(Re)Affirming Blackness as a Radical, Engaging, Authentic, and Loving Leadership Praxis

• In Event: Because We See Us: (Re)Claiming, (Re)Centering, and (Re)Affirming Blackness in Education

Abstract

Objectives
Because antiblackness (Dumas, 2016) permeates the systems, structures, policies, and practices of our educational institutions, anti-Black and dehumanizing perceptions of Black Women Educational Leaders continue to silence, police, and undervalue us within our leadership contexts. Given our responsibilities and commitment to the communities in which we serve, Black Women Educational Leaders navigate the politics of whiteness through the practice of armoring up. Armoring up drains Black Women Educational Leaders in our roles, and it necessitates a (re)claiming and (re)centering of Black educational fugitive spaces (ross, 2021b) that can affirm, protect, sustain, and grow us. To that end, this study details the realities and possibilities of creating and leading an all-Black administrative team during the academic school year. I analyze how I endeavored to (re)center and (re)humanize Black leadership despite, and within, anti-Black, institutional and educational contexts. Through this study, I aim to uplift the critical and radical visions needed to create shifts in beliefs, practices, and policies so that Black Women Educational Leaders specifically, and Black Educational Leaders holistically, sustainably can 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 Leaders 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 and Data
Methodologically, I combine Black Feminist Methodologies (Evans-Winters, 2019) and Dillard and Bell’s (2011), nkwaethnography (life-affirming ethnography) to detail my facilitation of weekly Blackness-affirming leadership meetings in which my all-Black Leadership team came together to explore their radical visions. Through providing a supportive, loving, and affirming space that humanized the experiences and epistemologies of Black Educational Leaders, including this paper’s author, I attended to last frame of BlackCrit (Dumas & ross, 2016), by creating “space for Black liberatory fantasy,” (p. 431).

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 (re)claiming and (re)centering pro-Blackness ways of being, knowing, doing, and lending could serve as a homespace (Stovall and Mosley, 2022) where Black Educational Leaders are able to engage in and receive intimate storytelling, other-mothering, mentorship, and spiritual nourishment in ways that are Real, Engaging, Authentic, and Loving.

Author

• Monique Walton, California State University - East Bay