All posts by Dr. Carlos E. Cortés

ADR ADVISOR Carlos E. Cortés is a retired history professor who has been a diversity speaker, educator, trainer, and consultant for forty-five years. His books include: The Children Are Watching: How the Media Teach about Diversity (2000); his memoir, Rose Hill: An Intermarriage before Its Time (2012); and a book of poetry, Fourth Quarter: Reflections of a Cranky Old Man (2016), which received honorable mention for the best book of poetry in the 2017 International Latino Book Awards. He also edited the four-volume Multicultural America: A Multimedia Encyclopedia (2013).
Advisors, Authors A-H, Politics, Social Issues

Diversity and Speech Part 32: Language Tensions of Speech and Social Justice  – by Carlos E. Cortés

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Most public surveys about free speech and the First Amendment go something like this.

  • “Do you believe in the idea of free speech?” Overwhelmingly yes.
  • “Should group slurs be allowed?” Overwhelmingly no..
  • “Do you support the First Amendment?” Overwhelmingly yes.
  • “Should hate speech be permitted?” Overwhelmingly no.

What gives? Aren’t these positions inconsistent? Yes, in the abstract or in the arcane world of constitutional interpretation. No, in the walk-around world where most people reside. Turns out most people like the idea of being protected from government interference with their use of speech. But they also like it when governments and private entities step in to mute certain categories of speech, categories that they might consider harmful, divisive, offensive, or misleading. The problem is that people do not agree on which speech categories should be banned. One person’s sense of truth telling is another person’s sense of disinformation.

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Authors A-H, Race & Ethnicity

From Conditional to Equitable Inclusion: Inclusivity for a Stronger Nation – by Carlos Cortés

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Keynote Address for Unidos:
2022 National Hispanic Heritage Month Celebration of the U.S. Dept. of Energy

Thank you for inviting me to join you for Hispanic Heritage Month.  And thank you for providing me the opportunity to reflect upon a very important idea: inclusivity.
________________________

In 1999, Mayor Ronald Loveridge of my hometown — Riverside, California –- asked me to lead a new city initiative, the Mayor’s Multicultural Forum.  He also asked the Forum to begin by drawing up a position statement on diversity.  We called the document “Building a More Inclusive Riverside Community.”  The City Council adopted the document, making inclusivity a basic city principle.

That was more than two decades ago.  Today you constantly hear variations of that idea.  Take DEI: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.  As a diversity consultant, lecturer, and workshop presenter I often use those terms, sometimes without giving them much thought.  So when you asked me to speak on the topic of inclusivity, I had to make a decision.  Should I give a traditional Hispanic Heritage speech filled with the usual once-a-year truisms about Latino this and Latinx that?  Sort of a Hispanic Groundhog Day?  I decided no.  You deserve something more original.

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Authors A-H, Social Issues, Sports

Diversity and Speech Part 30: The Strange Odyssey of Racial Sports Metaphors – by Carlos Cortés

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Woke people don’t stereotype, right?  And, of course, white men can’t jump.  Hm.  Consider the following.

For relaxation, my wife Laurel and I attend a bi-weekly creative writing workshop.  For a recent assignment, our instructor Jo Scott-Coe asked us to write about chocolate.   Each of the other participants wrote about food.   Not me.  For whatever reason, Jo’s assignment triggered thoughts of former National Basketball Association guard Jason Williams.

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Academic Articles, Social Issues, Wellness

Challenges of Teaching about Diversity and Health Equity – by Carlos E. Cortés

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A Difficult Conversation about Difficult Conversations forDeveloping Medical Educators of the 21st Century:
New Ideas and Skills
for Adaptable and Inclusive
Learning Environments Conference

February 4, 2022 (Revised, February 6, 2022)

 Let’s start with today’s ground rules.  None.  No rules; no powerpoints.

But three hopes.  That you speak honestly without obsessing about maybe saying the wrong thing, a bane to diversity discussions.  That you contemplate divergent ideas.  And that you reflect openly on your own perspectives by posting comments and questions in the chatbox as we go along.   

So let’s turn to our theme, difficult conversations about diversity and health equity.  Health equity conversations necessarily involve discomfort because they address the idea of group diversity, not just random individual differences.

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Authors A-H, Religious Diversity

Diversity and Speech #25: Growing Up Bi-Religious – by Carlos E. Cortés

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 Many diversity trainers tell me that they steer clear of religion.  Not me.  Faith discussions are always welcome in my workshops. I love talking about religion. Maybe that’s because of how I grew up.

