Abstract
How do leaders make the impossible choice between harm enacted on racially oppressed students and families, and harm enacted on them as advocates for racial justice in systems steeped in whiteness? How do they negotiate multiple harms in Black and Brown bodies?
Keywords
Despite perceived notions of tolerance and multiculturalism both withing and outside of Canada, racism is alive and well in Ontario and Canada perpetuated by the logics, beliefs, and assumptions of whiteness as normal and every day (Carr, 2008; Dei et al., 2004; Solomon et al., 2005). As scholars in educational leadership, we were interested in how anti-racist leadership in schools responds to the ongoing threats to the well-being, belonging, safety, and learning of Black, Indigenous, and racialized students, staff, and families. Meyerson and Scully (1995) assert that movements for change require the labor and love of those on the inside, those on the outside, and those on the margins of both institutions and communities, each group having an essential, albeit different role to play in collective resistance. They remind us that when we conceive of change movements as collective divisions of labor, we avoid the trap of who is more or less radical, more or less authentic, or more or less a change agent, and recognize the purpose, context, and interdependence of these roles beyond an individual or organization.
In Ontario, Canada, we are seeing anti-racist leadership in communities, in classrooms, and in school boards, each taking on very different characteristics toward larger movements for racial justice. This study explores one aspect of this broader ecosystem of change. We ask the question: what are the experiences of mid-senior level anti-racist leaders in Black and Brown bodies within school districts that are designed to uphold white supremacy? We illuminate the counterstories of six of these leaders in the Greater Toronto Area, Ontario, Canada, and draw on the scholarship of tempered radicals (Alston, 2005; Meyerson, 2008; Meyerson & Scully, 1995) and Applied Critical Leadership (ACL) (Santamaría & Santamaría, 2013, 2015; Santamaría et al., 2014a) to make sense of these experiences that we frame as im/possibilities of anti-racist leadership from within school districts. We conceptualize anti-racist leaders as having the critical consciousness, political will, and commitment to challenging long-standing racial inequities by both dismantling systemic barriers and creating new structures that center the realities and aspirations of historically oppressed populations. The six participants in this study choose to center anti-racism in their leadership despite the significant deterrents to enacting equity-minded leadership and activism such as increased personal and professional risk (Ryan, 2016; Ryan & Tuters, 2017), increased stress and burnout (Gorski & Erakat, 2019; Krull & Robicheau, 2020), and daily trauma enacted through macro and microaggressions for racialized leaders (Krull & Robicheau, 2020).
The scholarship on tempered radicals helps make sense of the competing commitments and micropolitics of working for revolutionary change from within an institution (Meyerson & Scully, 1995). Tempered radicals are individuals with dual commitments. On the one hand, they identify with and are committed to their organizations. On the other hand, they are committed to a movement, cause, community, or ideology that often contradicts the dominant culture and ideology of their organization. “They rock the boat and stay in the boat” (Meyerson, 2001, p. xi); they do not fit or belong in their institutions and are often positioned at the margins because of their identities and ideologies, proving to be sources of transformation and resistance to stagnant, traditional systems (Meyerson & Scully, 1995). However, there is a tremendous gap in the literature on tempered radicalism in educational leadership and school districts. We draw heavily on Lowery's (2020) study that outlines three general approaches to social justice leadership: silence, tempered radicalism, and revolutionary actions. Lowery (2020) distinguishes between tempered radicals and revolutionaries, with the latter confronting injustice directly, such as unapologetically sharing views, directly questioning and challenging inequitable practices, and advocating for students marginalized by the system. Lowery (2020) explains that while tempered radicals employ strategies that range from covert to overt, revolutionary social justice leaders are more indiscrete in their opposition to injustice leading to greater personal and professional risks. We see participants in this study traversing tempered radicalism and revolutionary leadership in balancing personal risks and long-term and sustainable change. While Jones and Squire (2018) focus their attention on higher education, this study explores critical race-tempered leadership among in the K-12 schooling context among school district leaders. Furthermore, we join critics of tempered radicalism such as Jones and Squire (2018) who assert that Meyerson and Scully fail to account for the impact of histories of oppression, creating a false sense of agency for advocates within organizations aiming to challenge whiteness and intersecting, oppressive logics.
To support this goal, we turn to the scholarship on ACL, which describes the experiences, visions, and enactments of participants in this study, leaders in Black and Brown bodies leading for racial and intersecting justices. As a leadership application of Critical Race Theory (CRT), Santamaría and Santamaría (2013) describe ACL as: … the emancipatory practice of choosing to address educational issues and challenges using a critical race perspective to enact context-specific change in response to power, domination, access, and achievement imbalances, resulting in improved academic achievement for learners. (p. 7)
However, ACL does not sufficiently explain the difficulties that leaders face and the impossibilities of leading for racial justice within systems that are designed to uphold white supremacy.
We begin this study by exploring tempered radicalism and ACL more fully. We then turn our attention to counter-storytelling as methodology as we highlight the experiences of Black and Brown leaders who offer often-silenced narratives of anti-racist leadership. Our findings are presented as paradoxes that highlight both impossibilities and possibilities of anti-racist leadership in school districts framed through tempered radicalism and ACL. In analyzing the im/possibilities, we offer three perspectives on anti-racist leadership that draw on both theories and important recommendations to school districts and scholars of educational leadership that challenge the politics of representation. We also hope to illuminate some of the complexities within this ecosystem to help bridge relations and build trust between anti-racist leaders in school districts and communities.
Tempered Radicals
Tempered radicals are people who work and seek advancement within institutions and simultaneously work to eradicate social injustice within that institution (Kirton et al., 2007; Meyerson & Scully, 1995). Meyerson and Scully (1995) explain that “radical” refers to the desire of leaders to challenge the status quo and actions they take towards that end, while “tempered” refers to both a sense of anger and outrage at injustice, as well as the need to quell these emotions to avoid being alienated or unemployed. Tempered radicals are people who often do not fit within the organization, both because of their ideological and political commitments to challenge the status quo and because of their “marginal” social identities (Meyerson & Scully, 1995). Yet, they maintain a critical consciousness because of their interconnected identities, political and ideological commitments, and networks, which expose them to multiple perspectives (Meyerson & Tompkins, 2007). Meyerson (2001) distinguishes tempered radicals from the “modern-day hero” conception of leadership, suggesting that tempered radicals lead in ways that are “more local, more diffuse, more opportunistic, and more humble” (p. 171) and with a recognition that they cannot lead for change individually. As Meyerson and Scully (1995) note, they often help prepare for the massive change that radical outsiders are better positioned to advance while supporting insiders with more positional power to push for greater change.
Tempered radicals have a dual identity and are therefore in a state of enduring ambivalence that opens up challenges, possibilities, and choices in three ways (Meyerson & Scully, 1995). First, they are “outsiders within,” which affords the opportunity to make the change from within while being sufficiently detached to gain access to outsider knowledge about the changes required. Second, they may act as critics of both the status quo and institutional practices that maintain the status quo as well as untempered radical change, allowing them to see multiple perspectives. Third, they may simultaneously be advocates for both the radical change and the status quo, using the benefits that come from complying with the status quo as tools for change.
Expectedly, challenges emerge for tempered radicals. They are often seen as hypocrites that manage impressions to win over both sides, which can lead to a lack of trust and feelings of isolation. They also navigate feelings of co-option, such as being the token racialized leaders, actively deferring radical commitments until they have more institutional power or trust, and toning down “emotional” responses in favor of more “rational,” “institutionally acceptable” responses. Finally, tempered radicals experience emotional burdens such as guilt and self-doubt about whether they are, in fact, making the change or abandoning their moral and political principles. In a study of diversity professionals in various organizations, Kirton et al. (2007) found that in trying to seek compromise, their participants were seen as too radical by some and too conservative by others. They also risked losing their outsider identity and legitimacy as they used the language of insiders to gain internal legitimacy, which led to “co-option, dilution or even abandonment of the personal change agenda” (Kirton et al., 2007, p. 1988).
