing so it can feel unnervingly clubby. "
Score: 5
Nicholas Quah • Vulture • Aug 21, 2020
"I don’t think I’ll be forgetting the first episode of Nice White Parents anytime soon. Nice White Parents is, without a doubt, one of the most excellently made and endlessly interesting podcasts you’ll hear this year. On a meta level, the show does exactly what you’d want it to do: It drives conversation, it sparks emotion, it makes you want to scream."
Score: 5
Stephen Armstrong • The Times UK • Aug 16, 2020
"In a summer of vague discussions about “white privilege” and “structural racism”, Nice White Parents provides a brilliant, tangible example of how white people — even those with the best intentions — can inadvertently do great harm to black people."
Score: 4.5
Anna Leszkiewicz • New Statesman • Aug 12, 2020
"In Nice White Parents, Chana Joffe-Walt explores how even well-meaning parents affect major education decisions that fail black and Latino children in low-income areas. Focusing on one middle school in Brooklyn through the decades since Brown, Joffe-Walt – a nice, white parent herself – makes a powerful case that middle-class white people, who ostensibly believe in desegregation, reinforce racial divides."
Score: 3
Lydia Kulina • Age of Awareness • Aug 10, 2020
"...it quickly becomes apparent that the podcast is more interested in quick soundbites than a thorough investigation into the underlying issues of disparities in urban education. Repeatedly, the pod-cast fails to make connections to contemporary racial schooling inequalities."
Score: 5
Miranda Sawyer • The Guardian • Aug 8, 2020
"Nice White Parents is great. She really gets stuck in, Joffe-Walt, capturing both the hurt and insult of the parents who have been involved in the school for many years, and the well-meaning, tone-deaf newcomers. For a non-American listener, the amount of parental fundraising is shocking, as well as the straightforward racism of a gifted-and-talented programme that only seems to feature white children. This is an excellent podcast – gripping, relevant, uncomfortable. The consideration of the word “innocent” at the end of episode two is worth your time alone."
Score: 5
Jess Joho • Mashable • Jul 30, 2020
"If the title of Serial Productions’ new podcast makes you uncomfortable, good. That's the point. It’s emblematic of what makes Nice White Parents such a powerful, vital example of the anti-racist work white Americans need to be doing right now if we have any hope of even beginning to make good on our recent promises to support the equality of Black lives. The necessary tension Nice White Parents forces you to sit with is the fact that the fight for equality isn’t just about personal sacrifice or labor. It requires an even more fundamental evolution away from the tribalism of individual family legacy, and toward a worldview that values our larger human family as much as our immediate flesh and blood."
Score: 3.9
Natalie Wexler • Forbes • Jul 30, 2020
"While it makes for riveting listening, there are fundamental problems with Nice White Parents, or at least with the two episodes available now...The first of these is that desegregation is, as Joffe-Walt puts it, “the most effective way to close the gap in achievement between Black and white students.”…"
Listener Reviews
Score: 5
Kelley G. • Dec 18, 2020
"Fixing public Ed is a huge challenge and so important. Glad it is being talked about. "
