Serving in Black spaces of the institution: A decolonial Black feminist autoethnography

abstract

Black women serving in Black Culture Centres (BCCs) are often tasked with cultivating a safe space for Black students (Young 1986), yet may experience their own gendered racism from the same institution which they are supporting students through (Jenkins et al. 2021). As such, a decolonial Black feminist authoethnographic approach allowed me to be self-reflexive in examining day-to-day challenges as a leader; including the desire to incorporate feminist ethics of care such as othermothering into developing the safe space for Black students, while navigating the pervasiveness of racism and sexism experienced in the institution. Situating my experience as a tension, I seek to contribute to the research by examining how Black women BCC directors can embrace othermothering while also resisting capitalistic expectations of labour through a decolonial Black feminist approach to leadership. Findings from this study contribute to the emerging scholarship exploring the experiences of Black women in BCCs and provide an authentic understanding of the day-to-day work. Finally, strategies are provided for Black women directors who seek to incorporate a decolonial Black feminist praxis into their leadership as BCC directors.

keywords:

• Black Culture Centres
• othermothering
• Black feminist decoloniality
• higher educational leadership
• Black women directors

Introduction

Stepping into the role of a Black Culture Centre (BCC) director, my leadership and service to Black community was largely rooted in Western and Black patriarchal expectations. I received messages from “well-meaning mentors”, all men might I add, warning me not be “one of those Black women who are always angry in meetings”, telling me not to loc my hair and become one of those “Black feminists” and “make sure that you are always present for every and anything Black university and community wide”. I was compared to other Black women leaders on campus and was only given their ‘negative attributes’ as the ways that I need not behave to be a good director. I internalised these messages and exhausted myself, as most Black women do when we come against controlled images in our workspaces (Collins 2000). My body paid the price as I lost a lot of weight and suffered from stress acne. I also lost time as I said yes to every and anything Black, which often kept me from being home with my family.

How do Black women lead in BCCs within higher education in the United States of America (USA), where they are responsible for cultivating a sense of belonging for their students, being a point person for racialised challenges on campus, yet also experiencing their own gendered racism in the academy? While it might appear that Black women who work in multicultural student affairs such as BCC spaces have it easier than other professionals because they work in a physical space with community that look like them, this is not always the case. Director roles of BCCs include developing critical Black student scholars, demonstrating competencies in student development, ethnic studies, programme implementation and community engagement (Hefner 2002; Jenkins 2008). Yet they also work in environments where the mission and scope of work in the BCC is continuously under attack, including challenges with funding, staffing, and institutional support (Hefner 2002). Only recently have scholars begun looking at these leadership experiences of directors through a gendered lens, with research pointing to othermothering as a unique gendered additional unofficial duty in their work (Jenkins et al. 2021; Love 2021; Wells-Stone 2022).

In the fall of 2021, it was reported that Black women working in higher education comprise the largest percentage of racially minoritised staff (National Center for Education Statistics 2021). In a survey of Black women student affairs professionals, findings revealed they are largely concentrated in the assistant deans and directors positions at predominantly white institutions, with many working within multicultural student affairs (West 2017). Similar to their counterparts in faculty roles, Wesley (2018) found that Black women in student affairs also experience stereotyping, isolation, and exclusion in their work environments. Williams and Tuitt (2021) describe higher education as capitalist and colonial vestiges of white supremacy. As such, the coloniality of power (Quijano 2007), still deeply embedded in these institutions, impacts the daily experiences of Black women who work in these locations and are faced with both racialised and gendered oppression, including carrying disproportionate emotional labour work while navigating patriarchal, misogynistic, and white hegemonic institutional spaces (Buckingham 2018; Williams & Tuitt 2021).

As such there is a need to develop leadership approaches for Black women through frameworks that account for the geopolitical space they are working in, as well as their racial and gendered identity, that meets at the intersections of these spaces. One opportunity to do so is through the use of feminist decoloniality as a new leadership approach for Black women leading BCCs within higher education.

