A Black Woman Authentically Leading and Teaching Social Justice in Higher Education
COLETTE M. TAYLOR
On November 11, 2016, I began re-reading Shel Silverstein’s, The Giving Tree, an appreciation gift signed by a group of my former students in 2006. I was inspired to pick the book off the shelf due to the flood of distressed messages I had been receiving from former students. As I read their inscriptions, I began to cry. The crying itself was not normal for me, but what started out as misty tears became a cataclysmic waterfall. One would have thought I had lost a friend or family member. Instead, it was the culmination of incredible sadness and disbelief. Perhaps, in some ways, these feelings were based on the fact that I might have let these students down … taught them idealistic concepts of social justice without preparing them for the reality … arising from the clashes between class and economic privilege, race/ethnicity and White privilege, gender and male privilege, and the intersections of each of these privileges.
As I gazed at the familiar sketch on the cover of The Giving Tree—a tall tree, tree top spilling off the page, and a little boy looking up at it, I began to reflect on how often I have utilized this well-worn book. Throughout my career as a higher education professional, I have frequently used this well-known text to remind undergraduate students—most privileged students—about generosity and social justice. But should there have been more to it than that? If you recall, The Giving Tree tells the story of a relationship between a young boy and a tree. As the boy grows older, he wants more, and the tree sacrifices its apples, branches, and trunk for him. Only when he is an old man does the boy rejoin the tree, and the tree is happy.
Upon reflection, I am unsure if I fully understood the story as a younger Black woman; I was certain that the tree had done the right thing. Beautifully, the tree gave everything for the boy, and I tried to emulate this as a higher education leader. Giving everything I had, I taught my students about leadership and social justice. However, having grown older and encountered more and different challenges as a social justice educator, I am less inclined to see the tree’s reactions as healthy. While the sacrifices of the tree are commendable, the decision to keep giving to the boy pays no attention to the tree’s own needs or identity.
As a leader, teacher, and advocate for social justice, current events have me, a self-professed transformative social educator, struggling to answer: What does it mean to be an authentic social justice educator in higher education? This chapter summarizes the difficult task of searching for the meaning of authenticity as a Black woman social justice educator.
Baudrillard (1994) articulated that the real world is no longer understood as real because reality no longer exists. Determining authenticity in the simulacrum (from Latin, meaning likeness or similarity) is challenging if not impossible because the notion of authenticity requires a comparison to reality. Facing this reality—and in reference to the metaphor used in The Giving Tree—means accepting that the tree is NOT always happy when practicing social justice leadership.
Social justice is defined in multiple ways in the literature (Blackmore, 2002; Furman & Gruenewald, 2004; Gewirtz, 1998; Goldfarb & Grinberg, 2002) depending on the context. Gewirtz (1998) offers an operational definition of social justice centered on the ideas of disrupting and undermining arrangements that promote marginalization and exclusionary processes in organizations. For others, social justice includes practices driven by respect, care, recognition, and empathy. It is “the exercise of altering these [institutional and organizational] arrangements by actively engaging in reclaiming, appropriating, sustaining, and advancing inherent human rights of equity, equality, and fairness in social, economic, educational, and personal dimensions” (Goldfarb & Grinberg, 2002, 162). Simply defined, social justice leadership means that education leaders make issues of difference such as race, class, gender, and other historically and currently marginalizing conditions in the United States central to their leadership and advocacy practice.
Existing literature on diversity, equity, and social justice in education illustrates how the intersection of race and gender as experienced by the Black woman leader often forces one to act as a bridge for others and between others in complicated contexts.
As a group, Black women are in an unusual position in this society, for not only are we collectively at the bottom of the occupational ladder, but our overall social status is lower than that of any other racial group. (hooks, 1984, 16)
Students often learn about the lives of Black women by reading the works of such Black women as Sojourner Truth, bell hooks, Angela Davis, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, and Maya Angelou as assignments in literature or history classes. These works, including essays, speeches, poetry, and scholarly research, illuminate the struggles of negotiating the identity of both being Black and a woman encountering the effects of racism and sexism in society, but can often be seen as just detailed illustrations of racism and sexism in society.
The theoretical framework grounding this chapter focuses on the marginalization of Black women as an oppressed group and the works necessary by Black female scholars to resist such oppression (Collins, 2000; Hill Collins, 1989). As Howard-Hamilton (2003) notes, the dominant society members (through theoretical models, assumptions, and research) have articulated the experiences of Black women according to their experiential understanding. “Black feminist thought, then, specializes in formulating and rearticulating the distinctive, self-defined standpoint of African American women by African American women” (Hill Collins, 1989, 750).