Tempered radicals use several strategies to achieve change. As Richter et al. (2020) explain, “As part of institutions, tempered radicals exert change from within by means of diverse incremental and subversive change tactics ranging from everyday practices to isolated acts and coalition building” (p. 1016). In Meyerson and Scully's (1995) original work, they name strategies such as small wins; local, spontaneous, authentic action; deconstructing insider knowledge and reconstructing alternative worldviews; and, maintaining affiliations with people on the inside, people on the outside, and other tempered radicals. Over a decade later, in her book Rocking the Boat: How Tempered Radicals Effect Change Without Making Trouble, Meyerson (2008) notes additional ways in which tempered radicals make a difference: resisting quietly and staying true to oneself, turning personal threats into opportunities, broadening the impact through negotiation, and organizing collective action. Meyerson (2008) also identifies six strategies that tempered radicals use in threatening encounters: interrupting momentum (such as offering alternatives to harmful suggestions), naming the issues to raise awareness of the problem, correcting assumptions or actions, diverting the direction of harmful actions by demonstrating a pattern of exclusion, using humor, and delaying a response until a more appropriate time.
As much of the literature on tempered radicalism focuses on the business or higher education contexts, there is minimal scholarship on what tempered radicalism looks like in K-12 educational leadership. One study that offers an important framing here is Lowery's (2020) study on social justice leadership which distinguishes between tempered radicalism and revolutionary actions. Brining tempered radicalism into the context of K-12 leadership, Lowery (2020) reminds us that school leaders have “an additional call to seek equity for students—not just among their coworkers” (p. 9). She draws comparisons between tempered radicalism and Ryan's (2016) notion of strategic activism, in which educational leaders are selective about how and when to seek change, given changing contexts, partners, and cultures, but resist overt action because of professional risk and the importance of their positioning within the organization. While Lowery (2020) describes courage as the motivating force for social justice leaders that helps one to overcome fear in pursuit of justice, we are also interested in how leaders are afforded and enact “tempering” differently based on their race. The place of race and racism is another highly undertheorized aspect of the literature on tempered radicalism, an intervention this study aims to make in the context of K-12 school district leadership.
The only study we found that explores educational leadership, racism, and tempered radicalism is Alston's (2005) study of Black, female superintendents of education as both tempered radicals and servant leaders. As tempered leaders, they “embody self-will and determination, spiritual connection and awareness, and a strong work ethic and historical foundation (Alston, 1996, 1999; Alston & Jones, 2002; Meyerson, 2001; Nicholson, 1999; Peterson, 1992)” (p. 683). In the context of faculty and staff of color in higher education, Jones and Squire (2018) use an intersectional lens to explore how racism constricts actions for leaders of color and provide important critiques of the literature on tempered radicalism from the perspective of CRT. Of the 48 people Meyerson (2001) interviews in her follow-up study, 37 are White and four are Black. Jones and Squire (2018) aptly name the act of “tempering” as a privileged position and insist that tempering radicalism is a form of violent action towards people of color that upholds white supremacy. They write: The idea that one might temper themselves in order to continue to exist within a white supremacist structure and not address the emotional or physical violence enacted upon them on a daily basis is an act of self- and imposed-dehumanization. The audacity of temper determines that one ignores the self as human. (p. 50)
Tempering radicalism, then, allows White and other privileged people the benefits of working within a system at a slow, safe, moderate pace, placing a greater burden on those most harmed to take even greater risks in systems that were designed for their failure and exclusion (Jones & Squire, 2018). Tempered radicalism then, can serve as coded language for interest convergence, which is a term coined by Bell (1980) to stipulate that racial equity for Black people will only be achieved when White and Black interests converge. Jones and Squire (2018) call for a conception of critical race-tempered radicalism that challenges interest convergence to account for the ways in which power is exerted on people to enable and foreclose the full expression of their leadership and beingness. For example, they suggest that smaller actions of faculty of color to challenge white supremacy have much greater impacts on their well-being and professional standing than their White colleagues. With an interest in how tempering radicalism is enacted in an Ontario context, and with a specific focus on anti-racist approaches to school district leadership, we turn to ACL as an example of anti-racist revolutionary leadership, extending Lowery's (2020) concept of revolutionary leaders and Jones and Squire's (2018) critical race tempered leadership.
Applied Critical Leadership
In their foundational text Applied Critical Leadership in Education: Choosing Change Santamaría and Santamaría's (2013) explain that ACL has interdisciplinary theoretical foundations drawing on transformative leadership (Shields, 2010), critical pedagogy and critical multiculturalism (May & Sleeter, 2010), and CRT (Ladson-Billings, 1999). Specifically, ACL is a leadership application of CRT that serves to expose assumptions and power dynamics and challenge common sense assumptions that perpetuate inequities for Indigenous and Black learners, other learners of color, and their families and communities (Santamaría & Santamaría, 2015). ACL “offers a departure from patriarchal leadership and management paradigms void of reference to cultural, linguistic, gender, or socio-economic diversity theorized and written to reflect a time and social climate when homogeneity, oppression, and segregation were normalized” (Santamaría, 2021, p. 2). Similar to Santamaría and Jean-Marie (2014) and Santamaría and Santamaría (2015), this study explores how the identities of racialized leaders impact how and why they lead (and the particular challenges they experience as a result of their racialization. In their study on multiracial women leaders, Santamaría and Jean-Marie (2014) describe barriers these leaders face such as limited access to networks in contexts where leadership promotion often occurs based on connections, being mistaken for someone other than the school principal, and having to dispel negative stereotypes of groups with which they identified. Santamaría and Santamaría (2015) suggest that non-Indigenous, White leaders sometimes choose to assume a CRT stance to “race themselves outside of whiteness” (p. 34), and assert that Indigenous and Black leaders and leaders of color do not have the same “choice” to take up the fight.
ACL is a leadership approach practiced by individuals from historically underrepresented groups who have been affected by institutional racism and discriminatory practices as part of their own schooling experiences, their leadership journey and in their day-to-day leadership experiences (Santamaría & Santamaría, 2015). However, many of these leaders have transcended educational barriers and “may also be perceived as ‘successful’ in systems outside of their original/ancestral indigenous or culturally informed ‘ways of being’. These individuals may be far removed from or without memory of their Indigenous heritage due to a variety of colonial, neoliberal, or hegemonic factors (e.g., racism, war, forced relocation)” (Santamaría & Santamaría, 2015, p. 2015). In recognizing the limits of Western approaches to leadership that center dominant discourses of colonization (Santamaría & Santamaría, 2013), ACL draws on leaders’ funds of knowledge (Moll et al., 1992) as strengths that enhance the relevance of their leadership to the learning and well-being of historically underserved students. In this way, leaders’ racialized identities are acknowledged and valued for the renewal they bring to traditional approaches to leadership and their enactment of leadership that identifies and disrupts practices grounded in whiteness and colonialism (Santamaría & Santamaría, 2013). Conceptions of ACL are based on case studies of eleven culturally, racially, linguistically, and gender-diverse educational leaders (kindergarten to higher education), who practice leadership that promotes social justice and educational equity in educational institutions serving culturally and linguistically diverse learners (Santamaría, 2014; Santamaría & Santamaría, 2013; Santamaría et al., 2014b).
According to Santamaría et al. (2014a), several core shared themes or characteristics emerged among ACL participants, including:
A willingness to initiate and engage in critical conversations—often regarding race, language, culture, difference, access, and/or educational equity. White leaders may choose to assume a CRT lens for decision-making. The use of consensus as the preferred strategy for decision-making. The intentional disruption of negative stereotypes associated with historically marginalized communities. The importance of empirical or research-based contributions to educational contexts, adding authentic research-based information to academic discourse regarding educational equity issues. The need to honor all members of their constituencies. Leading by example to meet unresolved educational needs or challenges. The need to build trust when working with mainstream constituents or partners or others who do not share an affinity toward issues related to educational equity. Describing themselves as transformative, servant leaders who work ultimately to serve the greater good (Santamaría et al., 2014b). The use of disaggregated culture-, language- and race-based data to make decisions.
