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Tempering Applied Critical Leadership: The Im/Possibilities of Leading for Racial Justice in School Districts

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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? Purpose: Situated in between the literature on tempered radicalism and Applied Critical Leadership (ACL), this study explores the experiences of six Black and Brown mid-level and senior-level district leaders in Greater Toronto Area, in Ontario, Canada. Research Methods/Approach: We draw on counter narrative methodologies including in-depth oral history interviews and ongoing communication with participants to explore the impossibilities and possibilities of leading for racial justice. Findings: Impossibilities include complicities and complexities, accountabilities and alliances, and different metrics, different expectations. Possibilities include present and future hopes, personal power and voice, and joy and fulfillment. Implications for
Tempering Applied
Critical Leadership:
The Im/Possibilities of
Leading for Racial Justice
in School Districts
Vidya Shah
1
, Nada Aoudeh
1
,
Gisele Cuglievan-Mindreau
2
,
and Joseph Flessa
2
Abstract
How do leaders make the impossible choice between harm enacted on
racially oppressed students and families, and harm enacted on them as advo-
cates for racial justice in systems steeped in whiteness? How do they nego-
tiate multiple harms in Black and Brown bodies? Purpose: Situated in
between the literature on tempered radicalism and Applied Critical
Leadership (ACL), this study explores the experiences of six Black and
Brown mid-level and senior-level district leaders in Greater Toronto Area,
in Ontario, Canada. Research Methods/Approach: We draw on coun-
ter-narrative methodologies including in-depth oral history interviews and
ongoing communication with participants to explore the impossibilities
and possibilities of leading for racial justice. Findings: Impossibilities
include complicities and complexities, accountabilities and alliances,anddif-
ferent metrics,different expectations. Possibilities include present and future
hopes, personal power and voice, and joy and fulllment. Implications for
1
Faculty of Education, York University, Thornhill, ON, Canada
2
OISE/UT, Toronto, ON, Canada
Corresponding Author:
Vidya Shah, Faculty of Education, York University, 256 Winters College, 4700 Keele Street,
Toronto, ON M3J 1P3, Canada.
Email: Vidshah@edu.yorku.ca
Original Research Article
Educational Administration Quarterly
139
© The Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/0013161X221137877
journals.sagepub.com/home/eaq
Research and Practice: This study adds to the literature on critical race-
tempered radicalism by offering three important shifts in perspectives about
leading for racial justice that blur revolutionary leadership and ACL. These
include challenging a politics of representation and the necessary change in met-
rics, accountability measures, and systemic necessary to demonstrate the
readiness for anti-racist leadership; anti-racist leadership as messy,ambiguous,
and contextual that make space for complicities and complexities of this
work; and anti-racist leadership beyond anti-racist leaders, which recognizes
leadership beyond any one person, role, location, or generation.
Keywords
Black and Brown leaders, applied critical leadership, tempered radicalism,
counterstories, school districts
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 experi-
ences 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
2Educational Administration Quarterly 0(0)
et al., 2014a) to make sense of these experiences that we frame as im/possi-
bilities of anti-racist leadership from within school districts. We conceptualize
anti-racist leaders as having the critical consciousness, political will, and com-
mitment to challenging long-standing racial inequities by both dismantling
systemic barriers and creating new structures that center the realities and aspi-
rations of historically oppressed populations. The six participants in this study
choose to center anti-racism in their leadership despite the signicant deter-
rents 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 indi-
viduals 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 t or belong in their institutions
and are often positioned at the margins because of their identities and ideol-
ogies, proving to be sources of transformation and resistance to stagnant, tra-
ditional 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 Lowerys (2020) study that outlines
three general approaches to social justice leadership: silence, tempered radi-
calism, and revolutionary actions. Lowery (2020) distinguishes between tem-
pered 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 tra-
versing tempered radicalism and revolutionary leadership in balancing per-
sonal 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
Shah et al. 3
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-specic change in
response to power, domination, access, and achievement imbalances, resulting
in improved academic achievement for learners. (p. 7)
However, ACL does not sufciently explain the difculties 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 ndings 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 pol-
itics 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 insti-
tutions and simultaneously work to eradicate social injustice within that insti-
tution (Kirton et al., 2007; Meyerson & Scully, 1995). Meyerson and Scully
(1995) explain that radicalrefers to the desire of leaders to challenge the
status quo and actions they take towards that end, while temperedrefers
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 rad-
icals are people who often do not t within the organization, both because of
their ideological and political commitments to challenge the status quo and
because of their marginalsocial identities (Meyerson & Scully, 1995).
