Decolonial love as a pedagogy of care for Black immigrant post-secondary students

Abstract

This paper explores ‘decolonial love’ as a pedagogy of care among 16 first generation Black immigrants enrolled in predominantly White four- year colleges in the United States and Canada. The term ‘decolonial love’ and extensions of this original conceptualization focus on radical self-love and resistance to colonial oppression. Scholars have also connected decolonial love with Black liberation movements. Through a narrative analysis of the Black immigrant student experiences in university, this article uses a decolonial and intersectional approach to explore how higher educational institutions can embrace a radical decolonial praxis. This approach affirms and supports Black identities in a climate of anti-Black racism. The paper will discuss implications for institutions and educators whose aim it is to decolonize their teaching practices.

ABSTRACT (French)

Cet article explore l’amour décolonial en tant que pédagogie de soins parmi 16 immigrants noirs de première génération inscrits dans des collèges de quatre ans à prédominance blanche aux États-Unis et au Canada. Le terme amour décolonial et les extensions de cette conceptualisation originale se concentrent sur l’amour-propre radical et la résistance à l’oppression coloniale. Les chercheurs ont également établi un lien entre l’amour décolonial et les mouvements de libération des Noirs. À travers une analyse narrative des expériences des étudiants immigrants noirs à l’université, cet article utilise une approche décoloniale et intersectionnelle pour explorer comment les établissements d’enseignement supérieur peuvent adopter une praxis décoloniale radicale. Cette approche affirme et soutient les identités noires dans un climat de racisme anti-Noirs. L’article discutera des implications pour les institutions et les éducateurs dont le but est de décoloniser leurs pratiques d’enseignement.

Keywords:

• Black student experiences
• post-secondary education
• decolonial theory

Introduction

In 2021, there were 4.8 million foreign-born Black Americans, about 10% of the U.S. Black population (Pew Research Center 2022). In the United States and Canada, Black immigrants, specifically those born in African countries are more likely to attain post-secondary education after migration than the native Black population (Pew Research Center 2022; Statistics Canada 2020). There is a degree of variability by country-of-origin among Black immigrants. Twenty-six percent of African Americans have a bachelor’s degree or higher (Cheeseman Day 2020; Pew Research Center 2022). In contrast, 64% of Nigerian-born Black immigrants aged 25 and older have at least a bachelor’s degree, which is more than double the share of the overall Black immigrant population. About half of U.S. Black immigrants from Kenya and Cameroon have a college degree, while 40% of Ghanaians possess a bachelor’s degree (Pew Research Center 2022).

In Canada, the percentage of individuals aged 25 to 59 with a bachelor’s degree or above is 25.4% for Black immigrant women and 29.8% for Black immigrant men (Statistics Canada 2020). Several studies have shown that Black immigrants are not only more likely to attend higher educational institutions (Bennett and Lutz 2009; McCleary-Gaddy and Miller 2018), but they are also more likely to attend highly selective colleges and universities (Byrd, Brunn-Bevel, and Sexton 2014). Jaschik (2018) determined that the African-born student population in US colleges and universities increased by 7% between 2011 and 2018. Despite their many challenges, studies have found that Black immigrant post-secondary students demonstrate higher academic achievement and lower attrition rates relative to native-born Blacks (Owens and Lynch 2012; Daoud et al. 2018; Rauh 2016).

The differences between native-born and immigrant Black students have been variously attributed to higher household income and family structure. According to data from the Pew Research Center (2022), Black immigrant households have a higher median household income than Black American households ($57,200 vs. $42,000). Over half (54%) of Black immigrants live in households headed by a married couple, while 19% lived in a female-headed household and just 7% lived in a male-headed household (Pew Research Center 2022). Using census data, Rauh (2016) determined that foreign-born Blacks were more likely to be high earning, employed, highly educated, and not institutionalized by the criminal justice system. Tesfai (2019) studied Black immigrant housing segregation and found that Black immigrants were more likely to practise spatial assimilation than native-born Blacks. Spatial assimilation refers to the idea that Black immigrants use their economic means to move to less racially segregated areas, thus providing them with access to social capital (Tesfai 2019).

