Introduction

The quality of light by which we scrutinize our lives has direct bearing upon the product which we live, and upon the changes which we hope to bring about through those lives. It is within this light that we form those ideas by which we pursue our magic and make it realized. This is poetry as illumination, for it is through poetry that we give name to those ideas which are - until the poem - nameless and formless, about to be birthed, but already felt.

–Lorde (1984), Poetry is Not a Luxury

This special issue of the International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education explores the poetry of emerging scholars of color; the manuscripts within this issue illuminate scholars’ poetic perspectives of and approaches to research on race and its intersections within post-secondary contexts. The impetus for this special issue stems from the resistance we, junior scholars of color who research race and its intersections, experience, while working in an academy that was not built for us, our communities, or our scholarship. The resistance we constantly encounter stems from the privileging of paradigms, methods, teaching approaches, behaviors, dress, and much more, that is built for and by the dominant cultures (e.g. white, cisgender, heterosexual, and able-bodied) of the academy (see Delgado Bernal & Villalpando, 2002; Scheurich & Young, 1997; Stanley, 2007). This special issue is a liberatory love letter, written by a community of emerging scholars of color, through which we resist the resistance our bodies and minds often receive from the dominant cultures of the academy. Throughout this special issue ‘we pursue our magic and make it realized’ (Lorde, 1984, p. 36).

The process of writing and editing this ‘counterstance’ (Anzaldúa, 2007) to dominant culture was empowering, cathartic, community-centered, and, overall, comforting. Oddly, generating a title that could capture the essence and passions of this special issue was one of our, editors and authors, most challenging tasks. While, race would be a focal point of the issue, there were several other central points infused throughout each manuscript, including centering ‘young’ scholars of colors’ perspectives, exploring the intersections of identities and contexts, and complicating essentialist paradigms of race. In the end, as a community, we agreed on the title, Emerging perspectives on race and its intersections in higher education. Below, we briefly explore the words, and thus, the meanings embedded within this title, reflecting the overall purpose for the special issue.

Emerging perspectives

To emerge is to move out of the way of something, to become visible, important, and prominent (Emerge, n. d.). While, some people within the academy use the word ‘emerge’ to signify ‘early-career individuals who are emerging as contributors’ (ACPA, 2017) within a specific discipline or field, we do not employ the term solely in this way. For us, the term ‘emerge’ is applicable to the special issue in several manners. We, as scholars, are forever attempting to emerge from an academy that is steeped in white supremacist ideologies that intersect with multiple systems of domination (Ahmed, 2012; Patton, Harper, & Harris, 2015; Patton, 2016). As junior scholars of color, we labor to make our bodies, and the bodies within our communities, visible. We aim to support these bodies and the beautiful intellect that surrounds them toward visibility through our scholarship.

Our scholarship, and the manuscripts contained in this special issue, unapologetically center race and its intersections as the most prominent issue that must be made visible in higher education. Our bodies and our scholarship fight to emerge from under the blanket of whiteness that often covers the academy. Through our emerging scholarship, ‘we give name to those ideas which are, until the poem, nameless and formless, about to be birthed, but already felt’ (Lorde, 1984, p. 36).

Furthermore, we do not use ‘emerge’ as a synonym for ‘new.’ Our scholarship is influenced by years of resistance by and academic poetry from those who have come before us. Our fight to expose and emerge from the whiteness embedded throughout the academy as junior scholars is a direct result of the presence of and the scholarship from many scholars who have emerged (and continue to emerge) before us; they have created a path for us to follow, while supporting our deviation from this path.

On race and its intersections

Race is a socially constructed concept (re)invented by white society to maintain a social order that preserves white privilege (Delgado & Stefancic, 2012). While, race is a social construct, it is embedded throughout US education and has material implications for people living, learning, and working within higher education (Patton et al., 2015; Patton, 2016). Race is constructed and performed at the intersections of multiple contexts and social identities, including age, gender, faith, nationality, and sexual orientation (Delgado & Stefancic, 2012).

To focus on race and its intersections is to explore how race is not monolithic or static, or does not exist in isolation from multiple social identities and social contexts. Again, we clarify that ‘intersections’ is not a synonym for ‘intersectionality,’ no matter how often the academy conflates the two terms (see Luft & Ward, 2009). While, the manuscripts in this special issue are not devoid of intersectional analyses, which accounts for the confluence of multiple systems of domination and their influence on peoples’ everyday identity-specific experiences (Crenshaw, 1989, 1991; Thornton-Dill & Zambrana, 2009), intersectionality is not the focus of the special issue. Instead, we focus on the ways in which race intersects with multiple social identities, locations, and contexts to influence everyday identity-specific experiences within higher education.

Contributions to the special issue

Throughout the past year, we have worked in community with one another to include five full-length articles and an afterword for this special issue.