4Educational Administration Quarterly 0(0)
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
heroconception 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 indi-
vidually. 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 endur-
ing 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 suf-
ciently detached to gain access to outsider knowledge about the changes
required. Second, they may act as critics of both the status quo and institu-
tional practices that maintain the status quo as well as untempered radical
change, allowing them to see multiple perspectives. Third, they may simulta-
neously be advocates for both the radical change and the status quo, using the
benets 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 emotionalresponses in favor of more rational,”“institution-
ally acceptableresponses. 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 Scullys (1995) original work, they
Shah et al. 5
name strategies such as small wins; local, spontaneous, authentic action;
deconstructing insider knowledge and reconstructing alternative worldviews;
and, maintaining afliations 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 identies 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 Lowerys (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 studentsnot just among their coworkers(p. 9). She draws com-
parisons between tempered radicalism and Ryans (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 position-
ing 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 temperingdifferently 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 Alstons (2005) study of Black, female superinten-
dents 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
6Educational Administration Quarterly 0(0)
explore how racism constricts actions for leaders of color and provide impor-
tant 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
temperingas 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
benets 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 conver-
gence, 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 con-
verge. 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 col-
leagues. With an interest in how tempering radicalism is enacted in an
Ontario context, and with a specic focus on anti-racist approaches to
school district leadership, we turn to ACL as an example of anti-racist revo-
lutionary leadership, extending Lowerys (2020) concept of revolutionary
leaders and Jones and Squires (2018) critical race tempered leadership.
Applied Critical Leadership
In their foundational text Applied Critical Leadership in Education: Choosing
Change Santamaría and Santamarías (2013) explain that ACL has interdisci-
plinary theoretical foundations drawing on transformative leadership
(Shields, 2010), critical pedagogy and critical multiculturalism
(May & Sleeter, 2010), and CRT (Ladson-Billings, 1999). Specically,
ACL is a leadership application of CRT that serves to expose assumptions
Shah et al. 7
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 refer-
ence to cultural, linguistic, gender, or socio-economic diversity theorized and
written to reect 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 identied. 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 choiceto take up the ght.
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 tran-
scended educational barriers and may also be perceived as successfulin
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 leadersfunds 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, leadersracialized identities are acknowledged and valued for the
renewal they bring to traditional approaches to leadership and their enactment
of leadership that identies 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 leader-
ship that promotes social justice and educational equity in educational
8Educational Administration Quarterly 0(0)
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 char-
acteristics emerged among ACL participants, including:
A willingness to initiate and engage in critical conversationsoften
regarding race, language, culture, difference, access, and/or educa-
tional 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 his-
torically marginalized communities.
The importance of empirical or research-based contributions to educa-
tional contexts, adding authentic research-based information to aca-
demic 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 afnity 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 specic groups of leaders. In their
study on Latino/a ACL (LatACL), Santamaría et al. (2014a) note ve ele-
ments that perhaps indicate a sub-division of ACL: lack of leadership guid-
ance or scaffolding, spiritual aspects of leadership practice, the importance
of family, the use of data in order to make decisions, and the conceptualiza-
tion of a positive identity. These leaders do not opt to trade their marginal-
ized identities for hegemonic perspectivesand rather than suppress their
identities, biases, linguistic ability, ambiguity, and multiple perspectives,
Latino/a critical leaders use their ways of knowingto inform important lead-
ership decisions in education at every levelsupporting 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 chooseto lead through critical lenses inter-
sect and manifest as culturally responsive leadership contributing to sus-
tainable change(p. 22). They found that these leaders move within the
Shah et al. 9
individual, local, and global dimensions working to disrupt educational
inequities associated with the politics of difference in their particular sociopo-
litical/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 stu-
dents 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 princi-
pals 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 specicities indicate the responsiveness to contexts
and cultures. As we consider the literature on tempered radicals and the inter-
sectional 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 difcult. 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),