The purpose of the study was to explore the experiences of Black immigrant students at two predominantly White post-secondary universities. I conducted a narrative analysis of the Black immigrant student experiences using a decolonial and intersectional theoretical approach. My aim was to explore how higher educational institutions can embrace a radical decolonial praxis that affirms and supports Black identities in a climate of anti-Black racism. This paper will focus on addressing the question of how these Black immigrant students were able to cope with the anti-Black racism they experienced and persist in their educational studies. Throughout this paper, I argue that post-secondary institutions should embrace ‘decolonial love’ as a decolonizing pedagogical praxis. This is a pedagogy of care that can affirm the identities of those students marginalized by race or Indigeneity.

Structural barriers facing Black students in post-secondary education

The scholarly literature about Black students in U.S. post-secondary education identifies several structural barriers that may hinder educational attainment. As a consequence of lower socio-economic status, Black students may experience financial barriers. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, Addo, Houle, and Simon (2016) found that Black post-secondary students have significantly more student debt than their White counterparts. Jackson and Reynolds (2013) found that Black students were more likely to end up with higher debt loads and were also more likely to default on student loans than White students. Quadlin and Conwell (2021) studied parental savings for their children’s college education and found that Black students were disadvantaged, particularly Black girls. Even strong academic performance on the part of Black girls yielded little gains for parental educational savings. Klugman (2013) studied advanced placement (AP) courses which are designed to prepare students for post-secondary enrollment. Klugman (2013) found that the availability of AP courses in certain schools resulted in unequal access to course curricula that would prepare students for university. These inequalities are most often experienced by Black and Latino youth living in lower-income communities. Given the socio-economic inequalities faced by these students, retention of such students in post-secondary contexts is critically important.

Baldridge (2017) notes that post-secondary education is replete with deficit discourses about Black students that focus paternalistically on how the educational system can make up for their deficits. Baldridge (2017) further explains that these discourses neglect to consider their agency or interrogate the structural conditions that impede their progress. Brunsma, Embrick, and Shin (2017) asserted that underrepresented minority graduate students such as Black students experience alienation and that they also lack effective mentoring.

Black immigrants and the persistence of anti-Black racism

In spite of these gains achieved by Black immigrants relative to their native-born counterparts, the research evidence shows that Black immigrants still experience anti-Black racism at predominantly White institutions (Brunsma, Embrick, and Shin 2017; Constantine et al. 2005; George Mwangi and Fries‐Britt 2015). Anti-Black racism is defined as the ‘…system of beliefs and practices that attack, erode, and limit the humanity of Black people’. (Carruthers 2018, 26). Anti-Black racism manifests itself through racial microaggressions (Brunsma, Embrick, and Shin 2017) and also overt expressions of racism. The events of 2020 related to the murder of George Floyd drew attention to the existence of institutional racism in post-secondary institutions (Taylor et al. 2023; Thomas and Ashburn-Nardo 2020).While facing the many challenges of acculturating to a new societal context, Black immigrants also have to learn how to interpret their experiences of anti-Black racism upon migration to North America in relation to their primary country of origin (Berry 2006; Case and Hunter 2014). Case and Hunter (2014) found that Black Caribbean immigrants scored higher on measures of cultural racism-related stress the longer they resided in the United States.

What is decolonial love?

The term ‘decolonial love’ was first introduced by Díaz (2007) in his Pulitzer award winning fiction novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. In an interview with the Boston Review, Díaz describes decolonial love as

‘…the kind of love that I was interested in, that my characters long for intuitively, is the only kind of love that could liberate them from that horrible legacy of colonial violence. I am speaking about decolonial love’. (cited in Moya 2012, para. 14).

The histories of North and South America have been shaped by colonialism. The end of chattel slavery created new forms of oppression for persons of African descent. White supremacy has permeated every economic, social, and political system and the implications have been tragic for those oppressed. African and Indigenous people have been systematically taught through these social systems that they are intellectual inferior, amoral, and devalued. Decolonial love means to radically embrace the bodies and systems of belief thought to be unworthy of loving.

In Díaz (2007) novel, the colonial context is present throughout the story, which spans decades and continents. Foregrounding the colonial history of the Dominican Republic and the brutal Trujillo dictatorship, the novel describes how the diasporic Dominican community residing in large urban cities like New York can maintain transnational ties that reproduce inequalities of race, gender, sexuality, and class.

