Salsa, Soul, and Spirit (p.96-113)

I have to first begin that I feel so naive to so much. All throughout my K-12 years they only taught you what was in the books. During school we learned a fair amount about some of the things of Black culture. Mainly everything we learned was on the Civil rights movement, MLK, or Mallcom X is what was primarily focused on. As I think back to it I find it very offensive that the time we would learn the most about the things I mentioned above was during what is so called black history month. Why not being learning about all cultures equally and at all times of the year not just when its a certain designated month. During this reading I had just found out so many things that I didn't know before.

My best friend and I work together at the guest service department at Target and we are always sharing crazy stories of what may of happened while at work. Well a couple days ago we were hanging out an she was like your not going to believe what I tell you and I was just trying to imagine what she was goint to say. So she tells me that a woman comes up introduces herself and asks for the manager. The manager that had come up to the service desk happened to be of hispanic background. So the lady proceeds to tell our manager that she she speaks several different languages (german, french, mandarin, chinese, italian, english and a couple others). My friend proceeds to tell me the woman says the only language she hasn't learned is spanish and then tells the manager she finds it very offensive that the spanish speaking team memebers just freely speak spanish amongst themselves. She also said that by all you people speaking your spanish language is ruining my childrens culture. If I remember correctly my friend said she was white. The first thing I said to my friend is if that one lanuguage is ruining your childrens so called culture why did you go and learn so many others. All she could do was just sit there and sake her head. Recntly I have had people come up to guest service an tell me that they cannot believe we are turning into Wal-Mart far as the people we are hiring. It sickens me that their are equally opportunities for everyone now and some people still cannot expect that. The qoute from the book that sums this up for me is "The role of a leader is the role of advocacy.The purpose of leadership is to exercise one's power, knowledge, and access, to change the oppressive and destructive situations in society."