In his article, ‘Mapping Violence, Naming Life: A History of Anti-Black Oppression in the Higher Education System,’ Mustaffa provides a critical reflection focused on the violent history of the US higher education system, with a focus on anti-Black violence. Using a critical theoretical approach, this first manuscript exposes how post-secondary education has always served as an (im)possibility for Black people and contributed to multifaceted oppression within the Black community. Mustaffa theorizes higher education’s history as contested moments between the intra-connected forms of education violence and Black people’s life-making – a term he uses to ‘describe the creative spaces of possibility and freedom Black people produce when practicing self-definition, self-care, and resistance.’

Next, Dian Squire expands both critical race theory (CRT) and organizational theory to explore a Critical Race Institutional Logics Perspective (CRILP). Squire applies CRILP to post-secondary contexts in an attempt to explore how organizations exist in a society that privileges neoliberal ideologies, to center race and racism, and to integrate an analysis of power and resiliency at the actor-level. Specifically, he interrogates how institutional logics regarding diversity, equity, and justice influence faculty of colors’ understandings of a commitment to these logics and its ultimate impact on the ways that faculty experience their campuses. Particularly important to Squire’s analysis is how national racial incidences, such as the Black Lives Matter Movement, influence institutional logics and faculty behaviors.

For this issues we found it important to explore the many ways, not only race but also ethnicity intersect in particularly unique ways within higher education. Thus, the next two manuscripts in this issue contribute to emerging perspectives of how Latinx students experience the US educational system. Salinas provides a personal-theoretical analysis of the educational experiences of Latinx students in America. In ‘Transforming Academia and Theorizing Spaces for Latinx Students in Higher Education: Voces Perdidas and Voces de Poder’, Salinas explores extant research, legal cases, and political histories to highlight the marginalization and erasure of Latinx culture and voices throughout education. The manuscript aims to expand educators’ views of Latinx students’ experiences in higher education and provides recommendations for how the field can center Voces Perdidas – lost voices – despite the presence of Voces de Poder – voices of power and privilege.

Through her manuscript, Jasmine M. Haywood explores the racialized experiences of Afro-Latino collegians with a focus on intragroup marginalization. Haywood focuses specifically on the ways in which colorism, or skin color stratification, influences the lived experiences of Afro-Latino students navigating post-secondary contexts. Like Salinas, Haywood explores a population and issues that are often invisible in higher education. Using CRT and counter-narratives, Haywood confirms and adds new dimensions to research on intragroup dynamics of Latino collegians. Furthermore, through this manuscript, Haywood challenges normative monoracial and/or monoethnic only paradigms of race and ethnicity.

Next, in Njoku, Butler, and Beatty’s article ‘Reimagining the HBCU Environment: Exposing Race Secrets and the Binding Chains of Respectability and Othermothering’, the authors investigate how the intersections of gender, race, policy, and student differences at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) influence Black students’ experiences. This manuscript aims to disrupt dominant ideologies concerning HBCUs by highlighting how intersections of race collide with respectability politics to isolate those who do not adhere to heteronormative gender roles. Proceeding from a place of critical love, this theoretical analysis aims to reimagine and embrace variations of Blackness and disrupt marginalizing practices rooted in politics of respectability at HBCUs.

In ‘I think it’s very much placed on us’: Black queer Men laboring to forge community at a predominantly white and (hetero)cisnormative research institution,’ Reginald A. Blockett explores how higher education institutions are saturated in both white supremacy and heteronormativity. Through this manuscript, Blockett explores the labor that Black queer men undertake as they forge community at a predominantly white and largely heterosexual research institution. Using intersectionality and queer theory, Blockett advances the use of critical frameworks to explore and disrupt heteronormativity, cisnormativity, and racism that Black queer men experience within post-secondary settings.

In the Afterword for this special issue, Dr. Nana Osei-Kofi reflects on her own educational journey and shares with the reader what it was like to find her voice as a junior scholar of color. She explores how higher education scholarship was, and often continues to be, steeped in a state of ‘methodological conservatism’ that promotes hegemonic understandings. Drawing inspiration from Audre Lorde, Dr. Osei-Kofi concludes the special issue with a call for scholars, at all stages in their careers, to challenge the hegemony of the academy by remaining open to different knowledges, disciplines, methods, modes, and forms of scholarly engagement.

In conclusion

Lorde (1984) declared that in the absence of language, poetry, or, in our case, poetic-scholarship, ‘lays the foundations for a future of change, a bridge across our fears of what has never been before’ (p. 38). As a community, we continue to build bridges that endeavor to disrupt whiteness and focus on the lives, experiences, and narratives of those influenced by race and its intersections in higher education. We hope that you enjoy the poetry within these pages; may it illuminate, name, and form the emerging perspectives and ideas that are within all of us.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.