ABSTRACT
This chapter utilizes the author's personal experience, practice and re-definitions to better conceptualize and theorize what leadership roles and spaces look like for Black, Indigenous and people of color. The author argues that with white normative, and historically and contemporary racist cultures influencing expectations around leadership, Black, Indigenous and people of color have difficulty entering leadership roles. In opposition to any notion of authentic leadership, the author argues that Black, Indigenous and people of color must negotiate and alter their true selves and racial and cultural identity in order to occupy and maintain leadership roles. Any defiance or presentation of the self, outside of pre-set expectations, then jeopardizes further advancement. As minorities, BIPOCs enter the social and organizational space with heightened precarity, thus allowing less room within organizational culture for negotiation and disruption. The author argues that a re-definition and understanding of what true diversity and inclusion work offers allows for an opening up of organizational culture which in turn creates space for diverse bodies to occupy leadership roles sans any negotiation of their identity. The author emphasizes that without a re-definition and commitment to culture change, diversity initiatives often fall short of changing organizational culture, and just service performative and quantifiable measures of diversity.
