Category Archives: About Us

About the American Diversity Report

Authors A-H, Authors R-Z, Healthcare, Of Women, The Arts

Arts in Health Inspire Women – by Nicole Brown and Chyela Rowe

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Arts in Health Program

Arts in healthWhy create an Arts in Health program for Mother’s Day? According to the CDC, women caregivers have a greater risk for poor physical and mental health, including depression and anxiety. Mothers have held such heavy weights this last year: from grieving losses to taking on more responsibilities such as managing work from home, additional hours for childcare, homeschooling, at-home nursing, coaching, offering tech support and much more. The presence of art and music in healthcare enhances the overall experience. It allows us to remove ourselves from whatever we’re battling to be motivated and inspired. 

Diverse partners joined together in Chattanooga, Tennessee, to inspire and support women and female artists for Mother’s Day and, most importantly, promote health and well-being through the Arts. The program included artwork by Alex Paul Loza, music by Shane Morrow and a presentation of new work from poet Erika Roberts in partnership with multiple organizations that will resonate with communities across the country.

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Culture, Levine articles, The Arts

Why I Support Arts Education – by Deborah Levine

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The Arts have existed since folks drew on cave walls and I suspect that there was some humming and harmony back in the day before song writing was a thing. Communal dancing around fires at night was an aboriginal celebration in humanity’s history. Artistic expression by individuals and groups seems to be embedded in our DNA. And one of the things that saved me when I first came to America as a kid, was this country’s passion for Arts and Culture.

Authors I-Q, Social Issues

The Impact of Images – by Kenyada Posey

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Cultural expressions, icons, and the arts have played a major role in how we’ve seen ourselves and others in the past, and can play a major part in bringing us together in the future. Before social media, newspapers and black and white television exposed us to the lives of others, arts, and society. Whether it be negatively or positively, music, TV, and movies and the imagery they evoke will continue to impact our society and the way we view community.

As a Black woman, the images shown in movies, TV, and mentioned in music has had a major impact on me and my self image.  Cultural expressions have seemingly been more negative than positive and date back to the runaway slave flyers posted around America a century or two ago. The image of the Black woman and Black man were usually exaggerated with a huge nose and a goofy-like look to depict ignorance. We have also seen the image of the angry Black woman plastered everywhere.
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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 R-Z, Social Issues

Try Heart Based Solutions – by Keith Thornton

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As we acknowledge our oftentimes dismissal of our societal commonalities, the human lineage possess generations of historical struggle in attempts to stem conflict born out of various differences and disputes.  The earliest inhabitants of our planet have always found clan like strength to endure as a species in spite of never ceasing conflict.  Fast forward to present day and on cue, we perpetuate all that has been done before us with seemingly the same results, unaware we have options to greatly change our human narrative.  As an alternative approach, to today’s hesitance to engage each other in a candid manner for solutions, we should consider to the merits of creative heart-based solution making as way to overcome social barriers.

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Authors A-H, Teams & Leaders

DEI in the Boardroom – by Dr. Deborah Ashton

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Equity Impacts Corporate Decisions

Why have diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) expertise in the Boardroom? Look at the controversy swirling around the Georgia’s voting law–the backlash, the boycott, and the backlash to the boycott. Georgia’s most vulnerable citizens lose from both the law and the boycott. I contend that if there had been DEI experts on the boards of the major corporations that traditionally lobbied in Georgia, this may have been averted. Corporations could have predicted how the passage and signing of the bill into law may have impacted their brand. While the bill was being crafted social justice concerns could have been addressed, along with concerns regarding voting integrity. When you are driving you slow down before you come to the hairpin curve rather than trying to correct for it afterward. I have always contended that we should resolve a problem before it begins.

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Authors A-H, Race & Ethnicity

The Wound that Will Not Heal – by Dianne Irvine Fleet

I am a 72-year-old well-educated, sad, tired and angry Black woman.  Let me tell you why I am so sad, tired and angry.

I am writing this in April, 2021, at the end of the prosecution’s case in the Chauvin trial.  For most Black Americans, the killing of George Floyd was like opening an old wound and picking at a scab again and again so that the wound never quite has a chance to heal.  The Chauvin trial has caused us to relive that terrible day and to realize that the wound has not yet healed.  You may not read this until the trial is over and the verdict is in, but, no matter the outcome, the wound will still be there.

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Authors A-H, Generational

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

“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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Authors A-H, Politics, Social Issues, Transforming

How I’m Trying to Make a Positive Difference – by Marc Brenman

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I’m trying to make a positive difference in American political life by investigating whether and how it’s possible to draw some Trump voters toward the political center. In November 2020, about 48% of American voters voted for Trump. Voting for Trump is a proxy measure for rightwing feelings and beliefs. Many of these beliefs are extreme. None contribute to the American Dream of fairness, equity, opportunity, equality, and compassion, or the Good Society. Do we want to live in a permanently ideologically divided country, with the risk of civil war?
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Authors I-Q, Transforming, Trends 2021

How Will You Toast The 2020s? – by Martin Kimeldorf

Cocktail party discussions in the rambunctious boom years of the 1960s often ended in dark pronouncements for the next century. Upward trending population growth graphs collided with downward bar charts displaying resource depletion. A few brave souls uttered dark prophecies for the 2020s. They whispered about a world landscape filled with economic and environmental collapse. They claimed this would create a breeding ground for pandemics that would challenge our very survival.

America loves to terrorize and confine itself with a bipolar view of the world.  The Ozzie-and-Harriet voices in our heads droned on with happy-talk. In George Jetson cartoons, we imagined escaping traffic gridlock in our flying cars.  At the same time a Civil Defense doomsday voice commanded us to “duck and cover” beneath atomic mushroom clouds. Eventually Twilight Zone voices questioned these comedic survival tactics.
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