Responding to our Nation's Crisis of Leadership

As an organization focused on the development of emerging leaders who work with youth, families, and communities, we watched the insurrection in Washington this week with sadness and anger.

As many have already said, we know that if these attackers had been BIPOC, their treatment would have been radically different. We must, at every turn, work first to name and then dismantle white supremacy. None of us is exempt from doing this work. And we know that language matters; these were not protestors but an insurrectionist mob, incited by, of all people, the President of the United States. 

Leaders matter. Our work is to develop leaders who unite people, not divide them; who speak truthfully and respectfully while also calling out actions that harm others. We cannot give a “pass” to people who promote hate speech. 

Our nation was founded upon the genocide, exploitation, and enslavement of BIPOC. It has been the work of generations since then to confront this shameful history. White supremacist culture still thrives. Reflecting on the role of leadership, particularly creative leadership, continues to drive us forward at PSi. We still have faith in a better future. 

In 1968, Dr. King spoke eloquently about “the other America.” He said, “... that other America has a daily ugliness about it that transforms the buoyancy of hope into the fatigue of despair. In that other America, millions of people find themselves forced to live in inadequate, substandard, and often dilapidated housing conditions. …In this other America, thousands, yea, even millions, of young people are forced to attend inadequate, substandard, inferior, quality-less schools, and year after year thousands of young people in this other America finish our high schools reading at an eighth- and a ninth-grade level sometimes. Not because they are dumb, not because they don’t have innate intelligence, but because the schools are so inadequate, so overcrowded, so devoid of quality, so segregated, if you will, that the best in these minds can never come out. And probably the most critical problem in the other America is the economic problem. By the millions, people in the other America find themselves perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.”(1) But Dr. King continued to look towards a better future, and so must we. Today, Stacy Abrams says, “I’m not pessimistic or optimistic. I’m determined.” Her determination, and that of so many others, brought a victory in Georgia. 

As leaders, we must continue to summon our moral courage and confront, with humility, the ways we all perpetuate white supremacist systems. As leaders in the field of education, we have a crucial role in this difficult work. We cannot do it alone or in isolation. That is why we continue to develop and maintain the network that we are building collectively. Together, we will continue to prepare ourselves to be the kinds of leaders who bravely confront racism, embracing the power of creativity and the role of the artist to help define and describe a better and more inclusive path forward. We know that artists, perhaps uniquely, can reflect on the best and worst of humanity.  We join together in solidarity and urgency to create an America where we can all be proud.

PSi Faculty
Linda Nathan
Carmen Torres
Will C.
Sung-Joon Pai

(1) King, Martin Luther, Jr. “The Other America.” Speech to supporters participating in a celebratory “Salute to Freedom,” organized by the Local 1199, New York, NY, March 10, 1968. https://www.beaconbroadside.com/broadside/2018/03/martin-luther-king-jrs-the-other-america-still-radical-50-years-later.html