Indigenous scholars such as Simpson (2016) have used the term ‘decolonial love’ to refer to Indigenous people who have reclaimed their connections with their Elders, the land, and their communities as an act of resistance against the brutal history of colonialism that attempted to eradicate them. This eradication was implemented through systems of forced residential schooling and forced adoptions to White families. Decolonial love is not merely about loving oneself as an Indigenous person but also about loving one’s culture, heritage, and epistemologies.

In the field of education, scholars of decolonial studies have embraced decolonial love and articulated its meaning in the context of White settler colonialism. Like ‘diversity’, the term ‘decolonizing’ has become a popular buzzword in education (Rodríguez 2018). Rodríguez (2018) argues that the term has been widely embraced by White educators and researchers who invoke it without fully understanding the implication of its meaning. In actuality, decolonizing education represents a radical shift away from Western hegemonic ideals and values. Simpson (2016) argues that the act of decolonizing requires both centring one’s relationship with the land, encompassing both human and non-human, and resisting White supremacy and the many forms of capitalism. Decolonizing means challenging the binaries between human and nature. Simpson argues that decolonizing our educational systems means accepting the land itself as pedagogy. Decolonizing education requires a pedagogy of decolonial love.

Figueroa (2015) asserts that to take decolonization seriously, decolonial love also requires bearing witness or delivering testimonials about experiences of colonial trauma. Figueroa concludes that decolonial love can drive the work of political and social decolonizing efforts. Simpson (2016) and Tuck and Yang (2012) believe that the project of decolonizing can bring both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people together in the struggle against oppression. The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, for example, acted in solidarity with Indigenous groups over pipeline protests (Castillo-Montoya, Abreu, and Abad 2019). The radical epistemology of the BLM movement has presented not only a challenge to colonial relations, but a liberatory praxis that focuses on Black self-love. BLM offers a racially liberatory pedagogy that focuses on cultural affirmation and developing a critical consciousness. This racially liberatory pedagogy aligns with the aims of decolonial love because it values the humanity of Black lives and advocates for self-love (Castillo-Montoya, Abreu, and Abad 2019; Diverlus, Hudson, and Ware 2020).

Though each has a unique history, Indigenous and Black people have both struggled for centuries under colonial rule and are united by the common experience of being marginalized and oppressed.

Theoretical frameworks

This paper explores the Black immigrant experiences through a theoretical lens that is decolonial and intersectional. Decolonial theory is understood to focus on disrupting and dismantling systems of colonialism, as Mignolo (2011) argues about ‘de-linking’ from colonial structures of oppression. Others contend that decoloniality must entail discussion about land and resources that have been appropriated (Tuck and Yang 2012).

Quijano (2000) argued that the coloniality of power refers to a system of dominance and control over colonized subjects that circumscribes broader economic, social, and cultural relationships. Quijano (2000) further explains that the coloniality of power operates in two primary areas: the economic and the cultural. Colonized subjects have their labour and other resources extracted from them for the benefit of the colonizer, and their epistemologies or ways of knowing, devalued in favour of the colonizer’s knowledge systems and values. The coloniality of power influences contemporary relations between Western societies and their Indigenous and racialized populations. Equality can only be achieved through decolonizing and dismantling these systems of power (Quijano 2000).

Fanon (1952) also conceptualized that Black people living in a colonial context are perpetually aware of the dominant White societal culture and may evaluate themselves in relation to this dominant culture. This form of internalized colonialism permits the continuation of colonial relations even in the absence of the colonizer (Fanon 1952; Leonardo and Singh 2017). This is the experience of Black immigrants from African and Caribbean countries where colonial relationships still govern their economic and political structures. These Black immigrants are aware that these colonial relationships are also present in their new country. All Western societies have power relationships that privilege White Europeans and marginalize Indigenous and African populations (Porter 1965).

This paper also draws on intersectionality theory. Intersectionality theorists claim that race is one of several socially constructed identities that cannot be separated from other social identities such as gender, sexuality, and social class (Collins 2000; Crenshaw 2011). Members of racial groups are heterogeneous and hold multiple intersecting identities (Carter 2005; Carruthers 2018; Daoud et al. 2018). Intersectionality theorists argue that intersections function at multiple levels of oppression but also impact individual agency and resistance, as we observe from the research participants in this study.

