Renaming and Reclaiming: Race Talk and Psychological Safety in the Post-Truth Era

• In Event: 66.038 - Renewed Risks of Race Talk: Discussing Race in K–12 Classrooms, Teacher Education Courses, and Research

Abstract

Objectives/Purposes. We use principles from action research and a critical literature review to demonstrate necessary parallels between the Black feminist concepts that shape our training and practice, and three features of psychological safety: attunement, authenticity, and power-sharing. Through critical mutual coding, we discuss how a Black feminist operationalization of psychological safety informs interpretations of our preservice teachers’ race talk, and tools we offer to inform and enhance their engagement with race talk.

Theoretical framework. Race talk refers to any public exchange in which people attempt to better understand race (Howard, 2004; Leonardo, 2002; Sue, 2013). Psychological safety describes classrooms where the benefits of race talk outweigh the risks, and where race talk provides opportunities for vulnerability, learning and healing.
Drawing on the work of Williams et. al. (2016), psychological safety has three features that support race talk: Attunement: the extent to which teachers are able to understand the social worlds and lived experiences of their students. Authenticity: a teachers’ ability to be transparent in intentionally chosen moments. Power sharing: efforts to redistribute power and privilege so that all community members feel they have an equal voice.
Black feminism refers to the body of knowledge that insists Black women’s subjectivity and standpoint epistemologies are legitimate and necessary points of reference for understanding the social world (Collins, 2000).

Methods. We conducted a critical literature review, which using suggestions outlined by Booth et al. (2012). This included a scoping search, a conduct search, and synthesis and theory, ultimately putting research literature on race talk and psychological safety in conversation with Black Feminism.

Results and/or substantiated conclusions or warrants for arguments/point of view. Through our review, we made connections between psychological safety as an empirical construct and concepts developed under the rubric of Black feminism. As examples: the concept of attunement connects to Ladson-Billings (1992) “informed empathy,” wherein teachers “learn to feel with students as they guide them to practical and powerful solutions of problems that are amenable to student-conceived solutions” (p. 388). Authenticity aligns with hooks’ (2014) argument that fearing mistakes and “constantly evaluating ourselves” prevents us from making needed repairs when we marginalize or estrange a student (p. 33, 61). Power sharing is found in Lorde’s (1984) insistence that we are socially programed to destroy subordinate difference, and must find “patterns for relating across our human differences as equals” (p. 284).

Scholarly significance. Our other-mothering and ethic of care as Black women professors who facilitate and support race talk meaningfully overlaps with psychological safety. As scholars search for reliable tools to promote race talk in a post-truth era, it is imperative we acknowledge conceptual foremothers of difficult dialogue, and tools they used to sustain conversations about race (gender and sexuality). There is truth grounded in rich intellectual heritages that precede, overlap with and advance tools used in other fields and by other authors. Bringing these conversations together supports humanizing pedagogies and dispositions of risk-taking, accountability and humility for our students.

Authors

• Ashley Nicole Woodson, University of Missouri

• Kristen Duncan, Clemson University