From group mentoring to collective liberation: The imperative to decolonize nursing academia

Background

Four Black early-career faculty members, one Black doctoral student, and a Black senior faculty member, (herein referred to as scholars), previously engaged in cross-cultural mentoring with a White senior researcher to bolster their scholarship.

Purpose

In the years following the 2020 racial reckoning, the scholars were motivated to reconvene by the realization that traditional scholarship activities of academia ignore historical educational oppression and fail to account for the contemporary effects of racism and discrimination rooted in American colonialism.

Methods

Collaborative autoethnography, a decolonizing qualitative approach to research, was used to explicate our journeys in academia. The tenets of Freire’s critical pedagogy (conscientização, scholarship, praxis) framed our collective experiences.

Discussion

We describe resisting academic structures of power, discrimination, and disadvantage through reformation, crafting a vision statement, and utilizing positions of influence.

Conclusion

To decolonize nursing academia, we implore the scholarly community to pursue liberation and contest structures that center Whiteness and marginalize collectivism and collaboration.