A Plan for Culturally Responsive Advocacy Leadership

Essay Prompt

Assignment: A Plan for Culturally Responsive Advocacy Leadership
For this Assignment, you will research various perspectives of a multicultural education issue and develop an advocacy plan to effectively communicate and advocate for a culturally responsive solution. During the development of your advocacy plan, synthesize and reflect on the major learning points that are applicable to leading culturally responsive social change in your context.

To prepare for this Assignment, review the issues you identified in the Equity Audit assignment. 

Review Chapters 1–5 (pp. 1–64) of “An Introduction to Advocacy: Training Guide.”

Advocacy Plan
Education has recently become a very polarizing and contentious issue within the United States. For one international competition has been much more aggressive in both quality and quantity of candidates with desired skills. India and China in particular have a vast array of qualified applicants willing to work for lower wages than their American counterparts. Research has indicated that per dollar of wages and benefits international employees typically provide more vale to organization than their American counterparts who often demand higher wages (Weil, 2004). Low skilled labor is not immune to these international trends either. Hispanics, particularly from Mexico and Cuba have began to dominate many of the manual labor industries across America. Construction, lawn care, auto refurbishment, carpentry, cleaning services, and more are occupied heavily by Hispanics (Sparer, 2015). As a result, many American are feeling international labor pressures as it relates to jobs both domestically and abroad. International works are also driving down wage growth as they are willing to provide similar services for much lower wages.<

To mitigate these influences, experts agree that Americans must become more educated. Research has shown that the jobs of the future are primarily concentrated in a few select industries. Unfortunately, each of these industries require a specialized n   knowledge and expertise in order for American citizens to matriculate properly. Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math disciplines are in high demand. Multicultural education must look to incorporate these disciplines heavily into their curriculums to better prepare students to the coming economic demands that will be put upon them. By making heavy investments into this field, it will also help to improve many of the prevailing negative dynamics that relate to multicultural communities.

Multicultural communities have historically preformed worst than their white and Asian counterparts. Much of this stems from a lack of education and behaviors that generate success in life. Statistics indicates that in terms of income both Hispanics and African Americans are the lowest out of all races. This trend has persisted for decades which indicates this is a multigenerational phenomenon (Conley, 1999). Corresponding,  Hispanics and African-Americans have much lower wealth statistics than other races in America. The issue is compounded by the fact the both races are far more likely to be killed by police during a routine traffic stop, they have higher incarceration rates, lower healthcare benefits, and in certain instance lower life spans. Many experts agree that some of this is due to historic events, policies, and procedures that inhibited the economic growth of these respective communities. For African-Americans these events include centuries of slavery, Jim Crow laws, a war on crime which incarcerated millions of African Americans with minimum mandatory sentencing, and many other policies. For the Hispanic community, it has been the stigma of immigration in America, legislation related to illegal immigration, and other policies that inhibit or heavily restrict the economic growth of Hispanics. These can include racism, inability to access capital, inability to access loan, and so forth. Although many of theses issue do have a role in the development of society, they do not have as much of an impact as education.

Education is the critical element with multicultural development. History has shown that education in conjunction with financial literacy can help mitigate many of the influences presented above. From a historical context, many other cultures have done remarkable well through education, financial literacy, and community. From a historical context both the Jewish and the Asian communities have done remarkable well, although they have been in America a fraction of the time of African Americans and Hispanics. In fact, these two communities have some the highest wealth, income, and business ownership statistics in the nation.  Here, the key to there success was education, which, from a historical context can be replicated.

As it relates to the advocacy the plan will use a much more holistic approach as it relates to teaching minority populations. For one, as noted in the introduction, they will need to learn, acquire and master, the skills need for tomorrow. Many of these skills are STEM related and will require many years of education commitment. Therefore, the advocacy plan will first look to utilize a holistic approach that leverages these declines. The plan must encourage a strong emphasis on these subjects as research has shown the strong demand from companies related to the fields. The break much of the cycle related to low incomes and low wealth that permeates throughout the minority community, individuals must possess strong job-related skills.

