Cultivating sacred spaces: a racial affinity group approach to support critical educators of color

ABSTRACT

Despite repeated pleas for diversifying the U.S. teacher force, teachers of color who are committed to social justice are often unsupported and even pushed out via structural, interpersonal, and pedagogical obstacles within the profession. In response to neoliberal, colorblind, and apolitical approaches to teacher development and support, educators and organizers have reclaimed and reframed their pedagogies through critical professional development and grassroots activism to center healing from the impacts of oppression in its myriad forms . The ethnographic case study in this article examines how, over the course of three years, a grassroots racial affinity group became an important space for learning and healing for its members. I explain how the group explicitly centered twelve members’ voices, needs, and collective knowledge, and in so doing: (a) collectively cultivated a critical, humanizing, and healing space for their sustainability; and (b) navigated various positions within socially toxic education institutions and organizations. I conclude by discussing how and why critical racial affinity spaces for educators of color are necessary in order to support their personal, political, relational, and pedagogical growth, which has implications on their retention and leadership within the field.

KEYWORDS:

• Teachers of color
• social justice
• racial affinity groups
• grassroots organizing
• teacher professional development

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Whiteness is a way of being and seeing the world that maintains White supremacy (Picower, 2009).

2. Apple (2006) defines neoliberalism as a phenomenon in which economic and social relations are structurally and ideologically driven by the demands of the market. In the context of public education, it operates as a tool to serve the interests and power of the elite by maintaining dominance over disadvantaged groups.

3. I rely on Katsarou, Picower, and Stovall’s (2010) definition of teachers committed to social justice as those who engage in “the day-to-day processes and actions utilized in classrooms and communities centered in critical analysis, action, and reflection (praxis) amongst all educational stakeholders with the goal of creating tangible change in their communities, cities, states, nation, and the larger world … through the raising of social, political, racial and economic consciousness (p. 139).

4. I utilize the term EoC because not all group members are credentialed classroom teachers, as shown in Table 1: H.E.L.L.A. Group Members.

5. PoC refers to people of color.

6. The H in H.E.L.L.A., originally stood for the word ‘hope.’ However, toward the latter half of the first year of the group experience, one of the members, Jedaiah, suggested changing the word from Hope to Healing since he felt it was more accurate to the collective experience. The group agreed with his suggestion.

7. Intersectional identities is a term that refers to the intersecting social identities related to systems of oppression, domination, or discrimination which might overlap one’s racial identity with other such as gender, sexuality, citizenship status, and more (Crenshaw, 1991).

8. Cis-het refers to cisgender and heterosexual.

9. CBE refers to Community Based Educator.

10. ELL refers to English Language Learner.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Farima Pour-Khorshid

Farima Pour-Khorshid focuses on grassroots social justice teacher organizing, critical professional development, critical racial affinity groups and radical healing approaches to support educators within the field.