This autoethnographic reflection highlights my journey towards a feminist decoloniality praxis in BCC work and offers an opportunity to explore my experiences as one Black woman working in this unique location of the institution. To do this, I first explore the impact of othermothering as an ethic of care and the emergence of BCCs within a higher education context in the USA. Then I chronologically process through my experiences as a BCC director through leadership and service to others, including my personal introduction to decolonial feminist methods through an autoethnographic approach. Finally, I end with a discussion of the ways in which incorporating a decolonial Black feminist praxis can lead to creating an emancipatory space for Black women leaders to support their community and transform the institution.

Shaping of othermothering relationships and Black spaces in higher education in the USA

This section of the paper will explore two key moments that have shaped higher education for the Black community. The first focuses on how othermothering has served as an inherent role for many Black women as they nurture and support Black students. The second focuses on the establishment of Black Culture Centers (BCCs) in higher education in the USA. Finally, a connection between both will be made to argue for the need to better understand the complexities of how race and gender impact how Black women in BCC director roles approach their work.

Black women advancing education through othermothering

Othermothering is a tradition that traces Black women’s early practices of care while in the USA, enslaved during chattel slavery to West African traditions of creating care networks to support childbearing (Thompson 1998). As West African families were destroyed due to the economic exploitation of slavery, other enslaved women stepped in to ensure orphaned children were mothered and nurtured within slave quarters (Case 1997; Collins 1987; James 1993). After the abolishment of slavery, many former enslaved women became sharecroppers working for low wages, and the care of their children continued through other community mothers (Collins 1987). This practice of caring for and educating other children in this way is known as othermothering, and has been recognised by Patricia Hill Collins (1987) as an ethic of care where Black women feel accountable to treat all Black children in their community as part of their family (James 1993).

Over time, this form of othermothering permeated other social institutions, including school systems (Hirt et al. 2008). Although othermothering primarily focused on non-biological women’s relationships with other children in the community, these actions transcended to the educational institutions and impacted the culture of how Black teachers form relationships with their students (Hirt et al. 2008). Several studies reveal the unique benefits of othermothering within higher education (Collins 2022; Guiffrida 2005; Hirt et al. 2008; Watkins 2018). Othermothering was found to be of benefit in supporting Black students because of the holistic support provided to them (Bernard et al. 2000; Collins 2022; Guiffrida 2005; Hirt et al. 2008; Watkins 2018). Guiffrida (2005) finds that Black students are looking for relationships with Black faculty who can provide student-centred approaches that assist students’ development academically, socio-emotionally, and culturally.

Collectively, the research reveals that othermothering within educational institutions is deeply rooted as a practice of care among Black women educators and their students. However, othermothering has not yet been explored in other areas in which Black women may not be serving as traditional teachers or faculty, yet still support Black student success through other roles in the institution.

The role of BCCs in higher education

After the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, higher education institutions began to craft affirmative action policies, taking race into account in the admissions process (Teitelbaum 2011). As a result, enrolment of African American students at predominately white institutions began to steadily increase. This influx of Black students created a challenge for university administrators, who struggled to serve the growing needs of this demographic. Additionally, Black students began focusing on issues on their campuses rather than the more general community issues of the Civil Rights Movement (Wolf-Wendel 2004). They organised protests and sit-ins on campus through Black Student Unions and demanded that university leaders meet their needs (Kendi 2012). These included requests for Black studies programmes, recruitment of Black faculty and students, and the establishment of Black spaces for students (Patton & Hannon 2008). These spaces became known as Black Culture Centres (BCCs) and are credited as the product of student activism (Hefner 2002; Princes 1994).

Some of the oldest BCCs are found to have been established in the late 1960s (Patton 2010). Young (1986, p. 18) argued that “the first Black cultural centers were viewed by students and staff as safe havens in an alien environment”. Historically, BCCs assisted students in coping with marginalisation on campus by serving as central locations for Black students to collectively organise to discuss racial pride, political consciousness and campus engagement (Princes 1994; Stewart 2005). Dr Fred Hord, executive founder of the Association of Black Culture Centers (ABCC), argues that BCCs must be rooted in African culture and African American core values through use of Africoncentric strategies (Hord 2005). These strategies require developing programmes and student activities that recentre Black students “in the best of African culture” (Hord 2005, p. 61).