ACL also has particular articulations with specific groups of leaders. In their study on Latino/a ACL (LatACL), Santamaría et al. (2014a) note five elements that perhaps indicate a sub-division of ACL: lack of leadership guidance or scaffolding, spiritual aspects of leadership practice, the importance of family, the use of data in order to make decisions, and the conceptualization of a positive identity. These leaders “do not opt to trade their marginalized identities for hegemonic perspectives” and “rather than suppress their identities, biases, linguistic ability, ambiguity, and multiple perspectives, Latino/a critical leaders use their ‘ways of knowing’ to inform important leadership decisions in education at every level” supporting their leadership success (p. 177). In a separate study of over 20 ACL leaders, Santamaría and Santamaría (2015) explore the ways in which “Indigenous leaders, leaders of color, and leaders who ‘choose’ to lead through critical lenses intersect and manifest as culturally responsive leadership contributing to sustainable change” (p. 22). They found that these leaders move within the individual, local, and global dimensions working to “disrupt educational inequities associated with the politics of difference in their particular sociopolitical/cultural/geographic locations” (p. 27). They also concluded these leaders were responsive to socio-political and local realities, in part because the cultural and identity-based strengths of the leaders were shared with students and families. ACL leaders see themselves as local, regional, and global citizens and form collectives and collaborations with leaders who have similar identities and worldviews. Finally, they note that intersectionality must be constructed as an opportunity for innovation in both educational research and practice. Finally, in their 2015 study on Treaty responsive leadership as connected to ACL, Santamaría, Webber, Santamaría and Dam (2015) noted that in addition to the ACL characteristics listed above, school principals acted in treaty-responsive ways, meaningfully consulted with elders throughout the process, were part of community events outside of the school, and supported culturally and treaty-responsive teacher professional development. These specificities indicate the responsiveness to contexts and cultures. As we consider the literature on tempered radicals and the intersectional approaches of ACL, we explore the im/possibilities of leading for anti-racism in institutions that uphold white supremacy.
Methods
Ontario, Canada is a highly centralized and neoliberal, 1 provincial education system (Shah, 2018), which makes anti-racist leadership difficult. This is because leaders in neoliberal contexts often internalize its logic and embody autocratic leadership styles that are focused more on private gains than public aims (Ball & Olmedo, 2013; Trujillo, 2012). Furthermore, there are no formal accountability systems that demand anti-racist, anti-colonial, and anti-oppressive leadership practices. As an example, despite numerous policies and legislation that protect rights, such as the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (a national bill of rights enshrined in the constitution) (Government of Canada, n.d.), the Ontario Human Rights Code (a provincial law that affords equal rights) (Government of Ontario, 1990), Provincial Policy Mandate 119: Developing and Implementing Equity and Inclusive Education Policies in Ontario Schools (a provincial policy on equity for schools and school boards) (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2013), Ontario's Education Equity Action Plan (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2019), and the mandates of teachers’ unions and district school board policies on equity and inclusivity, there are minimal professional, financial, or other repercussions to upholding white supremacy and intersecting forms of oppression. Several recent examples in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area demonstrate a stronger commitment to protecting racist educators and educational leaders than students who have endured racist harm.
This study is part of a larger, multiple-case study exploring school district reform for anti-racism within this neoliberal context in Ontario, Canada. With strong connections to educational leaders in the Greater Toronto Area, the lead researcher was able to draw on those connections as key informants to advise on a sample of participants in the larger counternarrative study that explored the knowledges and capacities of anti-racist district leaders, and revealed “fundamental differences in leaders’ knowledges and capacities compared to those identified in the literature on educational change and promoted in the corresponding leadership frameworks in Ontario” (Shah et al., 2022, p. 1). The interviews were between 1.5 and 2 h and conversational in nature. We asked questions about their roles and positionalities, how they understand anti-racism and anti-racist reforms, how they enact their leadership in the context of their district, what motivates them and to whom they are accountable, the impact and possibilities of their work, as well as the role of district leaders in enacting anti-racist leadership and reform. The participants of the larger study were from six school districts in the Greater Toronto Area and nearby districts, characterized by high levels of diversity on the basis of ethno-racial identity, social class, gender and gender identity, sexuality, place of birth, language, religion, sexuality, disability, immigrant status, and more. Despite this strength of diversity, schooling exists within a provincial framework of education built on neoliberal policies and structures (Shah, 2018), with minimal accountability for anti-racist, anti-colonial, and anti-oppressive schooling and leadership practices. Participants varied in their social identities, identifying as White, Black, or Brown (including South Asian) and in their responsibilities, with some responsible for families of schools and others responsible for more central equity portfolios.
As we explored the findings of the larger, counternarrative study, we noticed counternarratives within the counternarratives. Beyond describing their knowledges and capacities as anti-racist leaders in the initial interviews, six of the 12 participants also described how they live and work in the tensions and paradoxes inherent in anti-racist leadership in institutions of white supremacy. They moved away from a “how-to” discussion of anti-racist leadership to the troubling ways in which leading for anti-racism is an almost impossible task in an education system that upholds white supremacy. This study narrows in on six of these initial interviews to further explore the experiences of Black and Brown mid-level and upper-level district leaders in three of the school districts (two from each district) and the tensions they experience in embodying these roles. The six participants navigate multiple, and at times contradictory needs and interests of racialized and other marginalized communities, as well as resistance to anti-racist efforts aimed at increasing access and opportunities for historically oppressed racial groups. Four of the participants identify as Black from the African diaspora, three female and one male, and two identify as Brown or South Asian, one male and one female. While not an intentional focus of the original research, we could not discount the prevalence of tensions and im/possibilities named by participants that we present here as impossibilities and possibilities of anti-racist leadership in educational institutions that uphold white supremacy. The six participants that did not speak to tensions in the same way identify as Black, racialized, and White, noting that not all the original Black and Brown participants spoke to the im/possibilities of this work. At the time of the interviews, three of the participants were mid-level district leaders (known as Superintendents of Education in Ontario) with direct responsibilities over a family of schools and direct responsibilities to senior district leaders. One of the participants was a Central Superintendent with responsibilities over mid-level district staff and board-wide portfolios on equity reforms, one was an Associate Director, and one was a Director of Education (known as a Superintendent of Education in the United States). We share positionalities and positions separately and somewhat vaguely to protect the identity of participants. Participants’ tenure as mid-level or upper-level leaders ranged from 3 years to over 15 years. The variance in positional power and length of service did not mitigate experiences of racism for racialized leaders in public school districts.
The larger study employed counter-storytelling, which is a central tenet of CRT (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002) and a central aspect of leading for racial justice (Capper, 2015). As Ikemoto (1997) reminds us, “By responding only to the standard story, we let it dominate the discourse” (p. 130). Counter-stories serve to expose, analyze, and challenge mainstream majority stories to challenge the dominant discourse on the difference (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002). The larger study shared the knowledges and capacities of anti-racist leaders in neoliberal contexts, creating narratives of leadership simply by sharing the experiences and ideas of those who resist the confines of the dominant culture. All of the participants spoke to the ways they resist whiteness and white supremacy in schooling. However, there was a subset of interviews that explored the im/possibilities of leading for anti-racism in Black and Brown bodies.
After we coded the data for the larger study, we returned to clean copies of these six interview transcripts. In our research for the larger study, we came across tempered radicalism and ACL as theoretical frameworks. The literature on tempered radicalism helped us make sense of the tensions and impossibilities of anti-racist leadership in institutions of white supremacy and the harm and danger these participants experience in navigating these tensions. The literature on ACL encompassed so many of the orientations, knowledges, and capacities of these leaders and helped us make sense of the possibilities of this work for Black and Brown leaders, students, families, and educators. We were locating and making sense of their experiences within and between these two bodies of literature. Our coding happened in multiple stages guided by the process of thematic analysis (Clarke & Braun, 2013) and ACL and tempered radicalism as the theoretical frameworks. According to Clarke and Braun (2013), thematic analysis involves seven steps: transcription, reading and familiarization, coding, searching for themes, reviewing themes, defining and naming themes, and finalizing the analysis. The impossibilities we identified applied to the majority of participants and the possibilities applied largely to Black female leaders. Counter-storytelling was also employed in the analysis of the findings as we identified three perspectives on anti-racist leadership that offer a fundamentally different orientation and that emerge in the in-between spaces of tempered radicalism and ACL. These perspectives include challenging a politics of representation; challenging neat, linear models of anti-racist leadership, and instead positioning leadership as networked, porous, messy, ambiguous, and contextual; and, viewing leadership as larger than any one person, any one role, any one location, or any one generation.
