“One Hand Can’t Clap”: Institutional and Communal Imperatives for Racial Justice on the Tenure Track

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

Abstract

The purpose of this presentation is to provide insights into the tenure-track experiences of a Black male faculty in his second year at a Southern university. Thus, the presentation will identify formal institutional structures that the presenter has been afforded on the tenure track to date and the informal communal supports that have enabled professional learning. Further, comparisons of existing institutional and communal structures will provide insights into imperatives that would help to dismantle racial injustice on the tenure track and bolster more robust supports as reparative imperatives, given the history and currency of racialized violence against Black males in the academy and wider society.
BlackCrit (Dumas & ross, 2016) is the theoretical framework of this study. Its framing ideas communicate the commonplace and normative nature of anti-Blackness, the tensions between Blackness and neoliberal multiculturalism, and the liberatory fantasies that characterize Black life despite the sociocultural realities. These lenses informed the research and insights into the relationship between racial injustice and policies and practices that often bear the institutional imprimatur of doing something without really doing it adequately and reparatively.
Moreover, using a critical race methodology (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002) with a practitioner research design (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009) as the mode of inquiry enabled the valuing of my experiences as valid data for the study. Further, this approach fostered cultural congruence in the ways the presenter discusses and re-presents the insights to emphasize the necessity of collaboration in efforts to upend the all too pervasive nature of racial injustice, including in teacher education.
Therefore, the presentation will draw on practitioner data sources, including institutional documents; femtor, mentor, and peer communications; and messages about professional network opportunities to provide insights into the necessity of racial justice on the tenure track, in teacher education, and specifically for Black males. Data analytic processes included conventional thematic analysis using pattern coding (Saldaña, 2016) and critical friends analyses in partnership for member-checking and analytic validity (Anderson et al., 2007).
Three key insights will be highlighted. First, formal institutional structures of support are necessary and helpful, but are often inadequate and sometimes rife with endemic anti-Black tensions. Second, cultivating a network of informal communal connections that help to fuel Black male life and liberatory fantasies–while pursuing tenure track success–is critical. Third, the vision for racial justice in teacher education, on the tenure track, and within the wider society require multiple partners and co-conspirators committed to just futures for all–in part, because “one hand can’t clap”.
To this end, this presentation is of scholarly significance because it contributes to the teacher education literature by offering insights from the lived experiences of a Black male on the tenure track. Further, it offers racially just and culturally authentic lenses into those experiences from the perspective of practitioner research committed to equity and justice (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 2009). Importantly, it does these and more by underscoring the significance of a system and whole village approach that is symptomatic of the necessity of synergy and interdependence for racial justice to be realized and sustained.

Author

• Shawn S. Savage, University of North Carolina - Wilmington