Ontarios Education Equity Action Plan (Ontario Ministry of Education,
2019), and the mandates of teachersunions and district school board policies
on equity and inclusivity, there are minimal professional, nancial, or other
repercussions to upholding white supremacy and intersecting forms of
oppression. Several recent examples in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton
10 Educational Administration Quarterly 0(0)
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 leadersknowledges and capacities
compared to those identied in the literature on educational change and pro-
moted 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 leader-
ship 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 par-
ticipants 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 ndings 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 ten-
sions and paradoxes inherent in anti-racist leadership in institutions of
white supremacy. They moved away from a how-todiscussion 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 expe-
riences 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 experi-
ence in embodying these roles. The six participants navigate multiple, and
at times contradictory needs and interests of racialized and other marginalized
Shah et al. 11
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 responsibil-
ities over a family of schools and direct responsibilities to senior district
leaders. One of the participants was a Central Superintendent with responsi-
bilities 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. Participantstenure 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 racial-
ized 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 connes of the
dominant culture. All of the participants spoke to the ways they resist white-
ness and white supremacy in schooling. However, there was a subset of inter-
views 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 impossibil-
ities of anti-racist leadership in institutions of white supremacy and the harm
12 Educational Administration Quarterly 0(0)
and danger these participants experience in navigating these tensions. The lit-
erature 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, dening and naming themes, and nalizing
the analysis. The impossibilities we identied 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 ndings as
we identied three perspectives on anti-racist leadership that offer a fun-
damentally different orientation and that emerge in the in-between
spaces of tempered radicalism and ACL. These perspectives include chal-
lenging 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 engage-
ment with the literature, feedback from presentations at various research confer-
ences, 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/possi-
bilities they face and guard against conrmation bias. We formed and reformed
categories at various stages of the coding process over a ten-month period,
checking identied themes for resonance with particular participants who
were in ongoing communication with us. Their leadership is difcult 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 intersec-
tional identities inuence what we notice, what we center, what we dis-
count, and what resonates with us. We also recognize that nobody on
Shah et al. 13
the research team identies as Black, making connections to and ongoing
conversations with participants even more important. Similar to
Santamaría and Santamaría (2015), we reect 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 racial-
ized leaders, the knowledges and capacities of these leaders, and the learning
needed to support anti-racist and anti-colonial leadership, this study
explores the difculties, the unspoken realities, the tensions, and the im/
possibilities of leading for anti-racism in Black and Brown bodies.
These ndings 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 impos-
sibilities: 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 Youre
always navigating. When do we put ourselves in harms 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 dis-
rupting 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 inev-
itable, participants struggled with negotiating where, when, and to which
14 Educational Administration Quarterly 0(0)
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 cant just always be from the outside and trying to
push in. You have to nd 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, youre 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 didnt
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 dont 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 dont know if thats 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 pub-
licly.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 communi-
ties. A Black female participant shared, I always feel as though theresa
gaze, and its not a gaze of afrmation or support. Its 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.
Shah et al. 15
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 isnt
because you physically have done work.A Black woman leader shared,
you also dont want to be too far off the ledge that when you look around,
theres no cushion for you, because, you know, you want to be able to inter-
rupt. But its 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 ofce, and it was awful. Whatever it
was that happened, I went into my ofce. 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 commu-
nities. Another strategy noted is the importance of having a stubborn per-
sistenceand convincing others of the need to stay with a new initiative for
some time before deciding whether to continue or cancel it. Four partici-
pants spoke to learning the skills of when to speak up, when to ask ques-
tions, how to ask questions, and when to step back. The South Asian male
participant explains that coming to terms with ones complicity individu-
ally 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 were reporting back in trans-
parent ways to communicate about how we are working to better serve those
kids.
