A CRT Analysis of Whiteness and Educational Leadership in a Hispanic-Serving Institution

• In Event: Different Words, Same Song: Ecologies of Whiteness Within Higher Education

Abstract

Critical whiteness studies (CWS) and critical race theory (CRT) in education have been widely used as approaches to examine whiteness and white supremacy in teacher education (Dixson & Rousseau, 2006; Leonardo, 2009). Specifically, CWS studies that directly connect whiteness in teacher education to the continued subjugation of children of color have yielded important insights about how we might effectively approach teacher preparation committed to dismantling white supremacy (Matias, Montoya & Nishi, 2016). Similarly, CRT has been instrumental in centering race and demonstrating the racialized and inherently inequitable structures of schools (Ladson-Billings and Tate, 2005). However, studies employing CWS and CRT to examine education leadership are sparse and limited to examining K-12 educational leadership (Allen and Liou, 2019; Alemán Jr., 2009). Moreover, entirely absent from the research are studies that employ CWS or CRT to explore whiteness and white supremacy within educational leadership. If we consider that educational leadership--deans, associate deans, department chairs--are charged with ensuring federal, state, and local mandates are met and teacher candidates are highly prepared to teach a large and ever-growing student of color population (NCES, 2020) we must ask about their role in challenging and/or perpetuating white supremacy. These questions become more complex when we consider the roles of leadership at a Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI), in which many administrators and faculty are people of color.
The present study explores how whiteness manifests and is enacted within education leadership through ideological formations that reproduce whiteness and perpetuate white supremacy at a public, 4-year, federally designated HSI in the Midwest. The context of this study is significant in that the Midwestern institution touts itself one of “the most diverse institutions in the country” preparing students “to thrive in a multicultural world.” Demographically, 31% of the student body self-identifies as White, 36% self-identify as Latina/o, 10% as African American and 9% as Asian American (Institutional Research, 2019). This is an institution that by many visible indicators should be able to live its stated mission and values. Yet it does not.
Drawing on Mills' (1997) framework of the racial contract, this study unveils the overwhelming presence of whiteness among educational leadership that advances white interests at the expense of its sizable student of color population. Drawing on CRT, this study includes a composite story that juxtaposes the overwhelming presence of whiteness with a counterstory revealing how faculty of color experience, resist and challenge ideologies steeped in whiteness only to be met with lukewarm results. As one of the only studies of race and white supremacy within educational leadership, it begins to address Allen and Liou’s (2019) question, “what role should educational leadership play in confronting the ideologies and practices of White supremacist social system?” (p. 677) and includes the role of educational leadership in challenging and/or perpetuating whiteness and white supremacy.

Author

• Isaura Betzabe Pulido, Northeastern Illinois University