I Love Myself: Decolonial, Critical Race Love Letters for the Long Haul

• In Event: Toward Decolonial Classrooms and Learning: Disrupting Dominant and Normative Practices of Language, Literacies, and Culture

Abstract

Objectives:
Education dominantly centers around logics of whiteness, capitalism, and colonialism which has led to confined conceptions and perceptions of educational leadership (Liu, 2020). Much of the scholarship on educational leadership discusses what traditional leaders should know and do, without cultivating the capacity of educators and students to examine structural oppression and draw connections to the ways they might reproduce inequities (Rivera-Mccutchen, 2014). Such perceptions of “leadership,” rationalize, if not completely invisibilize the idea that “the thought of the inferiority of the negro is drilled into him in almost every class he enters and in almost every book he studies” (Woodson, 1998, p. 2).

Countering these dominant practices of educational leadership, this paper investigates how traditional mechanics of educational leadership could be reassembled with the intent of cultivating "non-traditional" educational leaders who both navigate and subvert spaces of power in decolonial and anti-racist ways. Within an Educational Leadership for Social Justice Ed.D. program at a west coast public university, this study investigates the humanizing ways that the genre of letter writing can produce counter-stories that invite an intimately critical, loving, and soulful voice as a way to be in, with, and relationally accountable to self and community. This presentation provides a glimpse into the ways that students deepen their critical consciousness as well as political clarity (Beauboeuf-Lafontant, 1999).

Theoretical Framework
Drawing from scholars of Color, 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
Set in beginning- and end-of-the year Ed.D. seminars, the following question was explored. How might a decolonial and critical race approach to letter writing produce counter-stories that are racially affirming, healing, and praxis-directed? Data sources include student-produced letters, curricular artifacts, and reflexive memos.

Results
This scholarship highlighted PRAXISioner (Reyes, 2021) tools of problematizing, visibilizing, reframing, and reimagining. Through this toolset, this study highlighted how critical literacies and political clarity manifested in student-produced “Letters to my future self” and “Letters to community” amidst culturally sustaining and decolonial pedagogies. This work also revealed the healing and affirming potential of letter writing for doctoral students of Color.

Scholarly Significance of the study or work
If we are to “dismantle, redesign, and reconstruct systems that have reinforced and propagated structural racism, anti-Blackness, and educational injustice for minoritized people” in accordance with the 2022 theme, we must think on intimate, coalitional, and systemic levels. Our praxis must include not only critical literacies, but also sacred healing and decolonial love. This scholarship aims to contribute to the critical literacy discourse in humanizing and relationally accountable ways.

Author

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