With this understanding, Black female researchers can correct and challenge inaccurate narratives by clearly expressing the experiences of African American women based on the realities of their own lived experiences. “Since Black feminist thought both arises within and aims to articulate a Black women’s group standpoint regarding experiences associated with intersecting oppressions, stressing this group standpoint’s heterogeneous composition is significant” (Collins, 2000, 32). Due to personal experiences, Black women educators can shed light on the realities of social justice leadership to students by sharing their own diverse backgrounds such as socialization encounters, cultural adaptations, and assimilations as well as the negotiating of practices to authentically act as bridges in the quest to educate our students about social justice leadership.
The 21st-century democratic higher education system was designed to reconcile the individual as a part of and apart from society. Kincheloe (2001) articulated that democracy requires a critical consciousness, or understanding of the world, to deconstruct the national(ist) meta-narrative. This narrative can be problematic because the central story of both individuals and society in the United States is that of White, European, Christian males. Specifically, higher education in the United States grew from Eurocentric roots tied to a hierarchal system within the colonial foundation of higher education (Altbach, 2001).
As a strategic part of a university’s organizational structure, higher education professionals often are placed to support students within the constructs of the centuries-old higher education systems of practice (Chang, 2002). In this environment, higher education leaders experience diverse and complex challenges associated with both formal and informal interactions among students, faculty, and other educational professionals related to stereotyping, discrimination, inequality, and social justice.
As a Black woman administrator in higher education, it is easy to lose focus on one’s own identity while addressing the needs of students, as well as the incessant political and social pressures that take a toll both professionally and personally. The concepts of various privileges—class and economic privilege, race/ethnicity privilege, White privilege, gender privilege, male privilege—and the intersections of these impact one’s work every day. In Teaching to Transgress, bell hooks (1994) eloquently describes the “mind/body split,” through which she points out that it is a social privilege to call yourself “unbiased,” to not include your social identity in your work.
Anyone who calls themselves “unbiased” is inauthentic. All people interact with this world based on a specific perspective, and that perspective affects everything anyone does. It is a privilege not to see oneself as having a bias or particular agenda (because, really, everyone, including White, straight, middle-to-upper class, cisgender, able-bodied men, carry their biases and agendas). Thus our work as social justice educators actively, authentically, and consciously must become infused with our own perspectives and identities.
To better grasp these perspectives in our work, intersectional analysis of race, class, gender, and other social divisions is needed to understand the lived realities of the individuals with whom we work. Intersectionality, coined by Crenshaw (1989, 1991), expresses the concerns about Black female marginality in mainstream theorizing that were voiced by Black feminists such as Angela Davis, Patricia Hill Collins, and Audre Lorde (Cho, Crenshaw, & McCall, 2013).
By providing a complex ontology, intersectionality demonstrates “really useful knowledge,” that systemically reveals the everyday lives of Black women who are simultaneously positioned in multiple structures of dominance and power as gendered, raced, and classed “others.” Balancing various responsibilities in their lives, Black women come from diverse cultures, religions, and nation-states and live in the dominant modalities of race, class, and gender (Brah & Phoenix, 2004), which adds complexity to the patchwork of their lives. As social justice educators in higher education, Black women must balance these multiple roles while navigating the politics of the academy. To tackle social justice issues within higher education, one must acknowledge and understand the nature of power relations and how race, class, and gender interact with the lived experiences of Black female educators in their places of leading and teaching.
The Digest of Education Statistics reports that Blacks make up 7% of American college and university faculty and staff (National Council of Education Statistics, 2012). Statistics show that Black women earned 68% of all associate degrees, 66% of bachelor’s degrees, 71% of master’s degrees, and 65% of all doctorates awarded to Black students in 2009 and 2010 (NCES). By both race and gender, Black women make up a higher percentage (9.7%) of underrepresented students enrolled in college than any other group, topping Asian women (8.7%) and White women (7.1%). Although women hold almost 52% of all professional-level jobs, Black women lag substantially behind representation in leadership positions with less than 2% of leadership roles in the United States. These statistics highlight the fact that despite recent participant gains, Black women are subjected to both racism and sexism no matter where they work, but those working in higher education, because they have achieved a privileged status, are also the targets of classism. Frazier (1957), in addressing issues of the Black bourgeoisie, said “the frustration of the majority of the women … is probably due to the idle or ineffectual lives which they lead” (222). A different story could be heard when listening to the voices of Black women educators authentically working for social change.
To accurately hear these voices, one must understand that cultural identity and intersectionality are important issues when considering the concept of authenticity. Gee (2000) defines identity as “being recognized as a certain kind of person in a given context,” and writes that “all people have multiple identities connected not to their internal states but to their performances in society” (99). Identities are expressions of who we are; the way we speak and act fluctuates depending on the various situations leaders find themselves in and the identity that one wishes to construct or reveal at the time. Taylor (1992) argues that one’s identity is partly shaped by its recognition and misrecognition by others. He asserts that nonrecognition or misrecognition “can inflict harm, can be a form of oppression, imprisoning someone in a false distorted and reduced mode of being” (25).
