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

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 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 metrics, 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.