Encountering, Witnessing, Listening: Applications of Black Feminist Theory for a White Teacher Educator

This project is an attempt to resolve a moral and ethical crisis about my pursuit of a doctoral degree as a multiply-privileged White woman. I begin with a basic set of understandings: that I am committed to anti-racism, feminism, and to education as the best route forward in imagining a world free from the hegemony of a global capitalism rooted in Whiteness. However, I am troubled with how to transform these core commitments into action in a way that is productive, empathetic, and, most importantly, that minimizes harm. In this paper, I aim to resolve these questions using the wisdom of Black feminist theory as a guide. I begin by framing this work in a historical understanding of the damaging legacy of [a] racist feminism(s) in the United States. I then leverage Patricia Hill Collins’s (2009) domains of power framework to create an action plan for applying these liberatory concepts to my current work in higher education. Ultimately, I hope to connect my exploration of Black feminist theory to an actionable praxis—of witnessing, listening, and encountering “research as responsibility” (Dillard, 2011, p. 148)—to begin to understand my place in a responsible academic life