Racial Noticing and Community College Leaders: Implications for Equity‐Minded Organizational Change

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ABSTRACT This article complexifies equity‐mindedness by adding the “how” to the concept of critical race‐consciousness, introducing racial noticing as a framework for understanding how community college leaders attend to, interpret, and respond to racial phenomena during campus equity projects (CEPs). Using a qualitative multiple‐case study design, we conducted exploratory interviews with 11 leaders from three community colleges engaged in designing and implementing campus racial equity change projects. Interviews explored leaders’ racial noticing, their perceptions of other team members’ racial noticing, and how these lenses shaped CEP development, implementation, and communication. Four attending lenses emerged: Attending to Racialized Harm, Attending to the Offending, Attending to the Potentially Resistant, and Attending to Power. Leaders attended to different racial phenomena, and these differences produced tensions during the creation and implementation of CEPs. Across the three cases, white leaders most often Attended to the Offending or the Potentially Resistant, while leaders of color were more likely, although not exclusively, to Attend to the Racially Harmed. Across all three colleges, presidents' attending lenses also shaped the trajectory and boundaries of racial equity work. When a leader's attending lens differed from their president, responses included realigning, disengaging, or investing effort in persuading the president to change their perspective, with the latter leading to disproportionate labor for leaders of color. Overall, racial noticing offers a developmental pathway toward stronger equity‐minded leadership and a practical diagnostic for strengthening institutional transformation by helping leaders consistently center those experiencing racialized harm.

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