America is predicated on a system of capitalism. Here society often demand products and innovations that make their lives easier, add convenience, or entertain. Through capitalism, society transfers the excess savings from consumers to businesses in exchange for an adequate rate of return. These businesses then use the capital to further innovate their products while also hiring skilled and talented individuals to work for them. From a high level the system function based on excess savings being investing into businesses that earn a high rate of return for the providers of capital. During bull markets, which are characterized as massive optimism on the part of market participants, businesses invest heavily in jobs. These jobs are high paying and lucrative positions that are available to those with the appropriate prerequisites and skills. Unfortunately, within the minority communities they do not have the education level and thus the experience to qualify for these positions. These positions often go unfilled or are often filled by those who have the required skills and abilities to perform the tasks given to them at a high level. The advocacy plan attempts to mitigate this be an education community for multicultural students.

An important implement of any advocacy plan are the parents and surrounding communities. Educational institutions can only have students for so long throughout the day. It is imperative to have support networks to help foster growth within the educational institutions for multicultural organizations. To create socially responsible social change support networks are needed to help foster student growth. Support system help to provide encouragement for students along with emotion support with difficult subjects or activities. The problem with many multicultural groups is that they have many single parents attempted to perform both roles with a household. Within multicultural communities, many children are born out of wedlock. According to recent studies nearly 60% of African American children are born out of wedlock. In addition, only 30% of African American women are married before they have children (Cherlin, 2004). For Hispanic communities the statistics are higher, but still the results are similar. Here, many children are being brought up in broken families with little to no communal support. This is combined with many of the socioeconomic circumstances prevailing in these communities, further exacerbating the problem. In many instances, single mothers are attempted to raised children, while working multiple jobs to support a family (Sharma, 1996).

Likewise, many Hispanic communities are not properly educated and therefore have lower incomes to support the needs of their children. Statistics show that many have come illegal and therefore can only accept certain jobs related to manual labor, construction and lawn care (Bybee, 2007). As a result, they are often ill equipped to handle many of the innovative elements of society in a manner that those with proper education can. Therefore, children often grow up needed properly instruction, training, and motivation to matriculate through society.

The advocacy plans look to mitigate the literature and facts presented above. The plan will first look to foster community and parent involvement within the students lives. This does not only pertain the parent’s children, but to the community at large. Here, the goal is to create a community in which all stakeholders have a vested interest in the outcome. The state has an interest in the outcome as it relates to lower tax dollars being spent on remedial education, potential crime, and or welfare benefits for those who did not develop the appropriate skills. Communities have a vesting interest as their constituents are much more productive, thereby created business, jobs, and income growth. Multicultural communities are also interesting as they have an ability to generate generational wealth to help lower the prevailing income inequity that has persisted for many decades (Sharma, 1996).

To accomplish community and parent involvement, the advocacy plan will first look to teach financial literacy tools and foundations. This will do done in both a parent-only session and a student-only session. The courses will be taught be business and community leaders within the community who have a track-record of success within business and finance. This first element is critical due in part to the statistics used during the beginning of the proposal. Many multicultural families do not have access  to the financial networks, financial resources and influences that many of the powerful member of society have. By learning financial literacy at a ground roots level, communities can they look within themselves to establish business and industry.  Armed with financial knowledge of stocks, bonds, real estate, and alternative assets, communities can also look to invest in productive assets as oppose to material possession. Aspects such as cars, clothes, lavish homes, and sexually promiscuous women should all be shunned by the community over time as they learn about the merits of investing. Here, much like the cultures before them, many multination organizations can pool their resources together to own assets as oppose to be subject to their demand. Works at Walmart can slowly begin purchasing stock within the company. Consumers of Nike and Jordan shoes can lower consumption of the product and instead purchase the Nike stock. The same goes for McDonalds, Burger King, Ross, TJ Max, Disney, Netflix, and many other products multinational organizations consume. This will be the foundation of the advocacy plan as many minority communities have large amounts of purchasing power which can be deployed and utilized in much more productive means. Financial literacy is the first step in the advocacy plan as it has the most impact on the majority of the stakeholders involved. As noted, multicultural organizations suffer from lower income, lower wealth, lower job prospects, and higher incarceration rates. Education helps allocated these concerns, as these children can make better informed decisions in life. Finance, as it relates to education is universal. Irrespective of the individuals career field, they will encounter financial concept in their life. All Americans will face these decisions and must be prepared to behave in the appropriate manner. For example, it does not good to teach multicultural students if they use all of their income on lottery tickets or frivolous products. Therefore, it is essential to first start with financial literacy so that communities can better understand how to utilize the income, wages and benefits they earn through their skills and labor (Sharma, 1996).