Positionality as prologue: Encountering the self on the journey to transforming latina/o/x educational inequities

Abstract

Positionality is an often overlooked but strategic practice for analyzing race and racism within the organizational bounds of predominantly White institutions of higher education. Positionality is critical self-reflection that uncovers the tensions and areas of strength found in relationships among the researcher, the research topic, the study participants, and the data analysis process. I argue that the researcher's practice of interrogating and articulating their personal and professional knowledge, values, beliefs, experiences, and embedded assumptions about race and racism can also be applied to a practitioner who plans to engage in dismantling systemic racial inequities in higher education. This chapter will illustrate how individuals embedded within institutions of higher education can interrogate their own positions within racist organizational contexts; attend to power dynamics as educational leaders, narrators, and subjects of inquiry; and commit to transformational practice that can address Latina/o/x educational inequities.