16 Educational Administration Quarterly 0(0)
Five participants spoke to nding the people who are doing this work to
build a network of support because this work can be very isolating and demor-
alizing, 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 difculties 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 dont have the same inu-
ence and impact as community members but it doesnt mean we dont 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 its difcult 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 com-
munities to push for change from the outside so that they can then enact it
from the inside. Given historical mistrust between Brown and Black commu-
nities, 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 com-
munity 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, communi-
ties do not realize how signicant 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:
Its an ongoing discussion because I get it from the community all the time. You
work in a system thats racist, and you guys are not talking about racism
enough. This year we are focusing on anti-Black racism. But what happens
Shah et al. 17
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 youre doing and that youre supportive of them. And theyll 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 whos been here before me has been successful because
theyre protecting the rm at all costs. And so now going back to communities,
If Im protecting the rm, 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 difculties 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 identitiesrace, sexuality, faith, etc.) get promoted
through the ranks. As such, the likelihood of nding a Director of Education
that is willing to take the necessary risks to change the disproportionate out-
comes 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
18 Educational Administration Quarterly 0(0)
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 under-
served 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 guring out
who to trust to engage in this work and the associated dangers of public asso-
ciation with other equity-minded educators and community members. For
example, the South Asian male leader described the personal dangers of men-
toring 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 resis-
tance, 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 pro-
fessionally. 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 selloutand 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 posi-
tional 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 cant 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 difculties in dealing with teachersunions 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
Shah et al. 19
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
difcult 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 difcult 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 gener-
ally 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, Ive 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 fragil-
ity
4
that surfaces and the power in that white fragility to shut down the work.
This participant went on to say, I guess Im thinking about whether you can
completely engage in the work without re-centering whiteness. Im not sure.
Sad to say because of how the system operates.Yet, in more recent conver-
sations 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 racial-
ized, 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 apartwhen they try to lead the work for the rst 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 Ive 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:
20 Educational Administration Quarterly 0(0)
People tend to go into teaching whove been successful in a racist system, right,
and who were meant to rise to the top despite those obstacles. And even racial-
ized people, they rise to the top despite the obstacles the tendency is to want
to replicate that.
A Black female leader expresses how difcult it is to work with racialized
colleagues that enjoy the benets of assimilationand the need for racialized
leaders to do their own work to decolonize themselves before they can actu-
ally show up in a space in a more authentic way.The South Asian male
leader shares:
I cant 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. Its been about changing myself and holding myself
accountable. And the constant reective work that needs to happen. Because
in our desire to do anti-racist, decolonizing work, often times what we do,
without knowing thats what were 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 nding 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 invis-
ible 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 reg-
ularly 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 youre
going to jump on that and be aggressive,reiterating the troupe of the
angry Black woman despite district-wide commitments to anti-racist leader-
ship practices. Several participants also spoke to being type casted as the
equity person,discounting their breadth of expertise and experience and lim-
iting their vast skillset to equity-related knowledge and skills, which are seen
as separate from all other aspects of schooling and not the core businessof
schools. Type-casting these leaders both diminishes their anti-racist work as
Shah et al. 21
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 difcult 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, its something youre
personalizing rather than a right of all students, something that is identied in
the strategic plan of the board and how we relate to students, and they dont
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 benet of all students, and specically
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 cant really enter a sit-
uation or a room in some way, not prepared or any less prepared than anybody
else in the room Youre not just speaking for yourself; youre speaking for
everybody.The South Asian female leader shares:
So, expectations are higher, and you cant not meet them I always say to
people we cannot be disorganized. We cannot miss deadlines But Ive
been trained like that. But Ive been trained like that nobody can question
my work ethic or my ability to do my work. Right? Dot your is and cross
your ts.
22 Educational Administration Quarterly 0(0)
These leaders are navigating their leadership within the connes of profes-
sional 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 t.For example, the
South Asian female leader was told that the hiring committee was not
ready for her level of critique, despite the school boards public commitment
to anti-racism, anti-colonialism, and anti-oppression. The South Asian male
leader was told that he was not qualied enough for a job despite having
greater qualications 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 lead-
ership. This is a complex piece that he did here. So, I had to basically
walk them through his entire interview because they couldntseeit.And
meanwhile, this candidate is brilliant They all thought he was a weak can-
didate. You know how he articulated his answers and his responses. He
didnthaveaframework.Hedidnt 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 per-
sonal narrative and regarding his experiences and how that impacted and
inuences 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 enoughor not the right tand 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 qualied enough. The
window for acceptability, t,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 profes-
sional 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
Shah et al. 23
generated three themes: present and future hopes,personal power and
voice,and joy and fulllment.
Present and Future Hopes
Several participants spoke to their present hopes for Indigenous, Black,
and racialized students, families, and communities, as well as their imag-
ined hopes for future generations. While they recognized that systems of
oppression are self-perpetuating and that whiteness consistently nds
new ways to enact itself, they saw this work as imperative to a larger, gen-
erational 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, its 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 school-
ing. 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 youre going to do what it
takes to do the right thing. To me, its 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 Im not going to dismantle white supremacy in my lifetime. But to
know that this is a collective goal. Its 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.