Methodology

I enter this study as a Black Canadian-born women with parents of Caribbean descent. My parents were educated in a highly colonial context with all curricula and teachers from Britain. They grew up unaware of any intellectual contributions made by Black scholars. I also experienced Eurocentric curricula growing up and learned about Black scholars such as Franz Fanon, Patricia Hill Collins, Stuart Hall, Paul Gilroy, bell hooks, and Kimberlé Crenshaw only in graduate school. I also grew up with little knowledge about Black scholarship. As I will argue, in addition to non-Eurocentric curricula, we also need pedagogical approaches that focus on decolonization. Brunner (2021) notes that by devaluing or ignoring other knowledge systems we are engaging in epistemic violence.

This qualitative study of Black immigrant students at two post-secondary institutions is a collective case study (Denzin and Lincoln 2003; Stake 2007). This paper presents the findings of in-depth narratives of 16 Black immigrant students attending university in Canada and the United States. I chose to recruit participants in both countries because each had long histories of Black immigration. Canada and the U.S. have historically participated in slavery but still have different historical and social contexts. The participants were first generation Black immigrants. First generation immigrants are defined as those born outside the country they have migrated to Statistics Canada (2021). All the participants emigrated to the United States or Canada between the ages of infancy and early childhood.

Of the participants, seven identified their gender as male and nine identified their gender as female. The participants were from Caribbean countries, including Jamaica, Grenada, St. Kitts, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, St. Lucia, and Haiti, and from African countries, including Kenya, Tanzania, Liberia, Nigeria, Cameroon, Ethiopia, and Cameroon. Each interview lasted between 60 and 90 min.

Riessman (2008) notes that interviews allow participants to construct their identities through storytelling. I selected Riessman’s (2008) method of narrative inquiry to explore the complexities of their experiences. The audio interviews were transcribed and coded line-by-line with the qualitative data analysis software Atlas Ti. The software program also allows the user to track co-occurring codes and develop code families. Through the creation of code families, the user can begin to identify themes. To develop theoretical categories for analysis, coding began with the first interview (Charmaz and Mitchell 2001). The first interview was coded using conceptual codes to identify incidents or facts that related to the central research questions with the goal of ascertaining whether the interview questions required revisions.

Saldana (2009) developed a methodology for first and second cycle coding. As Saldana explained, first cycle coding methods provide the framework for refining codes during second cycle coding. There are a variety of first cycle coding methods, but descriptive coding was selected because it permits the researcher to summarize the content or action of each sentence or phrase. For the second cycle of coding, focused coding was used to assign categories to a selection of phrases (Saldana 2009). The coding method was deductive because existing passages were coded in relation to the descriptive codes generated through the process of second cycle coding. Second cycle coding generated 32 codes across 10 categories. The following themes emerged through the coding process of the student data: Understanding one’s Black identity, and Institutional affirmations of identities (Table 1).

Table 1. Cycle descriptive coding.

Codes	Categories	Themes
Academic work Adjustment Experiences with White professors Experiences with Black professors Experiences with other professors Black Identity Campus residence Campus segregation Dating Dating: Interracial Defining diversity: self Defining diversity: institutional Defining diversity: national Equal opportunity Experiences with Teaching Assistants Experiences of racism Financial aid Influence of Black professors Institutional diversity media Institutional racism Institutional support Mental Health Peer relationships: Black Peer relationships: Interracial Perceptions of Institutional Commitment to Diversity Racial identification Racial microaggressions Recommendations Socio-economic status Stereotypes Student Clubs Transition	Academics Campus culture Diversity Financial issues Black Identity Institution Mental Health Peers Professors Racism	Understanding one’s Black Identity Institutional Affirmation of Identities

Research ethics

I obtained institutional ethics approval from the two post-secondary universities. All participants were provided with a letter of informed consent describing the study. The letter of information made it clear that participation in the research study was voluntary and that they could decline to participate at any time without penalty/impact. They were also advised that any resources shared would be destroyed if they withdrew their participation. Participants were informed that their confidentiality and privacy will be protected to the extent permitted by applicable laws, and the research team would protect their confidentiality as much as possible. In accordance with the university retention policy for research records, data will be retained for 5 years and after this, all data will be permanently destroyed. Throughout, all student participants were assigned pseudonyms and all geographic locations and university staff have been kept anonymous.

