CREWing UP With Educators of Color: A Critical Race Love Letter

• In Event: Teacher and Leadership Educators of Color as Wounded Healers: Disrupting Dehumanization in Educator Preparation Programs

Abstract

Objectives

In his song, I, Lamar (2015) confesses, “I could never take the lead/ I could never bob and weave/ From a negative/ and letting them annihilate me.” Educational leaders of Color, have been directly impacted by the colonial and racializing projects in violent, dehumanizing ways. They are taught to constantly bob and weave, resisting the impulse to hate themselves and others like them to the point of eradication. Such threats of annihilation from everyday enactments of whiteness make educational leadership an endeavor of survival and compromise, particularly for Black Indigenous People of Color.

This scholarship acknowledges such racial violence, but more importantly, affirms the humanity, critical resilience, and ongoing healing of educational leaders of Color through a love letter. Using this humanizing genre with Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Critical Whiteness Studies (CWS) creates intimacy and relationality with its readers, as well as acts in form and content as a counter-story that highlights how white supremacy violence can be resisted using a coalitional process of “CREWing UP.”

Theoretical Framework
This scholarship intersects CRT as a race-conscious and praxis-directed framework with CWS which interrogates how whiteness is normalized. This pairing is made because of the ways that 1) whiteness and racism are intimately intertwined within educational institutions, 2) CWS more precisely attends to the nuances of whiteness, white supremacy, and racism in ways that CRT does not, and 3) CRT and CWS legitimize the realities and aspirations of educational leaders of Color.

Methods

This scholarship applies critical race methodology (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002) and a hermeneutics of whiteness (Leonardo, 2016) to explore these questions. How might constant experiences with whiteness and white supremacy impact educational leaders of Color? What internal resources, such as a critical theory of love, can be nurtured within educational leaders of Color to inspire their collective movement towards disrupting and dismantling white supremacy? Through these questions, a critical race love letter was written as a way to not only affirm the racialized experiences of educational leaders of Color, but also to invite them into writing their own love letters to themselves and others in their communities.

Conclusions
This scholarship highlights how a coalitional consciousness (Sandoval, 2000) grounded in a critical theory of love (Brooks, 2017) involves “CREWing UP” or Cultivating Resistance & Emancipation With United Power on intellectual, socio-cultural, and communal levels. The use of critical race love letter writing revealed ways that educational leaders of Color were able to center the experiences of racialized groups, challenge the nuanced ways that racism is employed, and invite others into a collective uplift.

Scholarly Significance
If we are to “Interrogate Consequential Education Research in Pursuit of Truth” in accordance with the 2023 theme, we must think on intimate, coalitional, and systemic levels. Our praxis must include not only critical consciousness raising, but also sacred healing and critical love. This scholarship aims to contribute to the CWS discourse in humanizing and relationally accountable ways through the intersection of each of these deeply personal and urgently social areas.

Author

• G.T. Reyes, California State University - East Bay
  Presenting Author