During this time, our holistic and evolutionary analytic process was informed by ongoing dialogue within the research team and continued engagement with the literature, feedback from presentations at various research conferences, ongoing conversations with participants for feedback on our initial thinking, participating in public conferences/webinars in which participants were presenting their ideas and sharing their experiences, and following the activities of participants on Twitter to gain additional insight into the im/possibilities they face and guard against confirmation bias. We formed and reformed categories at various stages of the coding process over a ten-month period, checking identified themes for resonance with particular participants who were in ongoing communication with us. Their leadership is difficult and life-giving, both impossible to enact and impossible to ignore. As such, we explore the tensions and paradoxes as im/possibilities of leading for racial justice among Black and Brown educational leaders.
As a research team of one South Asian woman, one White man, one Latin American woman, and one Muslim Palestinian woman, all within settler colonial contexts, we draw on and acknowledge how our own intersectional identities influence what we notice, what we center, what we discount, and what resonates with us. We also recognize that nobody on the research team identifies as Black, making connections to and ongoing conversations with participants even more important. Similar to Santamaría and Santamaría (2015), we reflect on our role in producing research and impacting leadership practices “to promote social justice, equity, and subaltern ways of conceptualizing leadership for diversity” (p. 30). We also bring a diversity of identities to the work and experiences with communities and activism, and we speak from different locations as pre-tenured, post-tenured, and graduate students. Two members of the research team have worked in school boards in Ontario and held central and leadership positions, and two members have experiences with school districts internationally.
Impossibilities
While educational leadership studies may explore the experiences of racialized leaders, the knowledges and capacities of these leaders, and the learning needed to support anti-racist and anti-colonial leadership, this study explores the difficulties, the unspoken realities, the tensions, and the im/possibilities of leading for anti-racism in Black and Brown bodies. These findings present a more complex and nuanced understanding of the realities that Black and Brown senior district leaders face in enacting anti-racist leadership. The following section explores the following impossibilities: complicities and complexities, alliances and accountabilities, and different metrics, different expectations.
Complicities and Complexities
The higher up you move, the heavier the weight of white supremacy, the more it conspires for you to uphold whiteness … So you always have to negotiate this whole thing of the forest and the trees. And what that means is that at times you are choosing to be complicit in the system for a longer-term game … You’re always navigating. When do we put ourselves in harm's way for the community and when do we need to protect ourselves for the longevity of the work?—South Asian, male participant
Complicities and complexities speak to negotiating levels and directions of harm, recognizing that anti-racist leaders are always both enacting and disrupting harm in systems built on white supremacy and colonialism. This section speaks to the inevitability and directionality of harm, and working with and through complicities and complexities.
The inevitability and directionality of harm
In recognizing that harm was inevitable, participants struggled with negotiating where, when, and to which communities harm would be directed. On the one hand, the harm would be directed towards historically oppressed populations if leaders did not engage in anti-racist work from the inside. Leaders spoke to the choice they made to make the change from within the system. A Black female leader shares, “So you can't just always be from the outside and trying to push in. You have to find an entry point. And often the entry point is within the existing structure. And when you enter that way, you can blow it up from there.” She later shares: So how are we going to change the system to ensure that in the end things are better for marginalized students? This means that you need to be an advocate. But as an advocate, you’re still employed by the board, which means you still have to be abide by those things. So, that means you have to navigate around the rules in the best interest of the students and families, which sometimes may be counter to the rules.
Another Black female participant explains: And I think at some point I made a decision that rather than being an activist, I was going to use my role to try and disrupt certain things in a way that didn't name it, but I felt I could make it go further. Because once you name it, all the people who oppose you come out of the woodwork. If you don't name it, you keep asking the questions at the table and hold people accountable. It was my thesis that this is what would get me farther. I don't know if that's true today, but that gives you a sense of the journey.
On the other hand, personal and professional harm was often directed at participants for engaging in this work. One participant shared, “So in working the way the system wants you to work, which is really to harm and have disparities … there really are no consequences. The consequences are when you speak back to the system.” The South Asian female participant explains, “They can silence you. And there are a range of ways in which that can happen. Even among people who consider themselves to be allies publicly.” Participants also spoke to those with positional power and in close proximity to whiteness being vindictive, making the attacks personal, and sabotaging and blocking ant-racist efforts and relationships with communities. A Black female participant shared, “I always feel as though there's a gaze, and it's not a gaze of affirmation or support. It's a gaze of, you know, ‘when will something go wrong?’ which provides an opportunity to discredit me, which means that then the work can be discredited.”
Participants also discussed the toll this work takes on them. A South Asian female leader described navigating this work as emotionally exhausting, sharing, “There are days I go home, and I am just spent, and it isn't because you physically have done work.” A Black woman leader shared, “you also don't want to be too far off the ledge that when you look around, there's no cushion for you, because, you know, you want to be able to interrupt. But it's also your employment. You never want to be sticking your neck out too far.” The emotions of racialized leaders are held to different standards and misunderstood. The South Asian male leader shares: And I remember this one day I was at head office, and it was awful. Whatever it was that happened, I went into my office. I closed the door. I broke down. I cried. And then I wiped up every tear. And I was like, you are going out there. No one gets to see your tears. And I walked right out, and I smiled … These tears were mine, for us.
Participants were continuously navigating the direction of harm, whether at self or towards students and communities, often with less power, but with the assurance of harm in at least one direction. These are impossible choices.
Working with and through complicities and complexities
Some participants noted strategies in addressing this tension, such as documenting the work to preserve some semblance of history or permanence, knowing how quickly their narratives, perspectives, and efforts can be erased and buried with a change in leadership or pressure from white, middle-class communities. Another strategy noted is the importance of having a “stubborn persistence” and convincing others of the need to stay with a new initiative for some time before deciding whether to continue or cancel it. Four participants spoke to learning the skills of when to speak up, when to ask questions, how to ask questions, and when to step back. The South Asian male participant explains that coming to terms with one's complicity individually and institutionally is an important aspect of accountability and self-responsibility: If we can begin from a place where we understand that no system is perfect and that all systems will necessarily exclude and/or harm some children, then we can become meticulous and home in on which children are being underserved and then build in accountability measures where we’re reporting back in transparent ways to communicate about how we are working to better serve those kids.
Five participants spoke to finding the people who are doing this work to build a network of support because this work can be very isolating and demoralizing, and you can end up questioning yourself in growth-deterring ways.
To support their decision-making in the context of multi-directional harm, many participants named the importance of accountabilities to and alliances with communities and the difficulties in wanting and needing to build trust with communities. The South Asian female leader explained, “those of us [activists] who work on the inside, sometimes we don't have the same influence and impact as community members … but it doesn't mean we don't want the same things.” Strong community presence and strong community voices that challenge whiteness can counteract the logics and metrics of whiteness in schooling that leaders are expected to uphold. The South Asian female leader explained: Even though I know it is the right thing to do, I still need the request. I still need them pushing it. I know what to do, but sometimes it's difficult to move it through the various structures here because their thinking [other district leaders] is not where my thinking is or where the community thinking is.
Educational leaders that are committed to disrupting inequities need communities to push for change from the outside so that they can then enact it from the inside. Given historical mistrust between Brown and Black communities, the South Asian female leader also shared that she had to build trust with the Black community by being consistent in her actions towards these aims, building strong relationships with Black community members, scholars, and educators, and acknowledging the differences in school experiences between Black and Brown students and their families.
Some participants spoke to the importance of building mechanisms for enacting community accountability, such as advisory committees and community meetings, so that community groups could ask the board about their funding plans, student outcomes, curriculum changes, and more. The Black male leader described the importance of his role in building up the power of communities to leverage their voice, knowing that often times, communities do not realize how significant their voices are. Yet, several participants also shared that many racialized communities are frustrated with the board and with racialized leaders that move too slowly or make only minimal changes to racist policies and structures. The Black male leader explains: It's an ongoing discussion because I get it from the community all the time. You work in a system that's racist, and you guys are not talking about racism enough. This year we are focusing on anti-Black racism. But what happens next year? What happens if you have a new Director? What happens when you get pushback?
Simultaneously, several participants also spoke to needing community backing for their professional protection within the system. The Black male leader continues to explain: I think community connection is the key on this. I also tell Black teachers who are worried about being safe, “have community behind you. Let them know the work that you’re doing and that you’re supportive of them. And they’ll back you to the hilt. And their voices will be even more important than anyone who wants to do anything to you.”