Findings

Understanding one’s Black identity

The majority of the 16 participants in both Canada and the U.S. spoke about their ethnic or racial identities in a manner that indicated it was central to their self-identities. All migrated from contexts of relative racial homogeneity and had to renegotiate their identities in their new societies. Arguably, all the participants came from countries with a history of colonialism. These students spoke about the importance of maintaining their ethnic and cultural identities. Malcolm [pseudonym], a 25-year-old economics major attending the Canadian university, was born in Zimbabwe and had been in Canada on a student visa for four years. At the time of the interview, Malcolm planned to stay and work in Canada until retirement age, at which point he intended to return to Zimbabwe. Malcolm spoke about his national and ethnic identity:

I’m Canadian, but I’m from Zimbabwe. You see the thing is we have pride where we came from. That’s why you don’t want to say it. I am very proud of Zimbabwe, and I will never ever stop saying that, and I say I’m from Zimbabwe, I’m from Africa, whatever. But citizenship juxtaposes the meaning of the word, I’ll be Canadian. I’m Canadian but I’m from Zimbabwe.

Malcolm was quick to affirm his Canadian citizenship but qualified this statement by explaining that he was born in Zimbabwe. He describes that he is proud of his heritage and that fellow Zimbabweans are taught to be proud of their heritage. He affirmed that he would never deny being from Zimbabwe no matter how long he is able to reside in Canada. Here, he makes the distinction between citizenship and ethnic/racial identity. Bannerji (2000) and Thobani (2007) have written about citizenship and belonging among racialized immigrants to Canada. Both argue that racialized immigrants may claim citizenship but are never seen as ‘Canadian’ because of an entrenched national conceptualization of Canadians having European ancestry. The history of colonialism has marginalized Indigenous Peoples in Canada to the periphery of Canadian society. Non-European immigrants are seen as ‘interlopers’, what Thobani (2007) describes as undesirables who lack the values and beliefs concordant with Canadian citizens of European descent. Immigrants to Canada quickly become aware of these racial hierarchies after acculturating to Canada and this in turn shapes their ethnic identities. A pedagogy of decolonial love would disrupt these ideals of the ‘Canadian’ as European and White. Decolonial love would mean that Malcolm would be able to value his Zimbabwean and Canadian self-identity.

Another student of Jamaican origin explained that she has a mixed heritage but is regarded in the Canadian context as a Black woman. Chyanne [pseudonym], was a 24-year-old Master’s student in sociology at the Canadian university. She explained how she has come to terms with her Black identity:

I explain that in terms of race, like, yes, I am a mixture, you know, African, European, and Indian-Jamaican. However, I’ve lived in this society for, you know, most of my life and most people here who are predominantly White seeing me as a Black woman. So, I felt yes, you know, yes, I’ve internalized that label and that I embraced that gladly. It’s something that I get away from. Yes, I’m Black and was raised in a household where my Blackness was preached over my other ethnicities and so that’s what I embraced and that’s why I think I am.

Chyanne described the differences between her actual racial identity and her ascribed identity. Although Chyanne described herself as being of mixed-race, she explained that she is still perceived as Black in the eyes of the dominant White society. Omi and Winant (2014) explain that racial formation in the United States was dependent on the ability to racially categorize individuals based on phenotypical characteristics. Persons of any known Black heritage would historically be classified as Black. This ‘one-drop’ rule still applies today in most Western contexts, including Canada. Under a system of colonial race relations, only individuals of ‘pure’ European heritage are categorized as White. Chyanne explained that her racial socialization as a young person taught her that she should identify herself as a Black woman. Arguably, decolonial love was championed in her home life since her Black identity was positively reinforced and embraced.

