This chapter is a critical autoethnographic analysis of a Black male school leader enacting racial and social justice in his school improvement efforts. A reflexive dialogue between dissertation research findings and related leadership experiences seek to extricate the colonial structure of public education and the colonizing intent of schooling as experienced by a Black principal and the communities of color from which his students and caregivers derive. Three dynamics are identified as oppressive: white moves towards Black domination, white privilege, and intersecting oppressions. Three decolonizing acts are highlighted: centering of racial justice, catalyzing critical community consciousness and agency, and dismantling intersecting oppressions through counter narration.
Colonization carried forth by the armies of war is vastly more costly than that carried by armies of peace, whose outpost and garrisons are the public schools of the advancing nation. -Samuel Lindsay, Commissioner of Education, Puerto Rico,1902
America is a colonial power. She has colonized 22 million Afro-Americans by depriving us of first-class citizenship, by depriving us of civil rights, actually by depriving us of human rights. -Malcolm X, The Ballot or the Bullet, 1964
TopResearch Purpose And Questions
The purpose of this chapter is to use autoethnographic reflection and analysis to interrogate questions of race, power, justice, and leadership in public schools. I detail my experience as a Black principal who sought racial and social justice in my school leadership and improvement work. This occurred against the backdrop of resistance, to my leadership, to moves toward cultural inclusivity, and to the empowerment of students and caregivers of color. The context for this combat is centered in a wealthy, largely white, highly resourced, mid-sized city in the Northeast. The school demographics reflect a majority nonwhite population and a privileged white minority student body. We further expand the backdrop to include school leadership experiences in two additional sites within the same New England state for comparison. This is an effort to distill from my dissertation research, its applicability across education situs. Throughout this chapter, my dissertation research on the challenges facing justice oriented Black male school leaders (Adkins-Sharif, 2020) is quoted and referenced.
In analyzing the questions below through critical race theory and frameworks of coloniality, I argue that schools are spaces and places of colonization for Black and Brown children, caregivers and leaders, and that our leadership work is an act of radical resistance to a system that reproduces domination and failure. My counter narrative seeks to answer the following:
- 1.
What are the overt and subtle ways racial and cultural oppressions are created and manifested in schools?
- 2.
How can Black school leaders effectively combat racial and cultural oppression that presents as disparate and inequitable educational opportunities and outcomes?