ChurchSome people are reared in a strong religious tradition. Others with none. I grew up in a home with two faith traditions. To this day that experience affects the way I view the world around me.

shofar
Rams’ Horn – Shofar

Consider the opening lines of my memoir, Rose Hill: An Intermarriage before Its Time.  “Dad was a Mexican Catholic.  Mom was a Kansas City-born Jew with Eastern European immigrant parents. They fell in love in Berkeley, California, and married in Kansas City, Missouri.  That alone would not have been a big deal. But it happened in 1933, when such marriages were rare. And my parents spent most of their lives in Kansas City, a place both racially segregated and religiously divided.  Mom and Dad chose to be way ahead of their time; I didn’t.  But because of them, I had to be. My mixed background meant that, however unwillingly, I had to learn to live as an outsider.”

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Authors A-H, Inclusion

Diversity and Speech No. 24: Curse of the Floating Signifiers – by Carlos E. Cortés

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 It certainly would be easier if everybody used words the same way.  Clearer communication.  Fewer misunderstandings.  But no such luck.  Words mean what people make them mean.  And people make meaning differently.

Sociolinguists refer to the idea of floating signifiers: words that mean more than one thing.   For example, when one person says X meaning A, but another person hears X but understands it to mean B.   This constantly happens in diversity discussions.

Take the word justice.  Ask ten people what it means and you may get ten very different answers.  When people in one of my workshops or classrooms start talking about social justice and I ask them individually what they mean, I am likely to get as many different answers as there are people in the room.  Lots of virtue signaling; little clear communication.

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Academic Articles, Authors A-H

Speech vs. Diversity, Diversity vs. Speech – by Carlos E. Cortés

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 Edward A. Dickson Lecture
University of California, Riverside

In February, 2018, I began a new scholarly odyssey.  I became an inaugural fellow of the University of California National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement.

In my fellowship application I proposed the following question: “over the past fifty years, why have so many diversity advocates become opposed to our nation’s hallowed tradition of free speech?”  However, I soon discovered that I had asked the wrong question.  Instead my question became “over the past fifty years, what has happened when two worthy values collide: inclusive diversity and robust speech?”

Today I invite you to accompany me on part of my personal odyssey.  This involves two acts followed by a brief epilogue.  Please join the conversation by posting questions and comments in the chat box.  I’ll also pause for a few minutes of discussion following each of the three segments.  And if the digital gods should step in and freeze me for a minute or so, please hang around.  Like the Terminator, I’ll be back.

Act One will focus on speech, primarily through the lens of diversity.  Act Two will address diversity, primarily through the lens of speech.  In the epilogue, I will suggest what I think lies ahead for the intersection of diversity and speech.

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Authors A-H, Education, Race & Ethnicity

Diversity and Speech Part 22: The Critical Race Theory Donnybrook – by Carlos E. Cortés

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A year ago, who would have predicted that Critical Race Theory (CRT) would have become a 2021 national buzz word?  A buzz word for those attacking it.  A buzz word for those defending it.    Probably with relatively few of those attackers and defenders actually having read much of it.

I have, but it’s not easy going.  Lots of ideas.  Lots of jargon.  Lots of obscurantist legal analysis.  But if you stick with it, CRT can be very thought-provoking.

CRT is based on a simple premise: the law is not neutral.  As a result, institutions and systems that arise from the law will not be neutral.   When Mark Twain asked a friend to explain his position on a controversial issue, the friend answered, “I’m neutral.”  To which Twain responded, “Then whom are you neutral against?”

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Authors A-H, Social Issues

Diversity and Speech Part 21: Predicting the Future of Cultural Expression – by Carlos E. Cortés

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Historians devote their lives to predicting the past.  So when called upon to predict the future of cultural expression, as the editor did for this issue, I had to distance myself from my disciplinary comfort zone.

Not for the first time.  Two decades ago I had to do this when completing  my book, The Children Are Watching: How the Media Teach about Diversity (Teachers College Press, 2000).  In that book I focused on the traditional mass media: magazines; newspapers; film; television; and radio.  It was the first book (and maybe still only) to examine how the media have treated the theme of diversity, not the depiction of specific diverse groups.  In other words, how have media provided an informal public multicultural education, for better and for worse?

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Authors A-H, Generational

Diversity and Speech Part 20: Communicating across Generations – by Carlos E. Cortés

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“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”

In those memorable opening lines of his novel, The Go-Between, writer L. P. Hartley captured many dilemmas.  The dilemma of memory.  The dilemma of change.   The dilemma of misunderstanding.

It also captured the dilemma of generations, particularly conversations across generations.  We did things differently then.  They do things differently now.   How are we going to help them understand what we experienced?  How are they going to help us understand what they are experiencing?
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