Thierry[pseudonym], a 20-year-old Haitian-born exercise physiology major at the U.S. university, had transferred from a community college program and planned to become a medical doctor. Thierry spoke about his perception that he was stereotyped around the university campus and how his physical appearance and hairstyle has affected this. He also talked about his Haitian identity and how he was also stereotyped by others within the Black community and beyond:

When I first came to the school, I had dreads. Like I’m talking dreads that came down to my back.

I: Really, what happened to them…

R: Yeah, so… I shaved them. But the dreadlock thing was just, everybody thought I was a football player. Me, I would say yes, but at the same time everybody is like from past years everybody knew of Haitians it either you are a cab driver, a bus driver, or something stereotypical. So, as a Haitian community like you have to like better… you have to be better than what people set for you. Because some Haitians don’t like to see some other Haitians succeed. So, and for the African American community themselves, I feel like more, more like stereotypes are placed on them.

Thierry appeared to be very aware of the negative stereotypes associated not only with Blackness, but also his Haitian identity. He explained that he arrived on campus with dreadlocks but that because he was stereotyped, he cut them off. Waters (2001) studied Black immigrants in New York City and found that there were biases against Haitian immigrants from within the West Indian immigrant community as well as within the larger society. Thierry described the stereotypes against Haitian migrants and understood that it meant that he had to be ‘better’ to disprove the negative stereotypes. Stereotypes can have a negative effect on Black student achievement. Steele and Aronson (1995) found that stereotype threat—the personal awareness of a negative stereotype—may result in poorer academic or work performance. It may become a self-fulfilling prophecy. For this reason, racial stereotypes against Black students are particularly damaging at all levels of schooling.

Thierry’s description of being stereotyped could also be interpreted as a racial microaggression. Black students commonly experience racial microaggressions in predominantly White universities and colleges (Harper 2006; Mills 2020). Pierce (1995) originated the term ‘microaggression’ and used it to describe everyday verbal and non-verbal slights or insults that have the effect of diminishing the esteem of the targeted individual. Individuals are generally targeted as a result of their racialized or marginalized status. Sue (2010) defines three categories of microaggressions: microassaults, microinvalidations, and microinsults. Microassaults involve overt verbal or non-verbal statements intended to convey bias. Microinsults include verbal comments or subtle behaviours that demean an individual’s racial heritage or social identity. Microinvalidations are behaviours or comments that negate or dismiss people’s feelings or thoughts. Fleras (2016) contends that racial microaggressions may constitute a ‘a new face of racism’ in which overt racist language is replaced by covert verbal and non-verbal codes. To counteract these practices, institutions need to embrace decolonial love and affirm the Black identities of immigrant students. This could be achieved through non-Eurocentric curricula and an inclusive environment where educators, staff members, and peers adopt an antiracist perspective.

Institutional affirmations of identities

In this paper, I argue that post-secondary institutions should decolonize by adopting a radical pedagogy of care grounded in ‘decolonial love’. The narrative excerpts from the Black immigrant students offer examples of how this could be realized for all students. Noddings (2013) argues for a pedagogy of care in schooling that approximates maternal care, arguing that the caring relationship is central to a positive teacher-student relationship. Noddings articulated a framework called circles and chains. Caring is a part of natural relationships within a family circle. Teachers and students may form chains of caring relationships in the school environment. When considering the experiences of Black immigrant students, accepting decolonial love as a pedagogy of care means going beyond simply ‘caring’ to actively try to disrupt White supremacy and embrace positive Black identities. Chyanne’s experience of decolonial love at her university was in the form of a Black female administrative staff member who made Black students feel welcome and affirmed their identities by supporting the Black student clubs and mentoring students:

I think probably one of the most positive experiences and unfortunately not a lot of students will get to experience… Her name was [name deleted]. She was a woman of colour. She was Jamaican. So she was sort of like, she acted as a gatekeeper position because she was the first face that you saw when you came in this department, and she welcomed you and told you all about the program if you have any concerns or questions, her door was literally open all the time. And so, she was a really huge wealth of sort of being the first point of contact and for a person of colour to come from a university like [university name withheld] and to have this person that welcomed you here, it was a huge deal.… so, she definitely like supports us in all of our meetings… we actually need faces like that because there are a lot of faces in this faculty that they don’t care what students of colour are going through. They don’t come to our meetings, and they don’t tend to bridge your knowledge with their institutional knowledge. They don’t try to teach us anything. Whereas this woman filled all of those voids.

