In case you didn’t know, September 12 is the start of HHM (Hispanic Heritage Month). And I’ll be completely honest with you, readers – I missed writing something uniquely significant and celebratory about HHM and other heritage months over the past few years. To be clear, I’m not Hispanic by birth, although that doesn’t matter, nevertheless I still regret missing that annual opportunity.
Continue reading Mr. and Mrs. President, tear down those border walls – by Terry Howard
Throughout history, political discourse in the United States has oscillated between civility and conflict. There were notable times when individuals from opposing perspectives engaged in constructive debate, exemplified by the 1965 exchange between author James Baldwin and conservative commentator William F. Buckley Jr., as well as the bipartisan relationships of leaders such as Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill during the 1980s. Yet, it is important to recognize that political violence is deeply rooted in the nation’s origins. The American Revolution itself was marked by actions that, had they failed, would have been deemed treasonous. As we complain about masks being worn to hide the perpetrator’s identity, colonists dressed up as Native Americans when they engaged in the Boston Tea Party. Hiding one’s identity is not new.
Continue reading Political Violence & Inclusion – by Deborah Ashton
For nearly a year I’ve been going through an out-of-body experience. It was launched by a simple request that has turned into a not-so-simple journey. Here’s what happened.
In the fall of 2024, Steven Mandeville-Gamble, Director of the University of California, Riverside, Library, asked me to donate my professional papers to the library’s Special Collections. Feeling quite honored, I agreed. Since then I have been preparing my papers for delivery. This has involved months of wading through file cabinets, bookcases, and stacks of boxes crammed with books, articles, correspondence, course notes, past public lectures, workshop outlines, video and audio tapes, and published and unpublished manuscripts.
Continue reading Renewing Diversity Part 9: Rediscovering My Professional Journey – by Carlos Cortés
“It’s hard to know when to respond to the seductiveness of the world and when to respond to its’ challenge. If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But, I arise in the morning torn between the desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day”.
~ E. B. White
Somewhere around 1970 I came across the notion of self-help support groups for the unemployed. They reported remarkable results so I set the task of translating this into a workbook for young adults: Job Search Education. The success of that title brought me some 20+ book contracts of various topics from leisure wellness, to intergenerational programing, to mixology. It’s been a grand trip…and now as I take step back in the last quarter of my life I have found the value in writing one last “resume”. It is directed not at future employers; it is simply a summation for myself. It may inspire you to do the same.
I plotted out an outline that contained the following categories:
Without further ado about nothing (See Shakespeare’s play with that title), I’ll proceed with samples and words.
Continue reading Your final job interview is with yourself – by Martin Kimeldorf
The Jewish New Year is upon us, but may not feel like new, with vaccines being banned and Trump destroying democracy, making Americans hungrier, dumber, sicker, less safe, and more prone to natural disasters. He’s facing more days in court, alas with a Get Out of Jail Free card form the Supreme Court, which has absented itself from the Constitution. The book of Proverbs says, “To do righteousness and justice is preferred by God above sacrifice” (Proverbs 21:3). The psalmist exhorts: “Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute” (Psalms 82:3).
Fall is the beginning of the Jewish High Holy day of Rosh Hashanah. It means “the head of the year.” Some say it’s the birthday of the universe, the day God created Eve and Adam.
A RACE TO FRUITION OR A FIGHT TO THE DEATH?
In chapter one of his book, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose, Eckhart Tolle writes about “The Flowering of Human Consciousness”, using as a metaphor the appearance of the first flower on the planet as a seminal event in the evolution of the flora with which we humans are most familiar and, nowadays, take almost universally for granted. But the event, deemed somewhat insignificant in the history of the planet, is monumental in that it signals a growth in a direction of fantastic beauty and presence that enhances the very being of the planet itself and its human occupants.
Continue reading A Brief History of Humankind – by William Hicks
I begin this piece with a test on your ability to immediately recognize the names of the following five prominent Black women in the United States. Any luck?
Lisa Cook, Federal Reserve Board member
Latitia James Attorney General, New York
Ketanji Brown-Jackson, U.S. Supreme Court Justice
Stacey Abrams, former Georgia State Representative
Jasmine Crockett, Texas State Representative
Continue reading The Realities of Dark-Skinned Black Women – by Terry Howard
This year, I had the opportunity to teach Intergroup Relations at the University of Toronto as a part-time instructor. It was a new and enriching experience. While at the University of Rhode Island, I once took a course titled Non-Violence and Conflict Reconciliation—at the request of a friend. Since then, I’ve been deeply interested in issues of social harmony and justice. The question of how we can build peace in our society has often occupied my thoughts. Initially, the plan was to teach a different subject. But quite unexpectedly, I found myself teaching this course at a time when divisions between groups—across the world—are becoming sharper. Conflicts based on ideologies, religions, and identities continue to shape current political realities. The urgency of improving intergroup relations is not just felt in North America, but equally in India and elsewhere, I was born in India and I closely observe the socio-political issues pertaining to both societies.
Continue reading Intergroup Relations – by Debanjan Barthakur
Call me stuck in stereotypes, a time warp, “la la” land or whatever, but when I peered out the windshield at the sign “Welcome to Montgomery,” well the truth is that my racial anxieties set in, emotions no different than those when we first approached the Edmund Pettus Bridge crossing into Selma a few years ago. My knowledge of history and caution kicked in so I decided to make sure we adhered to local speed limits.
Okay, to be honest, when I think about Montgomery, Alabama, I think about Rosa Park and her refusal to take a back seat on a bus that led to a yearlong boycott and the rise into preeminence of its chief architect, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I thought about Governor George Wallace’s “segregation now, segregation forever” failed promise. Now all that doesn’t make me delusional; no, it makes me wary.
So, with that as an entre, this narrative is about our recent visit to the Legacy Museum in Montgomery and the nearby Freedom Monument Sculpture Park and National Museum of Peace and Justice.
Continue reading Legacy Museum and the Institution of Slavery – by Terry Howard
It is important to know the difference between being good and being nice. Good people are not always nice. And nice people are not always good. Being nice is easy and being good is fierce hard work.
The question is, do you choose to be a good person or a nice person? Pope Francis, who we lost on Easter Monday chose to be a good person he understood that which is preached in 1 John 3:18, good deeds make a difference, in the vernacular talk is cheap. We are what we do, and good people do good deeds.
Continue reading The Difference Between Good and Nice – by Deborah Ashton