Although there is not a formal body that provides a list of roles and responsibilities for BCC directors, several common roles exist, including: recruitment and retention, advising student organisations, implementing cultural programming, and working with senior level administrators to manage and resolve racial disparities and conflict (Love 2021; Stewart & Bridges 2011; Sutton & McCluskey-Titus 2010). Recent research on BCCs connects their existence on college campuses to serving similar functions of the underground railroads using a plantation politics framework (Jenkins et al. 2021). The researchers argue that culture centre staff serve as abolitionists and symbolic conductors as students’ journey towards educational freedom (Squire, Williams & Tuitt 2018; Jenkins et al. 2021). This requires staff to be “engaged in the complex network of student leaders, faculty, staff, and community members who discretely and strategically work to change the very institutions to which they belong” (Jenkins et al. 2021, p.199).

Jenkins and colleagues (2021) further note that this work is largely carried by women who are often occupying locations in the academy in which race, gender, and institutional status all meet at the intersections. This is highlighted in Wells-Stone’s (2022) research exploring how BCC directors describe career trajectories. One BCC woman director stated, “I am the othermother, that’s the unofficial job … I am also the conscious of a predominately white institution with a mission that was never created for Black people” (pp.128-129). A recent study by Love (2021) examining Black women’s lived experiences as multicultural centre directors revealed the challenges of working within two cultures of an institution while experiencing racialised and gendered discrimination. Love (2021, p.124) also highlights that Black women spoke about their job duties and the othermothering they provided to students, describing it as a “reciprocal respite” between students and director.

The historical establishment of BCCs and their continued work serve as a place of resistance to the neoliberal model of higher education in the USA. While places of resistance, the cost of this is often shouldered by Black women, who carry disproportionate emotional labour loads while also navigating their own experiences of oppression embedded in these spaces (Williams & Tuitt 2021). Jenkins and colleagues (2021) claim that cultural centres should be grounded in the cultivation of love and care. However, there is a paucity of research exploring leadership strategies for Black women who othermother within BCCs to cultivate this caring space while also experiencing institutional oppressions.

Linking Black feminist thought and decolonial feminism

Black feminism saved me and decolonial feminist methods are rebuilding me. I don’t think I really understood the strength of Black and decolonial feminist frameworks until recently, as I have attempted to make sense of how Black women survive in BCCs. The analytical lens for this autoethnography is rooted in decolonial feminism (Lugones 2010) and Black feminist thought (Collins 2000), as I aim to contribute to broadening who is considered a knowledge maker and privilege perspectives of Black women leading work in BCCs.

To understand the process of decoloniality, addressing the impact of coloniality must first occur. Coloniality and the “coloniality of power”, a term coined by Quijano (2007), describes the internalisation of power systems that have remained intact since colonial rule and have since continued to permeate our societies (Carolissen & Duckett 2018). Decoloniality is then unpacking how colonial power has privileged a particular basis of knowledge, while working to recentre knowledge production and concepts of identity from marginalised voices and geographic spaces (Carolissen & Duckett, 2018). Lugones (2010, p. 747) pushes us to expand the coloniality of power to also think about the coloniality of gender as a way of understanding the oppression of women who have been socialised through systems of “racialization, colonization, capitalist exploitation, and heterosexualism”.

Moving from simply an analysis to a place of praxis of resistance and overcoming is conceptualised as decolonial feminism (Lugones 2010). Matiluko (2020) argues that employing a decolonial feminist strategy in education allows us an opportunity to create epistemic diversity by repositioning and expanding how we centre experiences and knowledge. The process of feminist decoloniality has direct parallels to Black feminism in its challenging of knowledge construction (Matiluko 2020). Just as feminist decoloniality seeks to provide critical analysis of oppressive systems and calls for praxis-oriented solutions, so too does Black feminism.

Matiluko (2020) argues that Black feminism exists as a decolonial method. It resists perpetuating a Eurocentric norm and seeks to reposition knowledge of Black women in meaning making. Black Feminist Thought (BFT) is a critical social theory that centres the experiences of Black women in knowledge production and meaning making within the context of the USA (Collins 1986, 2000). While sociologist Patricia Hill Collins coined the term Black Feminist thought, she acknowledges the Black women who have come before her, contributing to what we know and how we understand the lives of Black women as “outsiders within” oppressive structures (Collins 1986). Collins (1986, p. S15) claims Black feminist scholars’ standpoint enriches the social discourse, as the work by way of experiences can provide us with a different understanding of our reality, that is often “obscured by more orthodox approaches”.