Leaders need community support for their personal protection and to move the work forward, yet they know that every time they choose not to disrupt for the longevity of the work, they are harming the very people whose support and protection they require.
Accountabilities and Alliances
And yet everybody who's been here before me has been successful because they’re protecting the firm at all costs. And so now going back to communities, If I’m protecting the firm, of course, how can I have integrity with the community?—South Asian female participant
Alliances and accountabilities speak to disrupting while remaining employed and the politics of building alliances across differences.
Disrupting while remaining employed
Participants described the difficulties in disrupting barriers while remaining employed to be able to push for change from within. A Black male leader explained that many of the publicly elected trustees who choose the Director of Education 2 are actively against anti-racist, anti-colonial, and anti-oppressive practices and orientations and get elected based on that platform. They may even use their position to broker back-door deals with senior leaders to ensure that “their people” (based on various social identities—race, sexuality, faith, etc.) get promoted through the ranks. As such, the likelihood of finding a Director of Education that is willing to take the necessary risks to change the disproportionate outcomes and experiences of students is unlikely. Trustees also block anti-racist initiatives and silence controversial and sensitive conversations that could serve to build the critical consciousness of both educators and the larger school community. Some participants also named having to navigate Directors of Education or other senior leaders that do not prioritize or vocalize commitments to anti-racism, anti-colonialism, and anti-oppression. This results in educators believing that they would be harmed professionally if they publicly declared their commitments to supporting historically underserved communities and educators and educational leaders not receiving the inevitable protection needed from people and organizations within and outside of the school board when they do act on these commitments.
Another barrier to disrupting while remaining employed is figuring out who to trust to engage in this work and the associated dangers of public association with other equity-minded educators and community members. For example, the South Asian male leader described the personal dangers of mentoring aspiring leaders because it is not always easy to decide which leaders are truly committed to anti-racism and anti-oppressive practices. He spoke to a type of mentorship in which he would share strategies for survival and resistance, such as how to share ideas that challenge the status quo and how to build support for a cause, strategies that if made public, would harm him professionally. He explained that he needed ample evidence to trust that those he was mentoring would not use the advice against him or against the larger cause of social justice as a move to align with whiteness. At times, to protect both the leaders he was mentoring and himself in public settings, this participant would need to make it appear as though he did not know those he was mentoring formally and informally. Sometimes, this would result in mentees thinking he was a “sellout” and being angry with him for distancing himself from them publicly. This participant also indicated that there were aspects to mentorship and his work more generally that he could not share with us in the interview, stating that it would undermine the work if these strategies were exposed to whiteness and white power.
Other participants explained how racialized leaders, despite their positional power, are often powerless in the face of racism and racial capital, making disruption even harder. A Black, female leader described a case of racist insubordination directed at her by a white teacher in her family of schools. However, there were no policies or procedures to protect her and hold this educator to account because in this case, the racism was directed upward. She stated, “You can't be the object of the attack and the investigator at the same time. So there needs to be something that recognizes that … racism exists at all levels, regardless of your position.” Several participants spoke to difficulties in dealing with teachers’ unions that undermine the work of Superintendents trying to hold teachers to account for racist actions and words, by protecting the teachers and engaging in long battles that take time, energy, and money away from possibilities for anti-racist change. 3 These examples demonstrate the tremendous labor of racialized leaders that is often unnoticed and unaccounted.
Building alliances across difference
Accountabilities and alliances also become difficult when navigating relationships with colleagues and bosses and holding them to account for racial justice work. The Black male leader explains that senior leaders do not trust him because of his connections to community, being scared that he might turn the community on them and assuming that he has negative intentions such as “taking down the board.” Instead, his intentions are to build a robust school board in which many voices are centered and rightfully holding the board to account. This tension is especially difficult when working with White colleagues and being careful not to recenter whiteness. A Black female leader shares, “It is so hard to show White colleagues how they are implicated in the very systems we are trying to dismantle. They think that being good and nice makes them anti-racist.” In speaking to their White peers, participants generally spoke to “bringing White people on board.” Another Black female described intentionally partnering with a White man when presenting on racial justice in schooling. In speaking to the approach taken in her racial justice work, a third Black female leader explains, “I’ve seen the more direct approach happen, and then the dialogue that happens outside of the room that ends up shutting down all of the work because of the white fragility 4 that surfaces and the power in that white fragility to shut down the work.” This participant went on to say, “I guess I’m thinking about whether you can completely engage in the work without re-centering whiteness. I’m not sure. Sad to say because of how the system operates.” Yet, in more recent conversations with participants, in the wake of a rise in racial awareness and calls for racial justice globally, many participants have shared that a more direct approach is needed now. The South Asian male participant shared that racialized, anti-racist leaders have failed in “helping white people to understand how these systems actually harm them as well.”
Several participants also shared that ways in which White allies may interrupt the work in how they navigate and take up space, and the ways in which they “fall apart” when they try to lead the work for the first time and face backlash. They also spoke to the challenges of navigating Black, Indigenous, and other racialized leaders who are not oriented to anti-racist, decolonial aims. The South Asian male leader explains, “I will say to you very openly, some of the biggest obstacles that I’ve had in doing this work came in the bodies of Indigenous, Black and racialized people in the name of doing anti-racist and decolonizing work.” The Black male leader shared: People tend to go into teaching who’ve been successful in a racist system, right, and who were meant to rise to the top despite those obstacles. And even racialized people, they rise to the top despite the obstacles … the tendency is to want to replicate that.
A Black female leader expresses how difficult it is to work with racialized colleagues that “enjoy the benefits of assimilation” and the need for racialized leaders to “do their own work to decolonize themselves before they can actually show up in a space in a more authentic way.” The South Asian male leader shares: I can't count on me to be effective because I am now complicit. And I need somebody who will call me out if I need to be called out … the single greatest thing that that I have learned from doing anti-oppressive work is not about changing structures. It's been about changing myself and holding myself accountable. And the constant reflective work that needs to happen. Because in our desire to do anti-racist, decolonizing work, often times what we do, without knowing that's what we’re doing, is we uphold white supremacy.
This, he explains, means leaders need to invest in the healing of their own racialized trauma to not replicate whiteness.
Different Metrics, Different Expectations
This finding illuminates the ways in which Black, Indigenous, and other racialized leaders are perpetually viewed against White logics and White metrics that render them simultaneously too much and not enough, both invisible and hyper-visible. As such, these leaders have assumptions made about them and are held to different standards.
The three Black, female leaders spoke to microaggressions that they regularly experience, such as their White colleagues commenting on how smart or well-spoken they are. While following school district commitments to name injustices and have courageous conversations, one Black female leader describes her colleague responding to her with, “I knew you’re going to jump on that and be aggressive,” reiterating the troupe of the angry Black woman despite district-wide commitments to anti-racist leadership practices. Several participants also spoke to being type casted as “the equity person,” discounting their breadth of expertise and experience and limiting their vast skillset to equity-related knowledge and skills, which are seen as separate from all other aspects of schooling and not the “core business” of schools. Type-casting these leaders both diminishes their anti-racist work as “passion, and not anything based in research or knowledge,” separates anti-racist work from teaching and learning, and absolves other leaders from engaging in equity-related work or speaking out against oppression. For example, the Black and South Asian male leaders spoke to the ways in which Black and racialized leaders are given portfolios of equity, anti-racism, etc., and forced to deal with difficult and controversial issues within and between communities, with little support or protection from the organization, and with the expectation that they uphold the silences of whiteness and protect groups that have long been protected by whiteness.
Black participants described having to prove their credibility and convince others that their work was a strong contribution to leadership and pedagogy. For example, one male and two female Black leaders spoke to how White and non-Black, racialized leaders responded to their efforts to center the learning and well-being of Black students. One participant shared: Some think that leading in this way is a pet project. So, it's something you’re personalizing rather than a right of all students, something that is identified in the strategic plan of the board and how we relate to students, and they don't understand that this is the way we need to be leading and interrogating and interrupting.
A Black female leader spoke to an experience of wanting to hire a Black vice-principal and people thinking that it was her “agenda,” and not about building system capacity for the benefit of all students, and specifically Black students and families. The Black male leader shared the importance of building relationships with ethno-racial communities outside of the Black community, in part because it was important and necessary to the work of anti-racism, and in part so that he would not be positioned as only supporting his community, thereby discounting his efforts and the voices of the Black community.
