FINDING LEADERSHIP 정 (BELONGING): A CRITICAL RACE ETHNOGRAPHY OF ASIAN AMERICAN LEADERSHIP

Abstract

In a racialized America, Asian Americans are forced to be a model minority and remain perpetually foreign in one body (Kawai, 2005; Kim et al., 2011; Kim, 1999, Kim, 2011; Wu, 2014). This is a unique experience that is understudied. The study brought together 18 Asian American nonprofit and educational leaders from across the US to engage in convenings centering their experiences. Through community learning exchanges (CLEs) that were rooted in critical race ethnography (CRE) (Duncan, 2005; Woodson, 2019), CLE axioms (Guajardo et al., 2016), and elements of gracious space (Hughes, 2017), the study participants connected their experiences with the historical justice-oriented legacies of Asian American leaders. The process of this study resulted in emerging leadership tenets asserting another way to lead, away from the individualistic and instead through a collectivist lens rooted in the experiences of justice-oriented Asian American leaders of the past. The connection of the study participants' present day experiences as Asian American leaders with the demonstrated legacy of past Asian American leaders who pursued racial, social, and economic justice provides specific covenants of leadership that other researchers must consider in the theorizing and practice space of leadership research. The study contends that leadership is ultimately about love for community, our organizations, and ourselves.