Epistemological Imposition: Historicizing School Leadership Practices, Converging Interests as Reinvestments in Whiteness as Violence

• In Event: Beyond the White Gaze: Centering Black Perspectives on Social Justice in Education

Abstract

In the wake of three centuries of enslavement followed by 100 years of Jim Crow, the Brown v Board decision offered Black Americans hope in spite of an overambitious promise of equality after over 400 years of systemic, legal, political, economic, and social, servitude, and oppression. Thus, in nearly six decades post-Brown, which resulted in massive equity-oriented legislation and trillions of dollars in expenditures, very few advancements toward racial progress and social justice are ascertainable. This paper presentation looks at this unfortunate phenomenon through the lens of centering White epistemologies and marginalizing Black epistemologies and culture. One important implication in this study is how these epistemological controls manifest and or are replicated in educational leadership among researchers, particularly White social justice and equity scholars.
Scholars and researchers acknowledge that a political tug-of-war for control of education stood at the epicenter of the Civil Rights movement in the United States (Bell, 2005; Dudziak, 2009; Nelson & Meranto, 1977). This political struggle is rooted in the Progressive Era, a period spanning from the 1890s to the 1920s (Teaford, 2002; Tyack, 1974). One of the contemporary crystallizations of this political struggle is the centralization and or takeover of school structures and systems via federal, state, or city control (Davis, 2013; Kirst & Wirt, 2009; Manna & McGuinn, 2013; Morel, 2018; Wong & Shen, 2013).
The Black political struggle for control of education during the height of the Civil Rights movement was met with a staunch, systemic, and institutional resistance descending from the highest levels of government (Anderson, 2016). Political motives for attempts to deny Blacks the fundamentals of democracy, such as local control in determining “who teaches their children, who works in their communities, and what is being taught in their schools” (Morel, 2018, p. 138), have their roots in White resistance to the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. This research conceptualizes epistemological imposition by historicizing and exploring various ways that integrated governance systems were implemented in light of contemporary racialized educational politics. The researcher conceptualizes epistemological imposition by using aspects of converging interests and investments in Whiteness (e.g., Bell, 2005; Lipsitz, 1998).
This study consists of interview data and document analysis used to analyze an integrated governance school system, a recent de jure version of mayoral control executed to take over the urban, Capital City School District (pseudonym). Black and Latinx community members, educators, and students in Capitol City decried a hostile district takeover. Participants for this study include purposely selected Black and Latinx educators, community and school leaders, and elected officials involved with or impacted by the Capital City School District takeover. These women and men were selected due to their expertise in their fields and due to shared racial, ethnic, and cultural identities of the students who made up over 85 percent of the school district.

Author

• James Wright, San Diego State University