Chyanne pointed out that the Black female staff member would provide students with important information and appeared to understand their experiences as racially marginalized Black students. Chyanne perceived that the general faculty and staff members did not share their institutional knowledge in a way that would benefit Black students. She explained that the Black woman ‘filled all of those voids’.

An exploration of Black feminist theorizing helps to provide the rationale for how ‘othermothering’ can form a pedagogy of care that constitutes decolonial love. Black feminist thought also takes seriously the concept of an ‘ethic of care’ to challenge the continued subjugation and marginalization of Black women within institutional spaces and beyond (Lykke 2015). Given the ontological struggle to retain a sense of humanity in the face of oppression, African American women have historically developed kinship bonds of care to support each other. Othermothering has been described by Collins (2000) as an African American, community-based parenting strategy whereby members care for the biological children of others. This ethic of care includes the provision of educational, material, and emotional support. Othermothering is not limited to maternal-like relationships but includes sisterhood and fictive kin such as ‘aunties’ and other community members. The above narrative excerpt describes the act of othermothering, which can be an act of decolonial love.

Several of the Black immigrant students spoke about a particular professor of colour who meant a lot to them and influenced their experiences. This professor inspired some of them to enrol in African American studies as a minor because of the support they would receive. African American studies as a discipline is an example of an antiracist curriculum that would disrupt and challenge White supremacy. This professor embodied a pedagogy of care that supported the ideals of decolonial love. Michael [pseudonym], a 21-year-old junior from Liberia and a psychology major at the US university, excitedly recounted that this professor was the most accessible and supportive he had ever had:

Exactly, you can go into his office hours whether he has listed office hours or not. We can walk into another class that he is teaching and talk to him if we feel it is important. Never happened ever before ever in my life with any teacher.

Christine [pseudonym], a 27-year-old doctoral candidate in sociology at the US university, also vividly described her experiences with a certain professor of African American studies:

Oh, Dr. [name deleted]. He is the reason why I changed to African American studies. He is the most dynamic… if I could even be like an ounce of what he is… oh my goodness, he is… Mm-hm. Completely changed it, because he just… even though it was African American studies, I honestly feel that I learned more… outside of African American studies in his classes than… like I feel like I’ve learned more about sociology than some of my sociology classes. I learned more about law… so, he just… he opened my eyes on how a course can really be interdisciplinary. You know what I mean?

Christine [pseudonym] was one of the participants who claimed that the professor inspired her to switch her major to African American studies. In the above narrative excerpt, she described his engaging teaching style and how much she learned about the interdisciplinarity of African American studies. As with Michael, Christine recounted that he consistently demonstrated a pedagogy of care.

Rosa[pseudonym], a 22-year-old senior with a double major in legal/African American studies, was born in Jamaica and moved with her family to the Bronx, New York, when she was eight years of age. Rosa was another student who decided to double major in African American studies because of the supportive faculty and staff. Rosa was very outspoken about the general lack of support she experienced in her academic program and the perceived lack of support she received from her professors:

They’re helpful but to a point, I go to meet them, they said this is the class you need to take, take it by then, bye, they try to get me out the door. In African American studies, I go there, this is the class you need to take, take it by then, these are the best teachers to take, this is the best person to help you, you go here get your resume done, you could go to… that’s how they are.

It is important to note that although the students cited examples from supportive faculty or staff of colour, there were White institutional members who affirmed their identities as well. This is a very important point, since the majority of faculty members will not be Black at most predominantly White universities. Christine vividly described her experiences with a certain White male faculty member:

And for very different reasons, Dr. [name deleted] he’s just… he’s not African American, but he just… his poise, his… we have similar backgrounds in the sense of my mom was a teenage mother, his mother was a young mother, and just some of our experiences are similar, so I feel like I can really relate to him. And I just love the fact that he challenges me, so I guess it’s like a constant thing with people, who like continually challenge me, continually tell me, ‘No, Christine, you need to do this, you need to do that’.

