Moral Complexity in Leadership: Race, Memory, and Moral Goodness “Recitatif,” by Toni Morrison

“Moral Complexity in Leadership” cases and teaching notes help business instructors harness the power of fiction to prepare students for the moral and ethical dilemmas they will face throughout their careers. Meaningful fiction challenges students intellectually and emotionally; it reveals the inner worlds of human players and enables learning that can be difficult to access via case studies, commentary, or reporting. Through literature, students will wrestle with the kinds of problems they will face as leaders looking to make courageous decisions aligned with their moral codes. Using fiction to spark dialogue on moral issues will challenge students to read critically and carefully; to listen carefully and empathetically; to facilitate and participate in open—and sometimes contentious—conversation; and to articulate well-reasoned opinions. The readings and discussions will lead students to understand more fully what enables people to make choices congruent with their values; to choose actions that convey care for the systems within which they operate (or for which they are responsible); and—perhaps most important—to determine how people can avoid getting themselves into trouble. The works in this series represent a wide range of settings, viewpoints, and cultural frameworks; the characters are complex and contradictory, and the systems within which they operate (whether family, organizational, or cultural) influence them in varied ways. These cases have been taught to executive, full-, and part-time MBA student audiences for years. The series aims to increase students' understanding of moral frameworks and to enhance their skills in facilitating and participating in healthy and productive dialogue about complex and provocative issues. In this installment of the series, “Race, Memory, and Moral Goodness,” students will examine Toni Morrison's lone short story, “Recitatif,” which has much to teach leaders about the complexity of race and social hierarchies, the ways in which our memories can deceive us, and the possiblessibility of moral goodness. The story, published in 1983 and spanning several decades, and tells of two girls who meet as residents at an orphanage in the late 1950s and then again as adults who reminisce about their shared past. One character is white and the other Black, but Morrison purposefully does not specify which is which. Time and again, when exploring “Recitatif,” students have shared how Morrison's story has challenged their preconceptions about race and sometimes unsettled them in ways that led them to reflect deeply on their understanding of race, finding new insights about the world and themselves.