Participants also spoke to the higher expectations they are held to in the bodies they are in. A Black female leader describes, “I can't really enter a situation or a room in some way, not prepared or any less prepared than anybody else in the room … You’re not just speaking for yourself; you’re speaking for everybody.” The South Asian female leader shares: So, expectations are higher, and you can't not meet them … I always say to people we cannot be disorganized. We cannot miss deadlines … But I’ve been trained like that. But I’ve been trained like that … nobody can question my work ethic or my ability to do my work. Right? Dot your i's and cross your t's.
These leaders are navigating their leadership within the confines of professional typecasting and navigating other people that their system commitments are acts of self-interest.
Participants also spoke to navigating changing expectations and metrics that continuously position them as “not the right fit.” For example, the South Asian female leader was told that the hiring committee was not ready for her level of critique, despite the school board's public commitment to anti-racism, anti-colonialism, and anti-oppression. The South Asian male leader was told that he was not qualified enough for a job despite having greater qualifications than his White colleague who got the job. A Black, female leader shared that she literally had to translate the responses of a Black applicant in a hiring interview so that her White colleagues could understand the leadership qualities of this applicant. She explains: And so, I had to go through what he said. This is a demonstration of leadership. This is a complex piece that he did here. So, I had to basically walk them through his entire interview because they couldn't see it. And meanwhile, this candidate is brilliant … They all thought he was a weak candidate. You know how he articulated his answers and his responses. He didn't have a framework. He didn't have a framework that you recognized from your dominant, privileged way of seeing how the world operates. So, yes, he did [emphasis] have a framework, but it was through his own personal narrative and regarding his experiences and how that impacted and influences his work in leadership to support students. They could not see that at all. I had to translate that for them.
The brilliance and innovation that Black, Indigenous, and racialized leaders may bring to the job are often invisible to the white gaze, rendering them “not enough” or “not the right fit” and promoting white mediocrity. We see in these examples that racialized, anti-racist leaders are positioned as too smart/critical and yet not broad enough in their educational interests, experiences, and expertise, too smart and yet not qualified enough. The window for acceptability, “fit,” professionalism, and leadership is both very narrow and constantly changing.
Possibilities
Given the tremendous tensions and impossibilities of leading for anti-racism in Black and Brown bodies, why would an educational leader choose to lead this way? This section speaks to the personal and professional possibilities of leading for anti-racism. While there was less of a focus on naming the possibilities of this work, a close read of the data generated three themes: present and future hopes, personal power and voice, and joy and fulfillment.
Present and Future Hopes
Several participants spoke to their present hopes for Indigenous, Black, and racialized students, families, and communities, as well as their imagined hopes for future generations. While they recognized that systems of oppression are self-perpetuating and that whiteness consistently finds new ways to enact itself, they saw this work as imperative to a larger, generational goal of racial justice. As a Black female leader expresses, “I think about not doing it and who would continue to be harmed or how systems would continue to move and operate in ways that would continue to do harm. And so, for me, it's not an option not to do it.” There are certain types of change that need to happen from within institutions, to ensure that they are sustained and deeply embedded into every aspect of schooling. The misalignment in their purpose or vision of schooling and the present realities of students, families, and communities, caused too much dissonance and unease for several participants. It was simply not an option to lead in any other way. The South Asian female leader explains, “If you can see the humanity in people then you’re going to do what it takes to do the right thing. To me, it's my integrity. My integrity will not allow me to sit quietly.” Three participants also spoke to this work being both intergenerational and collective.
The majority of participants shared the importance of relying on the support, learning, and mentorship of other people, suggesting that you cannot do this work without strong mentorship, critical friends, networks of educators committed to racial justice, and communities. The South Asian male leader shares: I know I’m not going to dismantle white supremacy in my lifetime. But to know that this is a collective goal. It's a collective struggle … that will happen over generations and our goal is to push it much further than it is right now. Just like the elders before me were able to do it so that I can have this voice today.
The Black make participant also spoke to the importance of being part of Black communities to remind them that they are more than their role as an educational leader, that when the pressures are mounting, there is a place to go to re-ground and reconnect with those who and what matters in schooling.
Personal Power and Voice
Two Black female leaders and both South Asian leaders also spoke to the personal benefits of feeling a sense of power and finding their voice. One Black female leader shared, “I am more myself now than I was then. And I am much more vocal about the impact on students that we as a system are causing. And that's just the right thing to do.” The South Asian male leader shared: You need to know that, because when you’re facing this, you’re who you’re facing … and you can't do that unless you’ve done your own self-inquiry and narrative work and you know why you do what you do, and what your boundaries are, and what line you are not going to cross for the firm. And it gives you a sense of power because then … there's not the fear that exists.
This power is not a given. Several leaders spoke to not always feeling that they had the power to speak out and challenge. Rather, it emerged over several incidents in which they chose to speak up and disrupt. Personal power and voice seemed to have emerged after leaders grew tired of a legitimate fear in speaking out in the bodies they are in, or as a form of resistance to that imposed fear. A Black female leader described to feeling empowered to flip the script. Similarly, the South Asian female leader shares, “I always find it interesting when White people get it. I always say to them, ‘what's your story?’” Ultimately, personal power and voice were possible with greater alignment between one's inner landscape and outer expression.
With greater integrity between inner beliefs and outer expressions, these leaders found the opportunity to set bold expectations and hold school staff accountable. This came to life through setting expectations for anti-oppressive approaches within school planning and school leadership, and modeling this in their engagement with students, staff, and community. A Black female leader shares: Part of that negotiation is looking at the data and being able to say, you know, show me, help me understand who are the students that are on the fringes or at the margins. What themes do you notice? What's the same? What's different? And continuing to push educators to name what it is that they’re seeing or not seeing in specific groups and identifying the social identities, such as race and abilities of those individuals.
As leaders asserted the centrality of anti-oppression and antiracism in their work with schools and with peers at the system level, they also found themselves naming what they observed happening when the race was being signaled but unspoken, addressing whiteness and defensiveness when it was operating in their interactions with staff and peers, and developing language to speak about race and racism within the realm of leadership. This same Black female participant described being vocal at a senior team meeting in which they were discussing the actions of a school principal and deciding whether this was an incident that required learning or discipline: I can recall in one senior team meeting where we were looking at an action of a principal, which I would say was oppressive and racist and we polled the team to see if this is something that should draw discipline or an educational piece. I can't remember specifically what it was, but it was very severe in terms of the continuum. And the three individuals who said, yes, it should draw some sort of discipline were all Black racialized individuals. Others, they don't see it, don't understand it, or don't see it as like culpable behavior or a performance piece … How do we have decades of children going through a teacher or a vice principal or principal when the practice is harmful to students?
Naming these problematic behaviors and asking questions also empowered others to speak out. The South Asian male leader shares, “What I know has happened, because they’ve told me quietly, is that it's allowing other superintendents to feel like they can speak.” Several participants spoke to the importance of having the support of their mentors in developing a stronger voice and taking greater risks.
Joy and Fulfillment
Finally, participants spoke to the joy and fulfillment of this work. For the three Black, female participants, this joy came in part from the power of representation they carried and the ways in which they could humanize the experience for Black, Indigenous, and other racialized students and leaders, lifting as they climbed. One Black female leader explains: I’m always very intentional, especially with Black girls, saying, you know, not only are they smart and capable, but I always like to make a comment about, I like your hair, whatever it is, if it's in braids and bobbles or however they wear it and look to give them attention in the class, so they know that they are being seen.
Another Black female leader described the importance of how she engages with Black leaders, recognizing the numerous barriers they face and the power she has to reverse some of that harm. In speaking to a newly hired Black principal, she shares, “I remember visiting him on his second or third day in the school to say, ‘So what's it going to mean for you to be able to lead as who you are as a self-identified Black male in this space? And what do you need from me?’” Their inner power as leaders with positional power has opened doors and created space for other leaders.
The possibilities of this work operate on multiple levels—personal, communal, professional, moral, political, and intergenerational—but they are not possibilities for all Black and Brown leaders. In part, the likelihood of realizing these possibilities (and experiencing the impossibilities) increases with greater positional power, longer terms as a district leader, and the higher presence of anti-racist, racialized mentors. The likelihood of these possibilities is dramatically increased when the school districts normalize activism and protect and support leaders in taking risks toward anti-racist aims.