Central to BFT are five distinguishing features (Collins 2000). BFT recognises the connection between the experiences of Black women in US society and the distinct consciousness produced as a standpoint. Second is an acknowledgement of tension linking experiences and ideas. While Black women experience common challenges, there are differences in the individual experiences as a result of intersecting oppressions impacting how Black women respond. Third, there is an intertwined relationship between Black feminist thought and Black feminist practice. Fourth, BFT comprises varying contributions to the standpoint. Black women intellectuals should continue to interrogate the standpoint, recognising their positionality and ensuring that knowledge continues to be produced by and with other Black women. Fifth, BFT both in practice and theory must remain dynamic and change so that it continues to be used as a relevant social justice tool (Collins 2000). Ultimately, BFT serves as a critical social theory meant to empower Black women who experience injustice sustained by intersecting oppressions to resist oppression in both practice and thought (Collins 2000).

A decolonial Black feminist approach

Institutions of higher education are taking centre stage in discussions of decoloniality as many scholar activists argue that colonial ideas privileging European knowledge and process continue to permeate our academic institutions (Matiluko 2020). Employing a decolonial Black feminist approach serves as a response to this. This approach resists the idea that Black bodies in these institutions are solely meant to be exploited and incorporates a recognition of the humanity and unique experiences of Black women navigating them. Incorporating a decolonial Black feminist approach serves as an opportunity for Black women to become themselves on their own terms, within their own contexts (Tate 2018).

Moreover, this becoming includes the resistance of misogynoir through the decolonising of power, privilege, and knowledge (Tate 2018). Collectively, the use of BFT and decolonial feminist methods as a decolonial Black feminist framework applied to research in educational leadership provides findings that interrogate geopolitical contexts of knowledge production that inform systems, practices, and policies that harm Black women within educational spaces and encourage resistance. This resistance is praxis oriented, meant to encourage additional practices to support Black women through solidarity and care work.

Autoethnographic account

To contribute to this emerging area of literature, this research is situated in my lived experiences as an autoethnographic reflective approach. Specifically, this research is centred through a decolonial feminist framework with a Black feminist orientation. This approach allows for the sharing of stories and experiences as a way of meaning making and knowledge production. Dutta (2018, p. 94) argues that autoethnographies serve as decolonial tools that radicalise knowledge production by serving as an interventive measure in “authoritarian-neoliberal regimes of knowledge production”. A decolonised autoethnographic inquiry strategy creates a space where colonised and oppressed voices can speak, centre their narrative, and demonstrate resistance to Western, Eurocentric, ideologies (Chawla & Atay 2018). These authors believe that this process is a tool of empowerment for academics as they reflect upon the educational systems they inhabit and the reproduction of colonial practices they seek to challenge.

Current research reveals a paucity of scholars using both decolonial and Black feminist frameworks together to develop autoethnographies. However, Crawley (2012) argues that autoethnographies serve as a form of feminist self-interview to position feminists’ experiences as part of the larger feminist standpoint theory. Boylorn (2011) argues that Black feminist autoethnographic approaches reveal the complex and layered experiences of Black women. Moreover, Griffin (2012) shares that writing our own experiences and histories as Black women challenges traditional modes of inquiry. As such, incorporating a Black feminist orientation within a decolonial autoethnographic approach provides me an opportunity to contribute to the limited body of scholarship on Black women BCC director experiences as leaders in Black spaces within higher education.

Following in Black feminist autoethnography (Griffin 2012), I am using this approach to position my lived experiences as part of knowledge production. Griffin (2012, p. 143) shares that this methodological approach:

is obligated to raise social consciousness regarding the everyday struggles common to Black womanhood; embrace self-definition as a means for Black women to be labeled, acknowledged, and remembered as they wish; humanize Black women at the intersections of multiple forms of oppression; resist the imposition of controlling imagery; and self-reflexively account for Black women.

