Leadership Through The African American Lens : Seeking Understanding

Racial oppression in the United States has been present for almost a century now. Although slavery was abolished in the 1860s, people associated in target groups are still being mistreated by racial oppression in different ways. In the article “Being Poor, Black, and American” written by William Julius Wilson, a sociologist and professor at Harvard University, Wilson shows that political, economic, and cultural forces are the primary forces that contains the distinction between target and agent group positions. From the immigration policies, the workplace policies, and stereotypical views portrayed by society, these all have an impact on how an individual can live their life. Altogether, these forces ultimately keep people in check with society’s rules and regulations on what is right and wrong and keep them from stepping out of their place.

Is it racism or economics which hinders many African American communities from progressing economically in the 21st Century? This research proposal will address this question by examining the social and psychological impact caused by racism and the economic impact it’s had on the African American community. This proposal will further investigate whether the emotional scars of slavery continue to hamper African American progress or if racism is actually the cause.

The article “The Negro Digs Up His Past’’ by Arthur schomburg on 1925, elaborates more on the struggles of slavery as well as how history tend to be in great need of restoration through mindfully exploring on the past. The article, however started with an interesting sentence which caught my attention, especially when the writer says ‘’The American Negro must remark his past in order to make his future’’ (670). This statement according the writer, explains how slavery took away the great deal freedom from people of African descendant, through emancipation and also increase in diversity. The writer (Arthur Schomburg) however, asserts that “the negro has been throughout the centuries of controversy an active collaborator, and often a pioneer, in the struggle for his own freedom and advancement” (670).

In “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” Peggy McIntosh argues that racism can be found imbedded into the culture of society; conferring and denying certain privileges on some rather than all. This is a dangerous cultivation; endowing a strong expectation that white privileges are naturally deserving. Furthermore, making the cornerstone of McIntosh’s main argument; that white privilege is just a less aggressive synonym for dominance. When you receive privileges for looking a certain type of way, the recipient becomes immune; often not being able to acknowledge their advantages. As a result, this creates a cultural divide, between racial groups.

Across the nation, millions of Americans of all races turn on the television or open a newspaper and are bombarded with images of well dressed, articulate, attractive black people advertising different products and representing respected companies. The population of black professionals in all arenas of work has risen to the point where seeing a black physician, attorney, or a college professor are becoming more a common sight. More and more black people are holding positions of respect and authority throughout America today, such as Barack Obama, Colin Powell, Condelezza Rice and many other prominent black executives. As a result of their apparent success, these black people are seen as role models for many Americans, despite their race.

This article is entitled, “The Problem Behind the Problem: Creating Economic Well Being for Young Men of Color,” and was published in the International Journal of Business and Public Administration. It argues that there is a need for groundwork to be established to create and maintain future economic well being for African American men. In creating this groundwork, the author, Dr. Melvinia Turner-King, believes that this foundation starts with the social responsibility of scholars, political leaders and administrators, and so on. King puts her passion for her position in this matter into play with a pilot leadership program she proposed for African American male college students, which asserts ethically and socially responsible solutions designed to fit the current cultural and economic realities of our global environment. The results also reveal the importance of public administrators and educational institutions serving in collaborative leadership enterprises. Essentially, King argues that the results from her study illustrate that the “problem behind the problem” is that successful predecessors are not reaching back and helping undereducated black males to ensure future economic stability.

Minority administrators have an astronomically immense portion of Americans believing that minorities no longer face segregation in the work environment. The fact of the matter is that these examples of surmounting adversity are the exemption and not the tenet. They are more a consequence of the tirelessness, ability, desire, and resoluteness of these bellwethers than anything else. Numerous minorities have possessed the capacity to get access into the work environment, and conventionally move into lower and center level administration positions. Notwithstanding, by and sizably voluminous, the way to achievement deadlocks. In opposition to prominent feeling, minorities probing for achievement in the work environment consistently experience

Wise’s examination of the inconspicuous character of racism 2.0 dovetails fittingly with our course’s recurring theme of institutionalized racism. In class lectures we have defined institutionalized racism as the discriminatory practices that have become regularized and routinized by state agencies, organizations, industries, or anywhere else in society. Although such practices might not be intentionally racist, they end up being racist nevertheless as consequence of the systematized and unspoken biases that have become increasingly convoluted and entrenched within society over time. It also doesn’t help white people to recognize these discriminatory practices considering they have been unconsciously tailored to be consistent with white perspective and mentality. In her article, White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack, Peggy McIntosh examines not only how white folks often consider themselves to be a normative figure within society, but also how they are carefully taught not to recognize the advantages they gain from the disadvantages that impair people of color. In the article, McIntosh acknowledges the reality of her own white privilege and expresses, “In my class and place, I did not see myself as a racist because I was taught to recognize racism only in individual acts of meanness by members of my group, never in invisible systems conferring unsought racial dominance on my group from birth” (McIntosh 4). In fact, even if white folks do not believe themselves to

