Daniel Helena had been a teacher for ten years when he enrolled in the Educational Leadership Program at UCLA. A Black man, Helena taught in a charter school that aims to improve educational opportunities for low-income students of color in south Los Angeles. The school defines itself as “anti-racist and pro-Black.”
“Education is something I’m really passionate about, particularly education equity,” Helena says.
“I enrolled in ELP at UCLA because I was thinking about other ways I could impact school systems and wanted some versatility and options.”
While in ELP, Helena took on new roles at his school, serving as an English language development coordinator, and then taking on new responsibilities as an assistant principal.
During this time, the COVID-19 pandemic forced the closure of schools, with many transitioning to virtual learning to protect the health of students and educators. The nation was also rocked by the murder of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, by a member of the Minneapolis Police Department, as well as the violent deaths of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and other Blacks and African Americans.
In response, there was a surge of support for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) training efforts in education, and many schools and school systems began providing anti-racist DEI professional development (PD) to educators and staff. That included the charter school where Helena worked. Helena was a small-group facilitator at his school and found himself leading some of these trainings.
“This is the type of work that I care a lot about, Helena says. “I know that at the heart of the achievement gap are Black and Brown students who are unfairly compared to their white, more affluent counterparts. DEI work helps to name that and helps give our Black and Brown students opportunities they haven’t been afforded.”
One might assume that, given his experience, training, and interest in educational equity, Helena might be a natural fit for leading DEI training. Yet research has shown that Black educators often experience racial microaggressions in the workplace and tend to cope by detaching and avoiding discussion of racial issues. Race dialogues have a track record of being unsafe forums for Black, Indigenous, and other people of color, and participants can experience “racial battle fatigue” — psychological, emotional, and physiologic costs related to fighting against racism. That research soon proved a reality for Helena.
“I learned really quickly that, despite my affinity for this work, it is really challenging,” Helena says. “I faced challenges that I wasn’t equipped to navigate in the form of racial microaggressions.
“And on another level, as a facilitator, I had to not only participate but also take on the role of guiding others in this space. I just found it ironic that these trainings came out of the hurt and pain of the Black and African American community, but were not really centered around the Black experience.”
Helena’s experience would spur his curiosity about the experiences of other Black educators in DEI training, leading to his UCLA dissertation examining Black educators’ racial battle fatigue in DEI PD. Helena’s dissertation was named UCLA’s Outstanding Ed.D. Dissertation for 2023, and his findings are highlighted in a new ELP Dissertation Brief, “Back Affinity Spaces Are an Oasis From the Racial Battle Fatigue Caused by Anti-Racist Meetings.”
Drawing on interviews with 12 Black and African American educators (three men and nine women) who participated in anti-racist DEI PD at the charter school management organization where he works, Helena found that this PD creates negative emotions for Black people. Participants reported frustration, exhaustion and anxiety. Ten of 12 participants repeatedly characterized anti-racist DEI PD as performative, fueling frustration or anger. Nine of 12 reported feeling weary. Eight said they felt anxious.
Participants reported repeatedly experiencing racial battle fatigue during anti-racist DEI PD, saying they withdrew psychologically and/or emotionally to cope with the impact of the experience.
“A lot of my participants, as well as myself, experienced fatigue, anger, and frustration because we go through these trainings at a cost, yet there’s not much practical change,” Helena says.
“A lot of the training comes across as just empty words, hollow gestures. And from my experience and research, I think a lot of people lose trust in the process. It can be really easy to lose people’s trust when you say that you are going to do anti-racist work. And that’s really disheartening.”
Helena says that racial battle fatigue plays out in schools in different ways. Those affected may experience withdrawal and detachment and seek to distance themselves from participating in racial equity training or conversations. And that distance can bleed into the work of education itself, with educators distancing themselves from colleagues at work, perhaps even students.
As a facilitator of DEI training, Helena says he experienced a lot of anxiety—and his own racial battle fatigue led to withdrawal.
“You kind of see people’s true colors come out when some of these topics are broached. The silence can be deafening. There are a lot of nonverbal cues and communication that happen. You feel people tighten up, you feel people looking toward people in the room with darker skin to take the wheel, so to speak, and get us out of this awkward situation.
“And the silence usually comes from white people, who may have grown up in racially homogenous areas and don’t have experiences with a diverse group of people. The Catch-22 is that the people who need to speak up the most and need to question their beliefs and challenge themselves tend to do the least amount of work. I think a lot of people just kind of hold their breath, look at the clock repeatedly, and wait ‘til the time runs out. Then it’s, ‘all right, they did it. They checked the box.’
“And as a facilitator of this group, I’m caught in the middle. How do I address this? How do I care for myself in this moment, how do I keep this entire group moving forward? Part of my anxiety was, are people going to see me differently when I say, ‘Black Lives Matter,’ or talk about the importance of racial equity in education, especially in our school community? When I say things like that, how will that impact my standing? The status quo is to be colorblind, to be race evasive. And so, I’m risking everything in that sense.”
Reflecting that experience, one of the key recommendations from Helena’s research is that third-party experts with research backgrounds and experience in facilitation in DEI topics are needed to lead anti-racist diversity and equity PD.
“We need people who are honest, who are going to be direct, who will call out the discomfort, the awkwardness. We need people who come across as trustworthy, and who have the experience of leading these types of sessions. It helps to have an outside third party,” Helena says.
Helena also suggests establishing racial affinity spaces to help reduce racial battle fatigue. These spaces may provide members of similar racial groups with more positive and affirming DEI PD experiences and the opportunity to speak more freely about sensitive topics.
Helena hopes his research will help education leaders think about and make changes to how they approach PD in diversity and equity.
“If we are going to commit to being more diverse, equitable and inclusive, we have to be willing to upset the status quo and accept upsetting people who have benefited from racist, sexist systems. People need to be held accountable for what racial microaggressions can look and sound like.
“We need to ask, have you thought about Black people when you created this training? Have you talked to them before facilitating this training? How can you facilitate your training so that there’s not an inequitable onus of responsibility in these sessions on Black people?
“We need to invest in developing racial equity leaders and invest in holding people accountable.”