Autoethnographic accounts require researchers to write about their own past experiences and often include moments of epiphanies connected to particular cultural identities (Ellis, Adams & Bochner 2011). Data collection for this autoethnography was self-reflective (Cooper & Lilyea 2022) and centred on response to the following reflective prompts: (1) What have been my leadership experiences in relation to a feminist ethic of care?; and (2) How have the introduction to decolonial and Black feminist practices impacted my leadership? Additionally, I engaged in a data generation exercise listing major events in relation to the prompted questions and how they contributed to cultural self-discovery (Chang 2008; Cooper & Lilyea 2022). Pattern recognition and content analysis served as the process for this autoethnographic analysis, followed by the layering of themes over a chronological timeline through a decolonial Black feminist lens. This process serves as an opportunity to provide readers with deeper insight into how the autoethnography aligns within the larger cultural context (Cooper & Lilyea 2022).

Positionality

I self-identify as a Black cisgender woman from the Global North. My education experience has largely been centred through a juxtaposed hyper-visible and yet hyper-invisible identity at the same time. This has resulted in occupying spaces as the minority of the minority and the outsider within educational systems. In my collegiate experience, I found a counter-space within the institution through a BCC. I became a student leader in that space and credit much of my identity development and social justice understanding in my formative young adult years while in college to the centre. These experiences impacted my career trajectory and passion to pursue a career in student affairs, focusing on Black student success work. Currently, I now serve as a director of a BCC at an institution recognised as a minority-serving and Hispanic-serving institution. Additionally, my work has positioned me into broader leadership roles serving as a national board member who works with multiple BCCs across the country over the past few years.

To all the Black women who read this and can resonate, I hope my experiences validate your experiences and that we collectively find ways to care for ourselves and our communities through a decolonial Black feminist praxis.

Decentring the patriarchy in my leadership

Like many of us, I have accepted job positions to find out only later that my salary offer was significantly lower than those of my male and non-Black colleagues, and yet the hours I worked were more. I let men manipulate me into doing their jobs (repeatedly) after being told this would be an ‘opportunity to learn more’. I have sat in one-on-one meetings and been given advice from men about when I should think about having kids if I want to be taken seriously. “It’s time to put your big girl pants on”, was the way my calls with community leaders ended over the phone when asked about how I would solve one of their issues. Additionally, there were expectations that I needed to always be available for their phone calls and emails, and to do so pleasantly. “Please don’t become one of those Black women” was the warning I received so many times, to keep my emotions in line with their expectations.

While many of these messages were packed with controlling images, gendered and racial discrimination, and violence towards Black women, I took most of it and responded in the ways they wanted me to. I did so believing that this was the only way to not draw unwanted attention towards myself and to be viewed as a hard worker.

Three months into my first year as Director of the BCC, the world shut down due to COVID-19. Two months later, the Black community erupted in anger after the killings of Ahmed Arbury, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd. The advice I received from male mentors was that I needed to position myself at every table regarding any and all conversations of Black Lives Matter. And I did … I stayed on Zoom after Zoom meeting late into the night. I found myself positioned in spaces where I was expected to answer questions on behalf of the Black community that, looking back, I was not actually qualified to answer – but I did, so that I was visible and ‘hard working’. But I was exhausted as I was trying to manage being a wife and mom and my body took a toll.

During this time, I remember receiving an email about a new series of walking meditations that GirlTrek was hosting, and signed up for the reminders to begin their next Black History Bootcamp. GirlTrek is the largest health movement for Black women, in which daily walking is used to collectively organise for policy and systems change towards liberation (GirlTrek 2022). In this space, as I walked outside with airpods in my ears, the sun touching my skin, and separated from my office, it created a secret and sacred space for me to connect to Black feminism as I walked with other Black women across the world. GirlTrek gave me the courage to challenge patriarchal narratives and controlled images of who they wanted me to be and pushed me to reposition myself as a leader defined by my own standards and those connected to the shared experiences of other Black women.

When I embraced Black feminism, I began to exhale. I began to intentionally seek out Black women mentors in the academy, and ultimately this led me to find Black feminist and decolonial feminist scholars who have wrapped their arms around me to support me in this new journey as I redefine leadership and service through a more authentic approach.

