Sister Circles as Radical, Engaging, Authentic, Loving, and Spirit-Centered Leadership

• In Event: (Re)Centering Our Blackness and Ourselves: Black Women's Research as Responsibility to Our Spirits

Abstract

Objectives
The Anti-Black and dehumanizing perceptions of Black women educational leaders continues to silence, police, and undervalue us within our leadership and institutional contexts. Given our responsibilities and commitment to the communities in which we serve, Black women continue to “armor up to show up” so that we can navigate the politics of whiteness in leadership and educational spaces. The practice of armoring up drains Black women leaders in our roles, and it necessitates a (re)imagining and creating of Black educational fugitive spaces (ross, 2021b) that can affirm, protect, sustain, and grow us. To that end, this study focuses on the lived experiences of Black women as we reflect on navigating anti-Black, institutional and educational contexts during the academic school year, and it aims to uplift the critical and radical visions need to create shifts in beliefs, practices, and policies so that Black women can sustainably be authentic, radical leaders who Keep it REAL.

Theoretical Framework
Keeping it REAL! (Radical, Engaging, Authentic, Love) is a framework I developed to disrupt, engage, and liberate Black women by and through love. The Keeping it REAL! framework represents the movement from theory to praxis for Black women’s liberation in educational spaces. The layering of Black Feminism, Critical Race Feminism, and Womanism gave life to Keeping it REAL!. Each theory nurtures an intentional passion and pursuit to co-construct positive self-identity (Evans-Winters, 2019), recognize the systemic and structural power dynamics that devalue and dehumanize (Anderson, 2020), and emphasize and represent the multidimensionality of Black girls/women (Beauboeuf-Lafontant, 2005).

Methods
I applied an Endarkened Feminist Epistemological (Dillard, 2000) lens to create a monthly, sacred “Sista Circle,” in which all participants came together to explore their radical visions. Data was collected and analyzed through blending Endarkened Feminist Epistemologies (Dillard, 2000) and Black Feminist Methodologies (Evans-Winters, 2019). Using Dillard and Bell’s, nkwaethnography—“an ethnography that embraces ‘nkwa,’ a Twi word meaning sacred or life affirming” (p. 9), I describe how the sacred Sista Circle provided a supportive, loving, and affirming space that humanized the experiences and epistemologies of Black women educational leaders, including this paper’s author.

Findings and Significance
Building upon the need to understand the range of experiences of Black women in educational leadership research, as well as the need to identify and create the liberatory spaces that will authentically sustain Black women within their institutional contexts, the findings of this study revealed the importance of uplifting, empowering, and enlightening the field of education on the value and necessity of the Black woman researchers, educators, teachers, and students (hooks, 2009; Evans-Winters, 2019). More significantly, this study demonstrated how these sacred, life-affirming, Sista Circles can act as another homespace (Stovall and Mosley, 2022) where Black women leaders are able to engage in and receive intimate storytelling, other-mothering, mentorship, and spirituality nourishment in ways that are Real, Engaging, Authentic, and Loving.

Author

• Monique Walton, California State University - East Bay