Archive for date: September 6th, 2015

There is a powerful paragraph which begins at the bottom of page 32 and continues to page 33. It contains a perspective from Edgar Schein about organizational culture and change within. I believe there is still much work to do in the area of discrimination and institutional change, however, I also strongly believe we need to work from a positive standpoint, recognizing strengths and make decisions, comments and changes from a ‘building’ perspective rather than a ‘tear-down’ and reconstruct position. Sometimes it’s more about developing leadership practices, rather than characteristics.  We can build using the existing cultural strengths within an organization. I believe this principle can work in institutions from the family, to a school, to a large corporation, to a country.

One thing I found interesting was the concept of ‘critical mass’ and it caused me to reflect on the experience of my children being raised in an area where our community, by choice, not mandate, was approximately 30% black, 30% caucasian, 30% latino, and 10% asian. It seemed to work. The reading also caused me to reflect on the pressure and stress that successful members of minority groups might feel in the process of their achievement as they carry the weight of eliminating perceived stereotypes by their performance. There is danger in using a preconceived notion about a group of people to judge an individual and there is also danger in using an a perception about an individual to judge a entire group of people. Unfortunately, some of the policies and practices designed to address diversity have inadvertently added to the negative perception of ‘tokenism’.