Othermothering as an ethic of care

A typical day in the office often requires balancing your time four ways. This includes service to your Black students, the Black staff and faculty at the university, the general university, and to the larger Black community in your city. In our field of work, we often casually call the service to our students the ‘othermothering’ in the centre, and it’s mixed into our assigned job duties and also fully present as an ‘other duties as assigned’ type of labour. A labour of love, but nonetheless, a labour.

I find myself othermothering a lot more than I used to. Perhaps it’s because I am now a mom of two Black boys or perhaps it’s because these institutions just keep showing me how much they do not care about the Black bodies they attempt to exploit. In part, we are seeing a crisis in mental health for our Black collegiate student populations and we are also seeing more students who are conflict-averse after the pandemic, who are unsure how to resolve peer-to-peer conflict.

I also believe that since Black Lives Matter of 2020, students are coming in to our centre yearning for representation in their educational experience, which often comes through the nurturing from BCC staff. As such, I see more students on a daily basis coming to sit on my couch while I work on emails and in between my meetings (sometimes even hoping they can come in while I am in meetings), to vent about deeply personal experiences.

Hirt and colleagues (2008) describe othermothering as consisting of an ethic of care, cultural advancement, and institutional guardianship. These are described as follows: an ethic of care is the emotional engagement with students, including nurturing interactions (Hirt et al. 2008). Cultural advancement is the commitment to mentoring and improving the lives of Black children and the community as a whole (Hirt et al. 2008). Finally, institutional guardianship centres around the belief that educational spaces are one of the primary venues in which othermothering is practised and must be preserved (Hirt et al. 2008). Although similar to what we know as mentorship, othermothering extends to include “sharing of self, an interactive and collective process, a spiritual connectedness that epitomizes the Afrocentric values of sharing, caring, and accountability” (Bernard et al. 2000, p. 68).

I take these roles very seriously, as I think about my responsibility to Black students who occupy these spaces day in and day out. I take seriously that BCCs are homes away from homes, sanctuaries, and radical spaces for activism. As we take on these roles of othermothering, we often also take on the additional responsibilities of social worker, counsellor, career advisor, spiritual advisor, interior decorator, historian, photographer/videographer, community organiser, social media influencers, expert on all things Black, and as a close colleague and mentor would say, ‘white people whisperers’ (Palmer 2019). All of these tasks are deeply connected to our ability to create a welcoming and thriving space for all Black students to feel safe, seen, and validated on our campuses.

In a recent convening of the ABCC, Dr Anne Edwards and Sean Palmer¹ (2022) described what it takes to work in a BCC. They argued – and I would agree – that to work in our spaces, we must be skilled at mediating and restoring friendships and conflicts between students. We must be skilled at helping Black students transform their side hustles, skills, and abilities into transferable skills on their resumes (Edwards & Palmer 2022). We often meet students at the point of their life where they might be questioning their gender and sexuality, and the ways that they’ve been told how to act like a man or a woman, and we help them to unpack this.

For many of us, our spaces are small and under-resourced. We must become interior decorators as we intentionally cultivate spaces that Black students walk into and can see themselves, their culture, and their communities in the rooms, on the walls, in the conversations and in the aroma of the meals we cook to remind them of home. Edwards and Palmer (2022) continued by adding that we serve as historians who archive the Black student experience. I would add that we are also the photographer, videographer, and cheerleader in the moments where students receive awards and accolades that their families cannot be physically present for.

We have to know how to intake Black student trauma and transform it into healing and joy. When our students experience violence in these systems, we are their advocates in the rooms, their nurses and navigators. We catch their tears and teach them how to channel their discouragement, frustration, and rage for the institution into action. We develop our students to become community-conscious activists and organisers. For example, when Black students have the cops called on them for asking questions in the classroom, or are stopped by cops casually on their way to class and asked ‘You aren’t doing anything suspicious, right?’, or when a floor in housing dedicated to the Black student community becomes hyper-surveilled, we do more than just report it to the appropriate parties and leave it to the institution to resolve. We work with students to unpack these experiences individually and in community. We find ways to help them find connection to these institutions and build a sense of belonging, despite acts of unwelcoming by others through our centres by teaching them how to transform institutions from within.

