(For those of you asking where Salsa, Soul and Spirit #1 went, it was never published. WordPress ate the post. After 90 minutes of writing and saving it every 15 minutes, I went back an hour later and found it no longer existed, along with the second post I was writing during the hour gap. So here is my rewritten version.)
I am reading the third of three textbooks for my upcoming course. This one is on Leadership for a Multicultural Age. The title, Salsa, Soul and Spirit, comes from the three motivating elements of the non-dominant cultural groups that the author is suggesting we learn from in this multicultural age. Salsa is for Latino; Soul is for African-American; and Spirit is for American Indian.
As I start reading the introduction, I find many interesting and worthwhile points, but also many weird perspectives. To give you some sense of what I am seeing and thinking, following are a few quotes from the introduction, along with my comments about them:
Our democracy is fashioned on the principle of inclusive governance originally used by the Iroquois Indians. Yet when the Constitution was written, only free men were allowed to vote. Black men , as slaves, were counted as only three-fifths of a person, and women were not allowed to vote until the passage of the nineteenth amendment in 1920. The discrepancy between the vision of democracy and the reality of racial and cultural segregation has caused a continuing tension in U.S. society. These inconsistencies are most apparent in leadership that is not reflective of our multicultural nation.
Bordas, Juana (2012-03-26). Salsa, Soul, and Spirit: Leadership for a Multicultural Age (p. 4). Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Kindle Edition.
I am sure the Founding Fathers, who were engaging in a war against monarchy and for the preservation of their rights to rule themselves with the freedoms of Englishmen, would have found it odd that the representative government created was based on the principles of the Iroquois Confederacy. Nor would they have agreed that they had founded a democracy – Democracy was a dirty word to them. They believed in the rule of law, not the rule of the mob.
The chief problem the book appears prepared to address is Ethnocentricity. The definition given is:
ETHNOCENTRICITY IS SEEING THE WORLD FROM ONE CULTURAL orientation and believing it to be the universal standard— or even superior to all others. American leadership, which has been culled largely from White male perspectives, centers on mainstream cultural values and thus reflects an ethnocentric orientation. A multicultural leadership orientation, on the other hand, incorporates many cultural perspectives, appreciates differences, values unique contributions of diverse groups, and promotes learning from many orientations. People are encouraged to maintain their cultural identity while at the same time participating in the diversity of the larger society.
Bordas, Juana (2012-03-26). Salsa, Soul, and Spirit: Leadership for a Multicultural Age (p. 8). Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Kindle Edition.
This all has a nice ring to it, until I merge it with the following quote:
The western hemisphere, then, is a rich jambalaya of African, Spanish, and indigenous cultures. The nine multicultural leadership principles apply directly to the many countries with multicultural populations, where leading diversity is a critical issue.
Bordas, Juana (2012-03-26). Salsa, Soul, and Spirit: Leadership for a Multicultural Age (p. 8). Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Kindle Edition.
So we are multi-cultural, yet in describing the western hemisphere, that white male culture, that ethnocentric problem, isn’t even mentioned as one of the cultures that makes it up. The author is giving me the impression that Salsa, Soul and Spirit are all compatible with each other, but not with whatever term she will choose for white male culture. Exactly how these styles differ is given in her summary of multicultural leadership:
Multicultural leadership entails changing organizational structures so that diversity becomes part of the standard way of operating. This requires a transition from hierarchical pluralism, which expects people to conform to dominant cultural norms, to egalitarian pluralism, which embraces the values and norms of many cultures.
Bordas, Juana (2012-03-26). Salsa, Soul, and Spirit: Leadership for a Multicultural Age (pp. 20-22). Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Kindle Edition.
This has a nice, tolerant ring to it. The thing to be aware of is the frame in which this new model is set. Embracing the values and norms of many cultures is itself a norm, a hierarchical norm that overrides all others. Just like saying “there are no absolute truths” is an absolute truth, it leads to the same sort of logical conundrum.
And from the surface of the introduction, I am left with a lingering concern that there is no room in this egalitarian pluralism for the white male perspective that is the foil in all these conversations.
At The Rainbow 