Gee’s (2000) theoretical framework of the concept of identity expresses the need to study how people construct their identities through their interactions with others. Black female social justice educators, like myself, need to acknowledge the masks that people of color hide behind or the faces that they choose to reveal while working in predominately White higher education environments. It is important to examine how individuals define who they are in certain circumstances, and how these identities encourage Black women to make certain choices depending on the impressions needed to be made. Charles Taylor (1992) argues that modern identity stresses the importance of one’s inner voice and capacity for authenticity—in other words, the ability to find a way of being true to oneself. Equality doctrines emphasize the concept that each person is capable of marshaling his or her practical reason or moral sense to live an authentic life. According to Taylor (1992), the politics of difference has appropriated the language of authenticity to describe ways of living that are true to the identities of marginalized social groups.
The difference between Black culture and White educational systems has been the focus of pedagogical research for the last century (Tuitt, 2010). As Zamani stated, “given the complex intersection of race and gender, more attention should be paid to the educational, social, and political positions of African American women in post-secondary education” (2003, 6). Howard-Hamilton (2003) articulated the concept of the outsider within, whereby African American women have been, in ever-increasing numbers, invited into the higher education setting yet are still considered and often treated as outsiders with the little voice within these walls. As Black women enter the academic community, their identities interact with the dynamic community influences, causing a transformation of that personal identity into the “perceived” identity.
Because of this interaction and transformation, individuals often see themselves as changed people, people with two identities. Successfully obtaining a position, whether as an administrator or a faculty member can be challenging in itself. What can be even more challenging is successful progression in an academic environment where you are an authentic leader for social justice.
A Black woman’s journey as a social justice educator in higher education takes her into the “Heart of Whiteness.” The destination is often described as a place where the homogenous identity of the Black woman, is created by “a white gaze which perceives her as a mute visible object” (Casey, 1993, 111). An intersectional conception of oppression is often distinguished, particularly in higher education, from an account of systems of oppression that theorizes them as “interlocking” (Collins, 2000). Interlocking systems of oppression help to secure one another, and tracing the complex ways that both race and gender interlock in higher education is vital. Black female social justice educators know from experience how women are promoted into positions that exist symbiotically but hierarchically. They understand, for example, how domestic workers and professional women are produced so that neither exists without the other. Social policies in the United States, upheld by race, gender, and class politics, enables the pursuit of middle-class respectability in highly oppressive ways.
Various forms of oppression are “interlocking,” as described by McWhorter, because they cannot be separated in the lived experience: “race, sex, and class are ‘simultaneous factors’ ” in the lived experience of oppression (McWhorter, 2004, 55). As Black female social justice educators, many of us feel that we should let our intersectionality influence our work. This intersectional model describes the articulation of oppressions in authentic lived experience—in other words, using one’s experience with structural intersectionality to educate students about the reality of social justice. Crenshaw (1989) introduced the concept of structural intersectionality, which speaks to a model of identity that labels the unique situation of hyperoppressed, paradigmatically Black women. This analytical model of structural intersectionality illumes the complexity and irreducibility of race and gender oppression experienced by Black women in higher education.
Black female social justice educators experience life as a member of a group of people who experience themselves as members of an oppressed community by their recognition by others as people of common descent (Appiah, 1990). Functioning within an oppressed society in the power structure of higher education day in and day out takes a toll on Black women’s perspectives of who they are and their value in the society in which they live and work. We have unique experiences in higher education that many of our students do not have. As educators, we need to share these experiences with our students. Some middle-class students attending predominately White institutions are not unaware of the disparities between their own communities and surrounding affluent communities. Students notice these differences, but without knowledge and consciousness of the institutionalized systems of oppression, they lack an understanding of why the disparities exist.
As seasoned social justice educators, we should not view social justice education as an option but as an obligation. James Baldwin’s (1984/1955) words come to mind as I consider the questions of critical consciousness, obviousness, and authenticity:
One writes out of one thing only—one’s own experience. Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from this experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give. This is the only real concern of the artist, to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art. (7)
The effectiveness of social justice educators depends on their personal search for authenticity or critical consciousness. Self-reflection and the transformation of attitudes and beliefs about their experiences help leaders understand their authentic selves in several ways. There’s institutional culture, there’s societal culture, and there’s one’s own cultural background. Trying to balance the positive and negative experiences created by these cultures as an African American woman working in predominately White communities can lead to the devaluation of personal and professional identities. Many social justice educators tend to have the first-hand experience that people tell them that they do not look or act Black. We are Black. When I meet people who tell me I do not act Black enough, I say, “I might be different, but Black is who I am, not what I think I am.”