Othermothing in BCCs includes recognising the unique brilliance of each student and finding a space in the university and community where they can flourish. Often our work with them ends up helping them to find their passions and positions them into student leadership roles, such as student government senators, Black Student Union and Historically Black fraternities and sorority leaders, orientation leaders, residence hall advisors, etc. While these roles assist the student in learning transferable life skills for the future, the extra step in our othermothering approach includes us working with our student leaders to teach them how these positions have the power to impact their Black peers’ experience on campus, and remind them of their responsibility to community.

Othermothering work also includes moving beyond academic advisement to truly working with students to understand why they are majoring in what they are majoring, challenging them to think about how it will impact their communities, and giving them the courage to apply for that research programme, and submit that conference proposal or graduate school application. And we celebrate with them through the whole process, teaching them how to transform what they might deem an ‘L’ or a ‘loss’ into a ‘lesson’ for the next time.

In BCC spaces, we hold our students through the deepest of losses and through the highest of wins. We are an extension of their families. We are the othermothers. We do this work at institutions where Black students tend to be excluded and marginalised in most spaces of the academy. We love on our Black students, we speak love into our Black students and their dreams, and we help them journey through these spaces towards educational liberation.

But I would be remiss if I did not share that this work, this labour of love, this ethic of care, is longer than our 40-hour work expectations. It’s difficult when you walk into the same institution you are shielding your students from and encounter your own racial and gendered discrimination. As mentioned above, this is only a fourth of the work that we do in our institutions. The external advocacy in our universities positions us in spaces where we too are sometimes being checked off as the diversity in the rooms. Where our bodies are wanted in the space, but our voices are not. Where we as Black women are expected to mammy to the institution, to serve and give as much of our bodies, time, and energy as we can, with little extrinsic reward. Where we are targets of racialised and gendered violence, and yet we are expected to walk out of these committees, meetings, and offices with a desire to keep serving, with a smile on our face.

The challenge then becomes how much time do we give to our Black students, knowing that we too are experiencing oppression from the same space. How do we as Black women directors balance resisting a capitalistic approach to work where it is expected that we give and give our time and our bodies, while also knowing that our students need additional nurturing from us, often through more time from us. Othermothering in the tensions of this challenge is a place that many of us find ourselves in. How much time do we give? How do we do so without feeling guilty?

Incorporating feminist decolonial care in my new strategies

I am understanding the ways in which this system wants to isolate me, tokenise me, and burden me with a heavier load, and I am resisting. Decolonising my leadership through a Black feminist approach means that the othermothering that occurs in our work is beginning to be carried out with boundaries. These boundaries serve as ways to model to others that while othermothering is an inherently cultural practice which we will continue, we are also more than a service commodity to the institution, and that we are deserving of rest.

Additionally, a decolonial feminist leadership approach to placing boundaries on the ways that we othermother allows for our Black students to see the ways that we still care for community, while also prioritising that same care for ourselves, in hopes that they will learn to do the same. Finally, embodying a decolonial feminist leadership approach impacts the way care is spoken and given to our students as we create strategies, allyships, and networks of resistance for Black students’ educational liberation within these neoliberal institutions.

I offer strategies for how we can expand decolonial feminist strategies into general BCC operations and with Black women BCC directors’ leadership and othermothering ethics. These strategies are rooted in boundary maintenance, care for ourselves and community, rest and sustainability, as well as expanding of our networks.

Final strategies:

• Develop programming, curriculum, and learning objectives with the incorporation of decolonial Black feminism to expose students to new ways of thinking about their experiences.

• Orient co-curricular programming within learning opportunities centred on diasporic traditions, customs, and knowledge as a way of passing the practice of othermothering to the next generation.

• Incorporate cross-cultural, diasporic learning opportunities through a variety of speakers, programmes, service learning, student organisations and student voices.

• Build a university network of allies to move your students through their journey of educational liberation beyond the BCC.

• Be in charge of your narrative: use your voice and your presence to disrupt hegemonic ways of leading in the rooms that you occupy.

• Know your budget and assessment metrics so that you can challenge resource allocation.

• Incorporate reflexivity into your strategic planning, general operations and programming throughout the year, ensuring that you consider whose experiences are being centred in the range of work developed through the BCCs. How much time are we allocating to various populations of our Black student body? And what are the implications of doing so?