24 Educational Administration Quarterly 0(0)
Personal Power and Voice
Two Black female leaders and both South Asian leaders also spoke to the per-
sonal benets of feeling a sense of power and nding 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
thats just the right thing to do.The South Asian male leader shared:
You need to know that, because when youre facing this, youre who youre
facing and you cant do that unless youve 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 rm. And it
gives you a sense of power because then theres 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 legit-
imate 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 ip the script. Similarly, the South Asian female leader shares, I always
nd it interesting when White people get it. I always say to them, whats
your story?’” Ultimately, personal power and voice were possible with
greater alignment between ones 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? Whats the same? Whats different?
And continuing to push educators to name what it is that theyre seeing or not
seeing in specic 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 them-
selves naming what they observed happening when the race was being sig-
naled but unspoken, addressing whiteness and defensiveness when it was
Shah et al. 25
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 cant remember specically 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 dont see it, dont
understand it, or dont 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 empow-
ered others to speak out. The South Asian male leader shares, What I
know has happened, because theyve told me quietly, is that its 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 Fulllment
Finally, participants spoke to the joy and fulllment of this work. For the three
Black, female participants, this joy came in part from the power of represen-
tation 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:
Im 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 its 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 whats it going to mean for you to be
able to lead as who you are as a self-identied Black male in this space?
26 Educational Administration Quarterly 0(0)
And what do you need from me?’” Their inner power as leaders with posi-
tional power has opened doors and created space for other leaders.
The possibilities of this work operate on multiple levelspersonal, com-
munal, professional, moral, political, and intergenerationalbut they are not
possibilities for all Black and Brown leaders. In part, the likelihood of realiz-
ing these possibilities (and experiencing the impossibilities) increases with
greater positional power, longer terms as a district leader, and the higher pres-
ence 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 impor-
tant to name to not over-generalize the ndings. First, a small sample size
of Black and Brown educational leaders limits the generalizability of ndings.
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 leader-
ship 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 neo-
liberal educational context. Third, it is important to note that none of the partic-
ipants 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 imag-
inings 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 iden-
tied in the literature on tempered radicals, such as feelings of co-option and
Shah et al. 27
isolation, as well as fear of and experiences of losing legitimacy with commu-
nities. They also identied 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 col-
leagues to account (Lowery, 2020), and covert strategies of tempered radicals
such as working closely and strategically with communities and mentoring aspir-
ing 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 represen-
tation (Ghosh & Abdi, 2004) sustains the racist structures that give rise to dis-
proportionate 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 knowl-
edge 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
28 Educational Administration Quarterly 0(0)
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, t, and leadership are aligned to whiteness, main-
taining 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 Squires (2018) critique of tempered radicalism from
the perspective of CRT. For example, the term radicalsuggests 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,”“radicalactivists, 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
choiceto take up the ght (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 threatand build trust with the mainstreamas 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 char-
acteristics as Black and Brown male and female leaders, also meant that the
Shah et al. 29
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 chal-
lenges 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, educa-
tional 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 position-
ing 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 callto seek equity for students and co-workers,
this study adds another dimensioneconomies 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
Lowerys (2020) notion of revolutionary leaders, who, unlike tempered rad-
icals 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 un-
nishedness 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 ones purpose,
nding ones voice and speaking ones truth, knowing ones power, and expe-
riencing joy and fulllment in this work. While the impossibilities of this
30 Educational Administration Quarterly 0(0)
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, fulllment, 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 strate-
gies 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 institu-
tions, 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 servicetofuturegen-
erations, 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 collect-
ives 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 anti-
racist change. Scholarship can also document and analyze how community
organizations, parent collectives, and anti-racist educational leaders can collec-
tively 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 recommenda-
tions 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 rst implication
speaks to the ways in which educational institutionsclassrooms, schools,
school districts, and school boardsneed new metrics and accounting of what
constitutes equity, anti-racism, anti-colonialism, and anti-oppression and deeper
Shah et al. 31
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, evalua-
tions 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 ned and/or red, 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 posi-
tion 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 collab-
oration between school boards, teacherscolleges, qualifying institutions, and
teachersunions 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
afnity 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 devel-
oping accountability measures for anti-racist work, supporting and position-
ing 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 complex-
ities of this work that positions racialized, anti-racist leaders as simultane-
ously harmed and harming, supporting aspiring leaders in developing
32 Educational Administration Quarterly 0(0)
strong connections within the board and in community, and in identifying pat-
terns 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 rene 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 inand address anti-racism
directly, there should be an expectation that White leaders engage in additional
learning and reection 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 collabora-
tions, sharing stories in the media and social media, advocating for human
rights, and more. Community activists and scholar-activists can also encour-
age, recruit, and support people committed to racial justice to run as elected
school board ofcials. Some of the recommendations include inviting com-
munity 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 connec-
tions and establishing relationships between educational institutions and com-
munities. 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 parentsrights, 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
Shah et al. 33
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 Fullment. In
putting these two bodies of scholarship in conversation with the ndings, we
identify three important shifts in perspectiveforleadership.First,weexplore
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 ecosys-
tem 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 dif-
culties 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/school-
ing, we allow for collective and liberatory possibilities for schooling that
simply cannot present themselves in a world of binary logics.
