Chapter 5: Where to Start when Situating Anti-Racism in Pedagogy in Leadership Education: Engaging Through Course Design

Leadership education does not happen in a vacuum. It is heavily and constantly shaped by the spirit of the times. 2020 proved to be another turning point in the United States (U.S.) in discussing race as a critical part of how institutions and individuals interact (Singh et al., 2021, p. xxiii). The murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, violence against Americans of Asian ancestry, migrants from South America facing inhumane conditions in border patrol custody along the U.S.-Mexico border, and many other atrocities provided a visual, anger-inducing, and desperate understanding of how time and space connect the legacy and practice of racism in ways that were and still are difficult to ignore. As I watched the Black Lives Matter protests around the world in the summer of 2020, I knew that it was impossible to avoid the question of how to situate anti-racism in leadership education. While I present 2020 as a turning point in discourse about racism in leadership education and in the U.S. at large, examining racism and its impact on lived experiences is not new (Bell, 1992). Hernández (2018) offered a necessary reminder of this: