Supporting Our Students, Protecting Our Energy: Black and Boricua Practitioners' Reflections on Identities Informing Leadership

Supporting Our Students, Protecting Our Energy: Black and Boricua Practitioners' Reflections on Identities Informing Leadership

Stephanie Hernandez Rivera, Jonathan A. McElderry, Velma Buckner
Copyright: © 2021 |Pages: 15
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-7152-1.ch005
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Abstract

This chapter explores the experience of practitioners doing equity and inclusion work during a time of increased campus unrest at the University of Missouri. The authors position the understanding of their experience as partly shaped by what they have learned or come to understand about their identities. They do this through the use of testimonio. As a result of these testimonies, they identify two areas of connections in their experiences as practitioners of color. These include preserving their energy and fear's impact on voice. Based on these connections, they conclude by sharing their experiential knowledge with other practitioners who share in their plight.
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“That is how I learned if I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive. My poetry, my life, my work, my energies for struggle were not acceptable unless I pretended to match somebody else’s norm. I learned that not only couldn’t I succeed at that game, but the energy needed for that masquerade would be lost to my work.” – Audre Lorde, Learning from the 60s

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Relevant Literature

As previously stated, there is little research on the experiences of administrators of color and often this research is focused on administrators who have mid or high-level positions (Wilson, 1998; Montas-Hunter, 2012; Pertuz, 2017; Ramey, 1995), with few studies focused on the experiences of early-career practitioners (McElderry & Hernandez Rivera, 2017; Sánchez et al., 2020). Qualitative research in particular has revealed the nature of oppressive power forces that impact the experiences of administrators of color (Hernández & Morales, 1999; McElderry & Hernandez Rivera, 2017; Mosley, 1980; Patitu & HInton, 2003; Verjee, 2013). Research studies have identified multiple forms of oppression, racism, sexism, heterosexism, classism as impacting the experiences of professionals of color (Patitu & Hinton, 2003; Sánchez et al., 2020); however, more research is needed to truly understand how these systems mechanize themselves.

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