Despite her mother having some college experience but no degree, and a grandmother with a sixth-grade education, Dr. Eboni M. Zamani-Gallaher was placed on a pathway towards earning a postsecondary degree.
That started with seeking the best educational opportunities.
“She very much was someone that felt that education albeit not a panacea or a silver bullet was definitely something that could propel an individual to have a greater livelihood and life chances,” said Zamani-Gallaher, a professor of higher education and community college leadership at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Growing up on the southside of Chicago, she transitioned from attending an all-Black school to a predominately white Catholic school in an area with high racial antipathy.
Passing through segregated communities on her one-hour ride to school on Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) buses, forced Zamani-Gallaher to understand the idea of “crossing borders” and Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois’ concept of “double consciousness” at a young age.
“For my survival and that which is going to uplift for my race, it was incumbent for me to also understand how to be bi-cultural and bi-lingual,” she said. “But to understand that as I would traverse, I would have to create, understand and try to tap into what had been very closed social and cultural repositories of capital. Whereby, I was armed because of a mother that had a college going culture that she embedded in my house.”
By sharing her childhood experiences, Zamani-Gallaher discussed “equity consciousness” at community colleges during her keynote address on the second day of the National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development’s (NISOD) International Conference on Teaching and Leadership Excellence held on Thursday.
