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Overview: Developing the context for understanding the
application of Appreciative Inquiry and its relationship to social change
 I am an African-American woman. Therefore, my research
orientation and the community/organizational work I do emerged from an
Afro-Centric frame of reference. Despite my being in a business curriculum, I
was drawn during the initial stages of my doctoral program to develop an
understanding of why youth were gravitating to gangs and as a result decided to
investigate if Appreciative Inquiry, which is an organization development
intervention strategy would work as a gang deactivation strategy. Given the
plight of African American youths' involvement in gangs, I did not, nor do I
now, apologize for my frame of reference. In 1993, a paper presented at the
Annual Meeting of the American Association of Community Colleges called for a
"wake-up call" directed at middle-class black Americans, specifically at
females, due to African- American women constituting 52 percent of the black
adult population. This call articulated the need for African Americans to begin
relying on themselves again, and bringing forth the energies and talents that
have characterized previous struggles (Phelps, 1993). I also found during the
course of my research and learning about Appreciative Inquiry and the plights
that face our children and ultimately the African American population at large,
that I changed, even though I thought, "I knew what I knew". Learning about the
negativity that ensconces our race from a different perspective provided me with
a far deeper insight than that which I had prior to engaging in this work. It
began a very spiritual journey for me.
In the face of examining the role of Appreciative Inquiry as an
intervention strategy that can help gang members transcend their
existing state, a logical question I had to ask was "What is there
to appreciate about gangs?" To answer that question and understand
the potential impact that Appreciative Inquiry could have on youth
in gangs, mentally I stripped away the veneer in order to see gang
members for what they are, and I learned that when we strip away
the publicized concept of the gang, the images we see in the media
and movies and the descriptions we read about in the newspapers,
the answer becomes very simple: they are youth. In many cases they
may be youth each of us knows, or they could be our own children.
Unfortunately, they are a critical part of our population that we
are losing to the death tolls that result from gang violence.
Therefore, if we are serious about stopping the gang violence,
we have to look within the hearts of these young people and beyond
the "hardness" that they attempt to project and help them to find
their inner beauty, which is why I found Appreciative Inquiry,
as a change facilitator to be so critical. It sets the stage for
us to move beyond the negativity in individuals, situations and/or
organizations and look at what works and what is beautiful.
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