Starting with African American Success: A Strength-Based Approach to Transformative Educational Leadership

In 1903 renowned sociologist and educator W.E.B. DuBois refl ected on the status of African Americans who were legally free from slavery but still oppressed by a systemically racist society that deemed them inferior and morally threatening to White Americans. Upon this refl ection DuBois (1995) asked, “What does it mean to be a problem?” (p. 44). In asking this question, DuBois pondered the psychological, social, emotional, and spiritual eff ects of African Americans striving to uplift themselves alongside White leaders and peers who believed they lacked adequate intellect and human worth. DuBois concluded that such conditions led African Americans to assume a “double consciousness” that entailed:… always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of the world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness, -an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. (p. 45)Over a century later, tremendous social, political, and educational gains have been made in African American communities and in the United States as a whole; yet, educational discourse, policy and practice pertaining to African Americans suggest that a “national ideology of Black inferiority” still lingers (Perry, 2004a, p. 8). African American youth are faced with trying to succeed in public education systems that perpetually classify them as “at-risk” and project their failure or academic fl oundering before they enter a kindergarten classroom (Berlak & Moyenda, 2001; Delpit, 1995; Irvine, 2000; Natriello, McDill, & Pallas, 1990). At the same time, African American parents are oft en characterized as uninvolved or uncaring, and they are perceived as a detriment to their children’s learning rather than an asset (Cooper, 2007, 2009b; Henig, 1994; Koonce & Harper, 2005). In all, African American youth and families are largely viewed through a problem-centered, defi cit-based lens of which they are painfully aware.