ABSTRACT
This chapter opens with a counterstory of a Black and queer educator’s transition from toxic school leadership roles to prioritize her survival. To extend the anti-Blackness that pushed her from administration, the authors include a brief historical overview of schools as specifically anti-Black. The chapter then engages relevant Black educator literature, arguing that extensive research has documented systemic, racially hostile school systems that silence Black school leaders at every stage in their hierarchical progression. By situating Black educational leaders as silenced intellectual guides in the struggle against schools, this chapter argues that the majority of educational leaders will remain predominantly white specifically because of the toxicity Black children and Black educators face. For many Black students and Black educators, surviving school systems that value, affirm, assert, and normalize whiteness requires that they neither challenge nor resist intellectual, cultural, and social white supremacy every step of the way. The chapter concludes by applying critical race theory tenets to Black educational leadership, providing a theoretical frame for the rest of the book.
