Category Archives: Social Issues

Social causes, activism, and projects

Authors, Race & Ethnicity, Social Issues

Dialing 911 on Black Folks – By Terry Howard

DATELINE: Police questioned a black graduate student who fell asleep while studying in a dormitory common room.

I picked up a local newspaper and was confronted by this headline: “Harassment for ‘being black’ gains attention.”

My blood started to boil.
I took in a deep breath, cussed to myself, and slowly exhaled.

There’s not a day that goes by without more evidence of how tough it is for many African Americans to go about their daily activities – any activity it seems. We’ve gone from DWB (Driving While Black), to SWB (Shopping While Black), to BWB (Barbequing While Black), to SISWB (Sitting in Starbucks While Black), to SIADWB (Sleeping In A Dorm While Black). Insanity is too mild a word to describe this racial mess we’ve gotten ourselves into.

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Advisors, Authors A-H, Social Issues

Retailers Dishonor Military on Memorial Day – By David B. Grinberg

As America pauses to reflect on Memorial Day, the retail and e-commerce industries are once again too busy reflecting on how to lure consumers into holiday shopping sprees.

Yet shouldn’t retailers be more mindful of the countless sacrifices of the U.S. Armed Forces and the many lives lost over the decades in service to our nation?

The retail sector continues to send the wrong message by using revered military holidays simply to boost sales and profits. The true message of Memorial Day is about showing remembrance and gratitude, not greed and profit-mongering.

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Levine articles, Social Issues

#MeToo, Three, Four, and Five: A Leadership Challenge – by Deborah Levine

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Why have women waited so long to tell their stories of sexual harassment, discrimination, pedophilia, abuse, and discrimination? How do we as individuals and as a nation process this tidal wave of #MeToo information as people come forward? I’ve hesitated to tell my stories of sexual harassment because I’ve never been able to comprehend and digest them. The first time I experienced my feminine vulnerability, I was only four years old. I was playing outside in the garden of our home in Bermuda, when a teen-age neighbor squatted down next to me as I was playing with my favorite marbles in the garden. Smiling at me, he reached under my skirt and stroked my privates through my underpants. Before he walked away, he made me promise not to tell my father, silencing me.

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Authors A-H, Social Issues

The Cosby Teachable Moment – by Terry Howard

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Hey predators, Bubba awaits!
“Rubbernecking,” is the act of staring at something of interest; a trait that’s associated with morbid curiosity. It can be the cause of traffic (and cyber) jams as drivers (and readers) slow down to catch a glimpse of what happened in a crash. It seems that the more grisly the scene the more we stare. Now I naively thought I could do a smooth pirouette around the recent “crash” – the guilty verdict in the Bill Cosby sexual assault trial that is – but nah, I had to do a U-turn and pivot back to it for two compelling reasons – the truth and the teachable opportunities it provides.
(Now Cosby fans, you may want to skip the next paragraph).

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Authors R-Z, Education, Social Issues

Cheer Not Sneer: Black Gen Z Success – by Elwood Watson

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Anyone familiar with the rituals of college life knows that we are in the midst of college acceptance and rejection season. Recently, Lamar High School student Micheal Brown of Houston, Texas made national headlines when he gained acceptance to all 20 colleges and universities he applied to, including four Ivy League institutions: Harvard, Yale, Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania. Stanford, Northwestern, Johns Hopkins and 13 other top-notch colleges and universities said “welcome,” as well.

The story doesn’t stop there. Each institution awarded him a full scholarship – a remarkable accomplishment, indeed! Videos of the young Brown yelling ecstatically as he was surrounded by equally ecstatic friends upon learning the wonderful news made headlines across the globe.

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Authors A-H, Social Issues

Silence and the Sergeant Schultz Syndrome – by Terry Howard

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Ever watch the old sitcom Hogan’s Heroes? If so, no doubt you’ll remember the famous line of Sergeant Schultz, “I know nothing … nnnoooTTTTHHHING!” when he witnesses Hogan’s shenanigans.

During these times of mind boggling incivility, blatant disrespect, school shootings and outright bullying, I find it disheartening to watch those who sit quietly on the sidelines (or behind them on the stage) while someone verbally demeans others with vicious bullying rhetoric. It’s unbelievable how calling someone a “SOB” and other unprintable words have become an acceptable norm these days.
And even worse are the spineless ones not wanting to offend their political base who choose to stand silently in the background and utter tepid responses, but only when called out on their silence.
Let me to peel back the onion as to why the Sergeant Shultzs, the silent bystanders, in the contemporary world appear to be so prevalent during these turbulent times.

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Social Issues

Making a Difference: Goodwill in Africa, Afghanistan, and the Middle East

These stories from Global Goodwill Ambassadors will motivate you to pursue your efforts to change the world for the better. Their words of wisdom will inspire you to be a model for others to follow in your footsteps. Here are interviews with Dr. Nadia Cheaib and Abdul Asill Azizi. Let us celebrate people making a difference in their own way.

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Advisors, Authors A-H, Social Issues

Mental Illness and Reducing Gun Violence – by Marc Brenman

After many mass shooting murders in the US, many elected officials and members of the public condemn the shooters as mentally ill, and want to forcefully control their access to guns. The issue has many dimensions. For example, most mass shootings in the US are by white men, but when they are caused by Muslims, the politicians and members of the public condemn them as terrorists. When African-Americans do the shooting, they are condemned as being racially motivated. What is mental illness, and how severe must it be before action is taken to restrain the freedom of those who have it? A third dimension is that by ascribing the cause of mass murder to mental illness, we provide an excuse, a relief from responsibility for the crime.

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Authors A-H, Social Issues

Today’s Idolatry of Symbols – by William Hicks

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This essay is written to address how we have devolved into a form of idolatry through the proliferation and use of symbols. Symbols are used to evoke a set of behavioral expectations to which we are beholden to subscribe if we are to be deemed acceptable by others. Symbols are all too often the proxies used to substitute for meaningful interaction and relationship. They are designed to reduce fear and risk, but they often mitigate against the courage necessary to relate meaningfully to each other.

For thousands of years, we have lived our lives largely in response to symbols- religious, political, social, natural- to the point today that we substitute symbols for relationship substance. We think because someone wears a cross he must be a Christian or a hijab she must be a Muslim, or emblazon their clothing with the American flag they must be a patriot. Symbols govern our expectations of what to anticipate in the behavior of others but this can be confusing, and often misleading.

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Authors R-Z, Social Issues

Our Society has Finally Reached the Tipping Point – by Kathleen Sullivan

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For over two years now, every day and night, I have been scanning the media comments sections of mainstream media articles to gauge social ebbs and flows.  And I have been tracking the influence of obviously professional trolls and bots. (I should write a thesis about their unfortunately profound influence.) I have been alarmed at how they have been largely successful in guilting, deriding, confusing, distracting, frightening, and shaming genuinely concerned, good-hearted commenters from taking solid, necessarily no-holds-barred action to reverse major societal and political wrongs and destructive movements and trends that have drastically increased in power and control during the same time period.

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