Breaking the Silence: A Qualitative Critical Autoethnography of a Principal's Lived Experience with Having Courageous Conversations about Race

Abstract

This qualitative critical autoethnography represents a highly personalized account of the intricacies and reflections of a Black female educational leader engaging in courageous conversations about race with a predominately White staff. Using myself as the subject and the researcher, my personal experiences with race, racism, and intolerance in a White socially constructed educational system is depicted autoethnographically as I learned to have courageous conversations about race. Exploring the development of my critical consciousness affected how I see race as a Black, female administrator. Singleton’s (2015) Courageous Conversations about Race was the foundation for this critical autoethnography. As a Black female educational leader of a Midwestern early learning center, I reveal my story as an insider-outsider…trapped; as I tried to figure out how I fit at the Aranbe Learning Center (ALC, pseudonym), where the staff was 87% White and the students were 90% of color, as it related to having courageous conversations. This critical autoethnography reflects my lived experience as an administrator trying to engage, sustain, and deepen interracial dialogue about race. My commitment to stay engaged, experience discomfort, speak my truth, and expect and/or accept non-closure is clear as I traversed a White socially constructed educational system.