Discussion
This study speaks to some of the impossibilities that Black and Brown, anti-racist leaders face in educational systems that are entrenched in the logics of whiteness. However, there are some limitations in this study that are important to name to not over-generalize the findings. First, a small sample size of Black and Brown educational leaders limits the generalizability of findings. Many more studies that speak to the tensions and im/possibilities of leading for racial justice in Black and Brown bodies is necessary for a more fulsome exploration. For example, additional studies might capture the differences and similarities in experiences between Brown and Black anti-racist district leaders and highlight possibilities for cross-racial solidarity. Second, these leaders are in school boards in the Greater Toronto Area in Ontario, Canada, which offers different contextual constraints and possibilities for leadership than in school boards in the United States and elsewhere, while importantly speaking to anti-racist district leadership in an extremely diverse setting in a neoliberal educational context. Third, it is important to note that none of the participants in this study identify as Indigenous. In Ontario, there are only a handful of Indigenous mid-senior level district leaders in the 72 school districts serving almost 5 million students, which speaks to the history and ongoing presence of colonialism in education. It is important, as has been described elsewhere (Santamaría et al., 2014a, 2014b), to explore the knowledge systems and imaginings of leaders from different communities demanding equity and self-determination, and, as this the limitations in this study make clear, the tensions and im/possibilities that Indigenous leaders face.
Implications for and Connections to Research
Participants in this study spoke to many of the tensions and challenges identified in the literature on tempered radicals, such as feelings of co-option and isolation, as well as fear of and experiences of losing legitimacy with communities. They also identified some of the strategies to disrupt oppression outlined by Meyerson (2008) such as naming the issues, correcting assumptions or actions, and demonstrating a pattern of exclusion. They spoke to direct and overt strategies of revolutionaries such as asking questions and holding their colleagues to account (Lowery, 2020), and covert strategies of tempered radicals such as working closely and strategically with communities and mentoring aspiring leaders by exposing them to the realities of the work (Meyerson, 2008).
All participants, in different ways, demonstrated many characteristics of ACL. For example, they all spoke to experiences of racism in their own schooling as well as in their current positions as educational leaders (Santamaría & Santamaría, 2015). Participants in this study were also willing to initiate and engage in critical conversations, assume a CRT and intersectional approach to their work, disrupt negative stereotypes of Black, Indigenous, and racialized students, use and contribute to research regarding educational equity, led by example, build community and trust with multiple communities, and work in service to racial justice (Santamaría & Santamaría, 2013). These leaders also worked from cultural- and identity-based strengths, saw education as part of a larger socio-political project, and aimed to use their cultural ways of knowing to inform their leadership (Santamaría & Santamaría, 2013), rather than aligning to whiteness.
However, this study offers three important shifts in perspectives about leading for racial justices that blur the concepts of revolutionary leadership and ACL. First, it challenges the politics of representation, which assumes that including Indigenous, Black, and racialized leaders will address the main concern of racial injustice: limited representation. As scholars have stated (Ahmed, 2007; Coulthard, 2014; Dei, 2006), multicultural, diversity, and inclusive approaches do little to dismantle the systems, structures, and policies that create inequitable conditions and experiences for Indigenous, Black, and racialized leaders and protect White, middle-class, heterosexual, Christian, able-bodied power at all costs. In these systems, leaders are expected to align to the logics and practices of whiteness and are punished if they expose or threaten its existence. This ab/use of the politics of representation (Ghosh & Abdi, 2004) sustains the racist structures that give rise to disproportionate outcomes in the experiences, well-being, and learning of Indigenous, Black, and racialized students and staff. Santamaría and Santamaría (2015) are explicit that ACL moves beyond tokenism to center historically silenced knowledge systems while decentering hegemonic knowledge systems, and to engage in a process of imagining future possibilities in education. Participants in this study understand these politics and understand the role they are expected to play as optical illusions. They are also committed to subverting and resisting these politics because they believe that the most loving and just action from inside the system is to transform some parts and dismantle others.
However, this study places greater emphasis on how context mediates the enactment of ACL and demonstrates some of the ways in which including Black, Indigenous, and racialized leaders that practice anti-racist leadership into systems that are racially hostile, is an act of violence. It demands their dehumanization and minimization (Jones & Squire, 2018) when all markers of success, professionalism, fit, and leadership are aligned to whiteness, maintaining the invisibility of whiteness, and leading racialized leaders away from themselves. While there may be a growing number of racialized and/or anti-racist educational leaders, they face realities that make the work of racial and intersecting justices, nearly impossible. While some racialized, anti-racist educators are excluded from leadership because they are seen as too radical, too disruptive, or too much of a threat to the positive image that school boards try to maintain, others are forced out because of the personal and professional toll of systemic racism, while still others are forced into an alignment with whiteness, which constitutes another form of harm. This speaks to the ways in which non-White leaders are promoted because of their ability to uphold whiteness and the ways in which non-White leaders are reduced to conform to the mediocrity of whiteness. Our focus needs to shift to how the cultures and structures of districts can support the expansive creativity, brilliance, complexity, and wholeness of leaders, especially Indigenous, Black, and racialized leaders who center on different experiences, values, and knowledge systems.
We echo Jones and Squire's (2018) critique of tempered radicalism from the perspective of CRT. For example, the term “radical” suggests that this is an aggressive or out-of-control form of leadership when it simply means leading in ways in which all children can learn and thrive. This is especially important in the current context of anti-CRT movements, in which anti-racist leaders are branded as “woke,” “radical” activists, and social justice warriors that perpetuate cancel culture and cull free speech. Similar to the ways in which Black, Indigenous, and racialized leaders do not have the same “choice” to take up the fight (Santamaría & Santamaría, 2015), participants in this study did not choose to be tempered in their radicalism; their radicalism was tempered by the system, and they were tempered differently as Black and Brown anti-racist leaders. This tempering can be seen as leaders negotiate “stereotype threat” and “build trust with the mainstream” as outlined in ACL (Santamaría & Santamaría, 2013). Navigating very narrow parameters of what it means to be a leader in a White system and being pre-ascribed characteristics as Black and Brown male and female leaders, also meant that the participants in this study could only show up as partial representations of themselves, representations in the image of whiteness. Increased isolation and vulnerability were also correlated with positional power, which challenges the idea in tempered radicalism that with greater positional power comes greater possibilities to enact justice-oriented changes. Like Jones and Squire (2018), we echo the call for faculty leaders (in this case, educational leaders), especially Black leaders to “be allowed to act in untempered ways as their livelihoods quite literally depend on changing a broader racist system” (p. 37).
This leads us to the second shift in how we might think about leadership: challenging neat, linear models of anti-racist leadership, and instead positioning leadership as networked, porous, messy, ambiguous, and contextual. This study explores the ways in which leaders are continuously negotiating levels and directions of harm, in which it is helpful for leaders within a system to conceive of themselves as engaging in harm and oppression even as they aim to dismantle harm and oppression. While Lowery (2020) suggests that schooling adds another “call” to seek equity for students and co-workers, this study adds another dimension—economies of risk: having to choose between risk to self (personally or professionally) and risk to students and families from historically oppressed communities. As such, participants had to come to terms with regularly engaging in harm at some level and in some direction. Perhaps this is why participants were more aligned with Lowery's (2020) notion of revolutionary leaders, who, unlike tempered radicals that use a range of overt to covert strategies, are indiscrete in the face of injustice, resulting in greater personal and professional risk.
Participants in this study help us to understand that while leaders may be oriented towards and committed to practices in ACL, they are continuously negotiating complexities, levels of harm, and the creativity required to engage in ACL in a system that continues to dehumanize and diminish them, and students and families that look like them. These negotiation and navigational skills are central to enactments of ACL, which at times means that they need to temper public commitments and actions to survive the very conditions they intend to change. Acknowledging the realities and unfinishedness of their leadership, while striving towards the principles and spirit of ACL may be a more accurate description of what it means to lead for racial justice in white-dominated spaces. Further, while this study demonstrates the impossibilities of leading for racial justice that are often suffered in silence and isolation, it also speaks to the possibilities of Black and Brown leaders leading for anti-racism, possibilities such as aligning to one's purpose, finding one's voice and speaking one's truth, knowing one's power, and experiencing joy and fulfillment in this work. While the impossibilities of this work are often experienced in silence and isolation, so too are the possibilities of this work. Experiencing both impossibilities and possibilities of this work at the same time is a complex and nuanced experience of leadership. Challenging the linearity of anti-racist leadership allows us to challenge the binaries of us/them, community/system, short-term/longer-term, and im/possibilities. It also allows us to notice, center, and grow the joy, fulfillment, and creativity that participants described as part of their experience in leading for racial justice.
