A love letter to educational leaders of Color: “CREWing UP” with critical whiteness studies

Abstract

This essay applies Critical Race Theory and Critical Whiteness Studies towards affirming the collective existence, experience, and humanity of educational leaders of Color, who tend to experience systemic dismissing and invisibilizing within educational institutions. Like racial commentators such as James Baldwin and Ta-Nehisi Coates, this essay uses the genre of letter writing—specifically a love letter—as a way to cultivate intimacy and relationality with readers. The piece intentionally does so because whiteness, white supremacy, and racism enact violence in ways that require intentional healing rooted in humanizing, revolutionary, and decolonial love. Ultimately, this love letter urges scholars, particularly race and whiteness scholars, to “CREW UP,” or Catalyze Resistance & Emancipation With United Power, in such a way that provides the healing, collective coalition-building, and consciousness needed to eradicate whiteness, white supremacy, and racism.

Keywords:

• Critical race theory
• critical whiteness studies
• educational leadership

Additional information

Notes on contributors

G. T. Reyes

G.T. Reyes is an Associate Professor in the Educational Leadership at California State University, East Bay. His approaches to educational leadership development, research, and professional learning are rooted in critical and socio-cultural discourses that forefront critical race, decolonial, and radical healing pedagogies.