Christine explained that although they were different races, she believed that their common socio-economic backgrounds that helped to bridge the cultural gap. She also described him as a great mentor to her and someone that she could go to for advice. It is important to consider how White faculty and staff may serve as critical allies for students of colour and how this shapes the institution as a whole.

Discussion

The findings show that ‘decolonial love’ is not something that is merely embodied by Black immigrant students but is a radical pedagogy of care rooted in decolonial praxis. In some instances, ‘decolonial love’ was fostered through an entire program, such as was the case with African American studies. In other cases, it was particular faculty or staff members whose pedagogy of care constituted a form of ‘decolonial love’. The Black immigrant students were keenly aware of the racial hierarchies in their new country. The participants’ experiences speak to Du Bois (1903) concept of ‘double consciousness’. Double consciousness refers to the idea that Black people in White dominant countries such as Canada and the US have a divided self-identity that causes the individual to look at themselves through the eyes of the dominant cultural group. He imagined that Black people have two souls that formed a dialectical relationship to one another. To survive, they need to have this double consciousness.

Du Bois (1903) metaphor of the veil, which represents how Black people perceive the outside world, is also useful here. The Black immigrants in the study had a strong sense of their racial and ethnic identities but were aware of how they were being perceived and judged by members of the dominant White culture. The veil forces Black individuals to perform a role to enact their racial identity, which may be very different from their self-identity. The metaphor of the veil also speaks to the fact that Black people must be vigilantly aware of the presence of the dominant White culture while remaining largely invisible to its members.

What decolonial love offers is the opportunity to interrogate and disrupt colonial practices that still exist within post-secondary institutions. These practices include a Eurocentric curricula and Westernized values that focus on individualism, competition, and capitalist consumption. As noted by Figueroa (2015), we must decolonize our education systems if we are to achieve decolonial love.

Decolonizing education has the ethical and political aim of recognizing past inequalities while at the same time reimagining present systems of thought in ways that centre non-­Western epistemologies. Colonial practices are foundational to the pedagogy and practices of Western education systems, and despite efforts to diversify the curricula for Indigenous and other marginalized students, it remains Eurocentric (Apple 2004). The philosophy underlying most Western curricula is that Eurocentric knowledges are crucial for a quality liberal education. Battiste (2013) terms this practice ‘cognitive assimilation’ and argues that it is tacitly expressed through schooling and that we must eliminate the historical injustices that are rooted in these collective colonial cognitive frameworks. Bhabha (1994) argues that the ‘other’ is produced through a set of colonial discourses, represented in the texts and images in textbooks and reinforced through pedagogical practices.

Several decades ago, Ladson-Billings (2014) developed and advocated for an educational approach that she termed ‘culturally relevant pedagogy’. According to Ladson-Billings, this means that teachers can learn to value and appreciate the cultures of their students and their families and communities. The educators then use this cultural understanding to structure and frame their everyday teaching practices. Highly effective educators who utilize culturally relevant pedagogy are also able to demonstrate a pedagogy of care.

Decolonial love is an act of radical resistance against the hegemony of colonialism and White supremacist patriarchy (Díaz 2007; Figueroa 2015; Simpson 2016). The participant narratives offer possibilities for this disruption by drawing attention to institutional faculty and staff whose everyday actions affirm the identities of their Black students and illustrate pedagogies of care.

Conclusion

‘Decolonial love’ as conceptualized by Indigenous scholars whose countries of origin have been colonized by Europeans also offers possibilities for Black liberation. As Castillo-Montoya, Abreu, and Abad (2019) have asserted, the radical pedagogy of BLM activists and its associated Freedom School represents a means of cultivating radical self-love while resisting White supremacy. This liberatory praxis has inspired post-secondary educational leaders to demand that their institutions affirm the identities of their Black students (Szetela 2020). This work contributes to decolonizing sociology of education by illustrating how academic outcomes can be positively impacted through institutional actions. By offering new ideas for pedagogical approaches, we can potentially narrow the academic achievement gap and foster Black student retention at predominantly White post-secondary universities. Through their narratives, the participants in this study expressed the importance of their Black immigrant identities and also provided examples of what they deemed to be radical pedagogies of care. ‘Decolonial love’ represents an imagined future where there is the possibility of transformative inclusive education for Black students in post-secondary education and beyond.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.