Ubuntu: Community Among Black Faculty Members

• In Event: Teacher Education, the Tenure Track, and Racial Justice: Insights From Three Black Males in Historically and Predominantly White Institutions

Abstract

Navigating the academy can be a cumbersome task for Black faculty, particularly at Predominately White Institutions (PWIs). Bonner (2004) asserts, “Many African-American faculty members see themselves caught in a never-ending cycle of having to prove their competence as intellectuals” (para. 3). This results in Black faculty members living by a familiar adage “got to work twice as hard to get half as far” in comparison to non-Black colleagues. Countering Eurocentric principles of individualism, I share my journey of finding my academic community which I refer to as my academic family. This community serves as a remedy to the struggle Black faculty face in academia. Among this community lies both space for academic networking and active and ongoing research along with communal support for navigating the academy.
King (2005) offered Ten Vital Principles for Black Education and Socialization, in which she identifies 1) “We exist as African people, an ethnic family. Our perspective must be centered in that reality; and 2) The priority is on the African ethnic Family over the Individual. Because we live in a world in which expertness in alien cultural traditions (that we also share) have gained hegemony, our collective survival and enhancement must be our highest priorities” (pg. 20). Drawing from these two principles, I situate my academic family as an answer to King’s call to band together for survival and success of Black people, in this case Black faculty.
Using autoethnography, I share my account, although ongoing, of building and maintaining community in Higher Education spaces. This reflection identifies how this support community provides vital support professionally but also the impact of my personal life based on the interdependence. In this work, I draw on anti-Black frameworks (Dumas & ross, 2016), pro-Black frameworks (Boutte et al., 2021), and Afrocentric Pedagogies (Asante, 1991). From an Afrocentric perspective, I bring forth Ubuntu. Ubuntu is a South African proverb meaning “I am because we are” highlighting a foundational characteristic of African and African descendent people, communalism. Communalism refers to a group of people with central interdependency and social bonds (Boykin, 1994). This autoethnography reflects how this community and similar ones that Black folx rely on “serve as a buffer to, and liberating or transformative solution from, the racialized isolation Black faculty experience in PWIs” (Bonner, 2014).

Author

• Jarvais Jackson, Georgia Southern University