I believe that social justice education has two aspects: truth and empowerment. One should always strive to teach the truth, no matter how brutal or controversial it may be, and to empower students. Therefore, sharing one’s own experience as Black women in higher education is essential. All the many injustices can make students and educators alike feel hopeless, particularly those who come from historically marginalized backgrounds. The world is not without hope, however. Wherever injustice exists, there are always those fighting for change.
A strong social justice leadership program increases student self-awareness and helps students embody intentional practices that reflect the values of a more just society. By taking up the challenge to transform society, educators have a responsibility to prepare students to take on enormous challenges and face significant resistance. It is irresponsible not to educate them on ways to weather the storms that will result. This was evident in the response of my former students to their “perceived” failure during the recent elections. The sadness experienced was not due to a failure in their social justice education, but a lack of understanding that the work of leading for social justice is never easy. My former students, based on their reactions, clearly demonstrated that the experiences that I provided were less than authentic. The lack of personal connection to oppression allowed them to have an unrealistic sense of social justice. Clearly, like the boy in The Giving Tree, my students had not faced, truly faced, the struggle of true social justice until this moment. Moreover, I, like the tree, never challenged them to discover that I could not provide them what they most need—an authentic social justice struggle.
Glenn (2000) suggests that a search for authenticity in a hyperreal world may be a waste of time, that there is nothing we can know as authentic. Upon reflecting on my personal experience while re-reading The Giving Tree, Black women social justice educators should recognize that it is important to build a collective understanding of the importance of using our authentic selves to educate our students. In actuality, all institutional members should be a part of a social justice collective, but in reality, it is a role of those who live the oppressed experience daily to speak truth to power.
On reflection, this means practicing what we teach and becoming resilient in our quest for authenticity. Taking a clue from The Giving Tree, the best way to become more resilient is to develop the capacity to be a compassionate and adaptable mindful leader. Black female social justice educators need to meet adaptive challenges as leaders who are consciously able to step out of habitual reactions and engage with a shifting reality in new and more sophisticated ways (Kegan & Lahey, 2010). In other words, we must learn to cultivate and transform ourselves into authentic, mindful practitioners of social justice. To do this, a critical skill we should develop is the capacity to be mindful. Practicing mindfulness, in this context, requires us to be present and aware of our multiple identities as well as the identities of others around us; to recognize our own perceptions (and potential biases) in the moment; and to harness the emotional reactions and actions needed in order to meet today’s social justice education more authentically (Boyatzis & McKee, 2005; Kabat-Zinn, 1990).
Mindfulness refers to one’s awareness and attention to immediate experience, whereas the authenticity construct refers to awareness of aspects of one’s self (i.e., values, beliefs, emotions, etc.) (Lakey, Kernis, Heppner, & Lance, 2008). To become mindful practitioners, Black women must learn not to become distracted from the chaos that surrounds the struggle for social justice. I therefore suggest we study and practice mindfulness. When challenged to the breaking point, do not act or speak right away. Take a few moments and just breathe. Allow for the space to evaluate the situation from multiple perspectives, regarding it from a place of freedom and peace, not anger or frustration. In a critical moment of social justice advocacy, this space allows clarity for decision making rooted in a principle of non-harm and authenticity.
Teaching social justice can be hard and emotionally exhausting work, especially in an environment where an institution’s rhetoric often does not match its members’ actions. Therefore, Black women educators also need to create a supportive community and space for reflection, regrouping, and mobilization. As Howard-Hamilton (2003) states: “[S]urvival for Black women is contingent on their ability to find a place to describe their experiences among persons like themselves” (25). Often, we find ourselves alone on our campuses bearing the burden of exemplifying the core values of diversity and social justice for our students. This community should be a place for Black women to openly describe their experiences—the good and the bad, to inform and incite empowerment for Black women educators working on college campuses (Reason & Broido, 2005). Networking and communing with colleagues who share one’s experiences, interests, concerns, and even frustrations will help individuals negotiate and navigate the potholes and battles embedded in social justice and activist work.
Teaching social justice is a calling for individuals determined to transform lives and changing the world. While the work can often generate frustration, disappointment, and sometimes disillusionment, it is imperative to reflect on the message of The Giving Tree. As a Black woman educator, I cannot give up and “be unhappy” during these turbulent times. For me, I have learned to be mindful and focus on the greater prize—finding social justice for every person and a better world for us all. When practicing mindfulness, I feel renewed and nourished by remembering that our “lineage is ancient and that my roots like those of the mesquite” (Anzaldúa, 1987, 234). This idea reminds me of my identities and the strength I can draw from them as I approach the complex, contested work of social justice education. In the end, teaching social justice and social change is not easy. Having students experiencing failure along the way is not bad. It inspires me to remain steadfast and committed to reconstructing a world that is more humane, equitable, and just, and to “become happy” like the giving tree.
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