The election of Barack Obama as the 56th president of the United States raised many hopes that the “Black struggles” was finally over. For conservatives, Obama victory reassured their beliefs that there was no longer such thing as racism and that every American had equal rights and opportunity to pursue the American dream. While many people have come to believe that all races have equal rights in America, Tim Wise argues in his documentary “White Like Me” that not only does racism and unconscious racial bias still exist, but that also White Americans are unable to simply relate to the variety of forms racism and inequality Blacks experience. This is mainly because of the privileges they get as the “default.” While Wise explores the variety forms of racism and inequality today such as unconscious racism, Black poverty, unemployment, inadequate education system, and prison system, the articles by the New York Times Editorial Board, the Human Rights Watch (HRW), and Adam Liptak further explore some the disparities in the criminal justice system. Ana Swanson points out in her article, “The Stubborn Persistence of Black-White Inequality, 50 Years after Selma” that while the “U.S. has made big strides towards equal rights,” significant gaps still remains between the two races. With the Supreme Court striking down a “portion of the Voting Rights Act that stopped discriminatory voting laws from going into effect in areas of the country with histories of disenfranchisement,” civil

Systemic oppression requires great scrutiny in order to critically analyze the elements that underlie the complex and impactful process. Furthermore, it is imperative to examine its relation with the governing ideology of the white dominated capitalist society of North America. Through this framework, racism is transformed into an implicit, or symbolic form, which functions outside the parameters of legality and condemnation (Bona-Silva, 1997); ), generating a paradigm where explicitly racist attitudes are fostered and are allowed to surface into society. Consequently, racism enforces the deprivation of status and power of visible minorities, allowing the power and privilege of the dominant group to remain unchallenged (Chaney & Robertson,

When white Americans choose to self-educate about systemic racism they can become allies in the fight to dismantle racist structures in our society. Systemic racism is a theory that “takes a look at how individual, structural, and institutional forms of racism intersect, overlap, and create a deep-rooted form of prejudice and discrimination that advantages a cultural group at the expense of others in all institutions of a society - economics, political representation, the criminal justice system, employment, and many others.” (Luther College 2015). This includes discrimination affecting credit, schooling, justice, residential location, etc. It can be eradicated in the next century, but not without white people acknowledging that it is a real issue that cost lives. It is not the duty of the oppressed to make a liberty sales pitch to their oppressors. However, it is the responsibility of those benefiting from the oppression of others to become educated, listen, and use their privilege to combat injustice. Asian, Latino, Black, and First Nations people respectively do not experience white supremacy in the same ways. Throughout this essay I will focus on the systemic racism targeted at Black people, using the term “People of Color”, coined by Black Feminists in the 1970s, abbreviated to PoC, to refer to them.

The employees are multimillionaires. The supervisors are multimillionaires and billionaires. The customer base is close to a half billion persons. Do you want to be the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) in such an organization? The working environment is a diversified, multicultural, multiethnic, racially charged atmosphere (Price & Wolfers, 2010, p. 1859). The organization under my microscope is the National Basketball Association (NBA). Price and Wolfers (2010, p. 1885) found that the NBA have achieved high levels of racial equality across key working relationships. Adam Silver is the current Commissioner of the NBA whose responsibilities include maintaining racial harmony among NBA’s key stakeholders.

As always, I enjoyed reading your post. Your topic “Black Women in Leadership” is a very fascinating, you should not have problems searching articles on that subject. You might also want to search previous dissertations on your topic to find gaps for further research; it’s a little trick I use to find gaps for my study. I have come to realized that as we work with those tools and manipulate them, we begin to understand how they work and which one is best for our field of study. However, one must keep one thing in mind, and that is to focus/use only one tool at a time and master utilizing it. Moeini (2014) suggested that focusing on one tool at a time can save the researcher an enormous amount of research time and effort and open new doors in

Within the upper echelons of upper management is scant room for African American women. This mini-proposal outlines a research project that focuses on the phenomena of the nominal amount of African American women are in positions of management or organizational leadership within the City of Philadelphia.

My Freshman and Sophomore year of high school I was one of many leaders of a group of girls named, Women Of Color Leadership. The group was about empowerment, education, advocation, and the uplifting of Chicana, and African American women. We were taught the importance of how to identify and prevent cases of Sexually Transmitted Infections, Teen Dating Violence, and Domestic Abuse to name a few. We explored and studied some of the numerous catastrophes around the globe that revolves around and happen to women daily. Things such as the Gendercide currently occurring around the world, the Female Genital Mutilation “rituals” used to manipulate and mentally break women, and the numerous Sex Trafficking Rings targeting younger and younger victims