Essay Prompt: 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...…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). 

Once financial literacy is obtained, then the advocacy plan will transition in to skills and job training. Here again it is important to provided training for skills of the future. As noted above experts agree the skills of the future will be related to STEM based jobs, industries and technologies. Competitor countries are already training their constituents to occupy these positions. America must do the same for its international constituents and citizens. By doing so, we can position our communities, and by default, our country in a much more advantageous position. To accomplish this, the advocacy plan must evolve and change the curriculum. The curriculum must be adapting to encourage and foster development…