The Deep Roots of Inequity: Coloniality, Racial Capitalism, Educational Leadership, and Reform

Abstract

Purpose: This article is a critical analysis of educational leadership and administration’s historically privileged Eurocentric epistemologies, research methodologies, and intellectual norms, shaping the field through conceptions of coloniality. The purpose of this article is toward decolonizing educational leadership. Problem: Dominant, Eurocentric knowledge systems are epistemically imposing. Racialized and ethnic critiques of Eurocentric epistemologies and educational leadership norms are relatively new in dominant knowledge production institutions such as University Council of Educational Administration and peer-review journals such as Education Administration Quarterly. Questions: Why are BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) epistemologies a critical issue in educational leadership, research, practice, and leadership preparation? In what ways have educational leadership research, practice, and training represented BIPOC epistemologies? Conceptual Framework: This article refines and advances theories of coloniality by a concept that I coined Coloniality Racial-Capitalism and Modernity. Coloniality, the darker side of modernity, is highlighted in educational leadership practices and reform for perpetuating epistemicide in the service of racial capitalism. Contributions to the Field: This article reconnects the struggles of Blackamericans to a global struggle, such as the progenitors in the Blackamerican struggle understood. Furthermore, placing coloniality in conversation with other critical work in educational leadership around coloniality’s articulations of racism and inequity is useful for BIPOC and their allies in fights for educational justice for BIPOC children.