The third shift in perspective is a deep recognition that leadership is larger than any one person, any one role, any one location, and any one generation. It requires the revolutionary force of communities, the enactments of ACL and revolutionary leadership, and the collaboration of leaders on the inside and the outside of educational institutions. It also requires an awareness of the intricacies of this complex web of people, policies, practices, and strategies that are subversively, and not-so-subversively, enacting change from multiple places. This awareness allows us to see the im/possibilities of each role, recognizing that any one person may occupy multiple spaces at once. It also invites us to engage in the co-construction of knowledge across institutions, communities, generations, and the boundaries between them. Finally, this is an invitation to understand both the limits and opportunities of each role and hold each other responsible for the best versions of ourselves within these roles and within institutions, in service to the collective, in service to future generations, and in service to goals of love, humanity, and justice.
In recognizing the resistance of educational institutions in working towards racial and intersecting justice, the scholarship can focus on collectives leading to racial justice. For example, while the system sought to temper their commitment, these six leaders strategically engaged with their peers, communities, and system structures to hold steady in the goals of antiracist change. Scholarship can also document and analyze how community organizations, parent collectives, and anti-racist educational leaders can collectively work together towards common goals, bridging relationships and building trust. For example, we consider the work of Sampson and Horsford (2017) which speaks to the importance of community equity literacy and offers recommendations for district leaders committed to building coalitions with local community advocates to improve educational equity (Green, 2017).
Implications for Practice
This study has several important implications for practice. The first implication speaks to the ways in which educational institutions—classrooms, schools, school districts, and school boards—need new metrics and accounting of what constitutes equity, anti-racism, anti-colonialism, and anti-oppression and deeper understandings of how whiteness operates in undermining the work of anti-racism. This includes institutional and individual silences, practices of stalling and denial, nepotism, favors, backdoor deals, special access to information, inner circles, the protection of racist educators and structures, and the punishment of anti-racist educators and structures. Metrics need to be developed that measure the frequency and impact of these behaviors as well as the impact of anti-racist, anti-colonial, and anti-oppressive initiatives aimed at improving the learning, experiences, and well-being of Black, Indigenous, racialized, and marginalized students, families, and communities (Shah et al., 2022). These metrics need to be used as the basis of regular, external, and internal audits, the results of which need to be shared with communities transparently. For example, evaluations can measure the degree to which those educators and educational leaders with the strongest track record of anti-racist practices are protected and supported by the organization. Finally, this must be accompanied by accountability systems in which leaders with racist track records are fined and/or fired, instead of simply being moved to another school, geographic area, or educational institution. Leaders who have been most harmed by educational systems are in the best position to understand how whiteness operates, consult on different metrics, and provide learning opportunities for senior leaders.
With these goals in mind, we will see fundamentally different approaches to racial transformation. In Ontario, there have been some important efforts to reverse the pipelines for racialized, anti-racist, leaders requiring close collaboration between school boards, teachers’ colleges, qualifying institutions, and teachers’ unions to imagine a pipeline from pre-service to the highest levels of leadership in school boards, and lateral positions of leadership in educational institutions beyond school boards. This includes faculties of education recruiting candidates from historically underrepresented populations and school boards developing networking and mentoring opportunities through affinity groups for aspiring leaders. This study adds to what is required for successful reverse pipeline initiatives. For example, school districts should actively work on creating the conditions for anti-racist Indigenous, Black, and racialized leaders to lead with more of their whole selves, such as developing accountability measures for anti-racist work, supporting and positioning deep relationships with communities as strengths instead of threats, and building in active processes for ongoing system transformation. This would also require a transition plan for anti-racist leaders into positions of greater institutional power and those who do not center anti-racism and anti-oppression in their leadership out of these positions. Support for anti-racist and racialized leaders can focus on navigating the complicities and complexities of this work that positions racialized, anti-racist leaders as simultaneously harmed and harming, supporting aspiring leaders in developing strong connections within the board and in community, and in identifying patterns that uphold and disrupting whiteness. School boards would change their metrics for hiring and promotion to align with the aims of justice-oriented practices (Shah et al., 2022). Those in positions to make decisions about hiring and promotion need to be trained on what to look for, what not to look for, and how to identify leadership qualities that are not even captured in institutional metrics in order to continuously refine institutional metrics. For example, metrics might highlight the importance of boundary spanners and advocacy leaders who traverse multiple personal and professional locations, and use their locations, access, and networks to create community and racial uplift (Johnson, 2016). Given the labor of Black and racialized anti-racist leaders in leading racial justice work in ways that both “bring White people in” and address anti-racism directly, there should be an expectation that White leaders engage in additional learning and reflection to unpack their understanding of, and relations to race and racism, whiteness, and white supremacy.
Finally, racially oppressed students and families would be well served by the development of stronger parent and community coalitions that could hold schools and school districts to account through consultations and collaborations, sharing stories in the media and social media, advocating for human rights, and more. Community activists and scholar-activists can also encourage, recruit, and support people committed to racial justice to run as elected school board officials. Some of the recommendations include inviting community advocates to formally critique policies and practices and participating in the hiring of culturally responsive educational leaders. As scholars, we must also ask ourselves what role universities can play in bridging connections and establishing relationships between educational institutions and communities. Universities can support parent and community coalitions with the co-creation of knowledge through research-practice-community partnerships, public scholarship, and scholar activism, and share this research through knowledge mobilization efforts that are widely accessible. In particular, scholars can create avenues to explain parents’ rights, to help them navigate the educational system, and share research that speaks to experiences of racism in schooling, the knowledge that will rarely come from the school system itself. Scholars can also lend their voices and signatures to campaigns for racial and intersecting forms of justice. Supporting the work of racial justice internally requires a strong, outer movement and push for justice.
Conclusion
This study explores the impossibilities and possibilities of leading for racial justice based on the experiences of six Black and Brown mid-upper-level district leaders in the Greater Toronto Area, in Ontario, Canada. Drawing on the scholarship of tempered radicalism (Alston, 2005; Meyerson, 2008; Meyerson & Scully, 1995) and ACL (Santamaría & Santamaría, 2013; Santamaría et al., 2014a), we explore impossibilities such as Complicities and Complexities, Accountabilities and Alliance, and Different Metrics, Different Expectations. We also explore possibilities such as Present and Future Hopes, Personal Power and Voice, and Joy and Fulfilment. In putting these two bodies of scholarship in conversation with the findings, we identify three important shifts in perspective for leadership. First, we explore the limits to the politics of representation that not only include centering silenced knowledge systems, but also include how context mediates the enactment of anti-racist leadership for Indigenous, Black, and Brown leaders into systems that are racially hostile. Second, this study challenges neat, linear models of anti-racist leadership, and instead positions anti-racist leadership as messy, ambiguous, and contextual. The third important shift in our thinking about leadership for racial justice positions leadership as an intergenerational collective, in which anti-racist leaders play one, albeit important, role. An awareness of this larger ecosystem of movements for racial justice requires that each participant is intimately aware of the im/possibilities of their role and every other role.
This study also offers implications for practice. First, a change in the metrics of leadership must center on different knowledge systems and the skills required to lead for racial justice. Second, changing the metrics means simultaneously creating structures to reversing pipelines that have long excluded and pushed out anti-racist and racialized leaders. The learning, mentoring, and networking involved in these spaces need to account for the im/possibilities of this work. Finally, given the tremendous burdens and difficulties of leading from within, we need to support the creation and growth and parent and community collectives and public scholarship that can hold school districts to account from the outside, in. In blurring the lines between inside/outside, harmed/harming, us/them, and community/schooling, we allow for collective and liberatory possibilities for schooling that simply cannot present themselves in a world of binary logics.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