• Cultivate a Black decolonial feminist community of support from within your institution, your field, and your local community, where you dedicate time to check in with each other. This includes finding ways to incorporate rest and care for our bodies mentally and physically into our communities of care. One example is deciding to catch up over walking meetings and/or committing to both walking from your respective locations while checking in.

• Slow down sis … drink your water, eat your lunch, and take your annual leave. You are a person deserving of rest, a person who must be sustained. We must resist the expectation that we are solely a service commodity to these institutions.

• Remember that rest is a form of resistance. Model rest for your students who are watching how much you work, how many late hours you spend at your BCC, and what that means for how they view what is required to be a ‘leader’. Rest for yourself, rest for your students, rest for your community. Teach rest in your othermothering.

I don’t think we as Black women serving in BCC leadership roles can find a balance until we become authentic and recognise our humanity. Now, in my third year as a director, some might say I became one of ‘those Black feminists’. But the truth is, ‘those Black feminists’ have built radical care networks that support each other in these spaces. As such, I have built a community. A community filled with deep authentic and genuine feminist care. I have watched the ways that the highest-ranking Black woman on my campus, a Black decolonial feminist scholar, has modelled care for me and others – and we are thriving. Lastly, I loc’d my hair … and in doing so, I like looking at myself in the mirror, because it’s a hairstyle that l like for me. I like looking in the mirror at the leader that I am becoming.

Feminist decoloniality as care has provided me with the opportunity to unpack the impact and legacy of colonialism across global institutions of higher education, and remind me that these experiences might be felt a little differently among Black women of the diaspora, but are rooted in the same powers of oppression. Given that there is very limited published research that details the experiences of Black women leaders in BCCs, I hope to use this as an opportunity to open this space and expand the standpoint of Black women within BCCs in the USA.

Matiluko (2020) reminds us that when we centre our experiences, we employ a decolonial feminist strategy to diversifying education. Decolonial feminism with a Black feminist standpoint as a model of care has aided my process of recognising the ways in which I was leading as disingenuous to myself and the type of leader I desired to be. Tate (2018) shares that resisting the misogynoir through decolonising our power, privilege, and knowledge serves as an opportunity for Black women to become ourselves, on our own terms, within our own contexts when we incorporate a decolonial Black feminist approach.

­While I recognise the limitation to this work is that it is simply one voice, it is one starting voice that I hope will be built upon from both the USA and other diasporic voices who work within student affairs areas of their respective global institutions.

Conclusion

Here in this autoethnographic reflection lies the tension of othermothering in BCC spaces, while also experiencing gendered and racialised discrimination in their leadership. In reflecting on my experiences as a director thus far and trying to make sense of this tension through the time we give to our Black students at the expense of our own, I am finding that resistance can occur through boundaries, rest, and networks of care. But it first must occur in humanising our experiences as Black women and recognising that our existence and our leadership in these roles in itself is a decolonial Black feminist stance.

To transform our higher educational institutions and decolonise capitalistic work expectations and oppressive experiences of Black women, we have to keep speaking about it, centring our experiences into knowledge production, and modelling resistance. These findings suggest that we need to begin to recognise the experiences of Black women in the academy who are neither students, faculty, nor upper administration, but staff who also work in these neoliberal institutions and are facing similar yet unique experiences. For us to gain a broader understanding collectively, we must look at the other spaces of higher education institutions in which Black women are working to uplift our Black colleagues who do not always get a voice.

I encourage women academics in both the USA and African higher education institutions to build community with Black women leading student support centres and amplifying their voices in their research. There is much to be learned about the ways BCC and student affairs staff spend time with students outside of the physical classrooms, yet inside the walls of these complex institutions.

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Brandi Stone

BRANDI STONE works as the Director at UNM African American Student Services and Special Advisor to the President on African American Affairs. Her passion is to assist Black students in their collegiate navigation. She is currently working on her PhD at New Mexico State University in Educational Leadership. Additionally, Brandi serves as a national board member for the Association of Black Culture Centers. She is a proud member of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc. In her spare time, she enjoys spending time with her husband and two boys working on local film projects and spending time outdoors. Email: [email protected]

Notes

1 Dr Anne Edwards currently serves as the Director of the BCC at Purdue University and Sean Palmer currently serves as Director of the Upperman African American Cultural Center at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.