Declaration of Conicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conicts of interest with respect to the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no nancial support for the research, authorship, and/or publi-
cation of this article.
34 Educational Administration Quarterly 0(0)
ORCID iD
Vidya Shah https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3413-9994
Notes
1. Neoliberalism constructs the purpose of education as creating competitive indi-
viduals for the global marketplace and their individual future work prospects.
Neoliberalism operates in educational settings in the following ways: standard-
ized testing, the commodication and narrow understanding of literacy, recon-
structing studentscharacter based on individual and entrepreneurial values,
prescribed curricula and preparing students as both workers and contributing
members of the economy (Apple, 2006).
2. In Ontario, the head of a school district is known as the Director of Education.
They are known as Superintendents of Education in the United States.
3. There are numerous incidents and comments made by teachersunions that speak
to their frustration towards senior level districts for not pushing and supporting
anti-racist and anti-colonial changes.
4. White fragility is a term coined by DiAngelo (2018) to explain White expecta-
tions for racial comfort within an environment of racial protection, which
lessens the ability of White people to tolerate racial stress.
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38 Educational Administration Quarterly 0(0)
Author Biographies
Vidya Shah is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Education at York University in
Canada. Her research interests explore anti-racist approaches to leadership and school
district reform.
Nada Aoudeh is a doctoral candidate in the Faculty of Education at York University in
Canada. Her research interests explore gendered Islamophobia and leadership counter-
stories in public education.
Gisele Cuglievan-Mindreau is a PhD candidate in Educational Leadership and Policy
at OISE, University of Toronto. Her research interests include critical approaches to
social justice and equity in local education policy.
Joseph Flessa is a professor of Educational Leadership and Policy at the Ontario
Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto, where he directs the
EdD program. A former teacher and principal, his recent work focuses on school-level
leadership in a comparative context.
Shah et al. 39
... Our analysis aligns with existing research on how People of Color navigate academic search processes (Burmicky, 2022;Gause, 2021;Turner, 2007) and underscores how high-status positions expose them to structural and organizational racism (e.g., Wingfield & Chavez, 2020). We also highlight a paradox for Leaders of Color: while qualified to identify and challenge whiteness, they often must adopt practices that normalize whiteness to attain and retain high-status positions (Shah et al., 2023;Wingfield & Alston, 2014). ...
... Although they exercised agency to secure their roles, this agency was racialized, as their success depended on aligning with prevailing presidential norms. This racialized agency, which entails minimizing emotions and social identities, normalizes the harm that whiteness inflicts on Leaders of Color and the communities they serve (Shah et al., 2023). ...
... Nonetheless, Presidents of Color who are equity-minded and understand the complexities of achieving racial equity are better positioned to challenge whiteness in academia and transform campuses into more racially just institutions (Liera & Desir, 2023;McCambly & Colyvas, 2022). Research shows that People of Color have the dispositions, experiences, and knowledge necessary to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion, particularly in promoting racial equity (Gonzales, 2018;Liera & Dowd, 2019;Shah et al., 2023;Turner, 2007). ...
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