According to the CDC, black women are three times more likely to die after childbirth than white women in the United States. This is a statistic I read in an NPR article in 2021, titled “Trying To Avoid Racist Health Care, Black Women Seek Out Black Obstetricians.” I was shocked to read how many Black women are met with discrimination, or simply do not feel safe in the care of non-Black physicians. The article explains that black patients are often under-treated, having their pain ignored and are less frequently referred for specialty care, which usually occurs due to an unconscious bias held by doctors.
Continue reading Representation matters, even in medicine – by Peyton Schultz
Category Archives: Transforming
Projects that are making a difference, improving lives, and building communities.
Brands overusing LGBTQ+ Pride Campaigns – by Chloe Atkinson
It’s not a secret that the LGBTQ+ has faced an extremely long and strenuous journey regarding equality. The road that the group continually travels is paved with hate crimes, betrayal, self-denial, and various other guttural pains. That’s why, for many members of the LGBTQ+ and its supporters, the initial acceptance and usage of same-sex celebratory branding and advertising was exciting. However, less than 8 short years after nationwide marriage equality was enacted, brands are overusing and oversimplifying LGBTQ+ content for marketing purposes. In practicing what some call “Rainbow-Washing,” brands have taken a form of allyship and tacked a price tag onto it.
Continue reading Brands overusing LGBTQ+ Pride Campaigns – by Chloe Atkinson
Propaganda and Re-education: Ritchie Boy Lessons – by Deborah Levine
How do they hate us? Let me count the ways. There’s Holocaust denial, Nazi memes, attacks by Supremacists, far-right conspiracies, and victimization appropriations. Ironically, Russia which was the source of a favorite Nazi propaganda, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, recently joined that list. Russia’s Foreign Minister, furious with their isolation and Ukraine support, compared Western leaders to Hitler who “wanted a ‘final solution’ to the Jewish question.”
Continue reading Propaganda and Re-education: Ritchie Boy Lessons – by Deborah Levine
African American History Month – by Eva Jo (Saddler) Johnson
African American History (AAH) Celebrations for decades have been designated to the month of February, mostly. I remember when invited the very few African American Educators’ staff members and our high school’s English Department Chairperson this was two years after I was hired in the state of Connecticut and after my college graduation.
We staff members were well aware that no knowledge or acknowledgement of African American History lessons were being incorporated or extra-curriculum programs into our school’s educational classroom goals and activities.
Continue reading African American History Month – by Eva Jo (Saddler) Johnson
Ron “The Banner” DeSantis! – by Terry Howard
Doggonit Ron DeSantis, so-called “governor” of the great state of Florida. You just can’t seem to let well enough alone, can you? Your obsessive thirst for power and a move to the White House knows no boundary. Here you go again with another asinine effort to “ban” something, this time the teaching of an AP African American History course to be taught in Florida public high schools.
Now if memory serves me correct, it was not that long ago when you got your jollies off by banning books and – the absurdity of all absurdities – banning the word “gay.” There’s something pathological sick about your weird penchant for banning stuff.
Continue reading Ron “The Banner” DeSantis! – by Terry Howard
Bridging the Choice Chasm – by Dr. Shalini Nag and Surya Guduru
A path to a sustainable future
As we get look ahead to 2023, sustainability takes center stage, yet again. Can we really achieve a sustainable future? Today, we posit that we can, if we are able to apply the equity and inclusion lens to the problem and bridge the Choice Chasm – the seemingly unbridgeable gap between the haves and the have-nots, between developed and developing nations, between incumbent practices and emerging norms.
Aftershocks from the Covid19 pandemic exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, combined with climate chaos made 2022 a chronicle of global challenges. These include the intermittent resurgence of Covid variants, the mental health epidemic, continued supply chain disruptions, internal displacement in Ukraine, worsening food crisis in the world’s most vulnerable regions, and a global energy crisis. By October 2022, weather disasters alone cost nearly 20,000 lives and 30 billion dollars, refocusing governments and organizations alike on sustainability.
Continue reading Bridging the Choice Chasm – by Dr. Shalini Nag and Surya Guduru
Increased Youth Engagement and Educational Productivity – by Ainesh Dey
Abstract
“Education is a passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those, who prepare for it today”, as proclaimed by eminent civil rights activist, Malcolm X, bears a deeper intellectual connotation. It brings out the very holistic foundation of education as an instrument of social awareness and development, with a subtle mention of its contemporary beneficiaries, “the Youth”. Yes, it is the young people who through their rational interpretation of core educational principles, harness the progressive socio-political development of the world.
The recent phenomenon of the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent shift to the digital mode of learning, have accentuated the need for increased efforts towards larger educational accessibility, quality and affordability, central to the role of global development in complete coherence with the recently initiated in the “Education for All” under the broader purview of the “Millennium Development Goals”, laid out by the United Nations, thereby demanding more nuanced responsibility of the young blood in spearheading a meaningful atmosphere of social inclusion , cohesion and stability.
Continue reading Increased Youth Engagement and Educational Productivity – by Ainesh Dey
EHLI: Inclusive or Elitism – by Dr. Deborah Ashton
Stanford University’s Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative (EHLI)
Stanford University in December of 2022 issued the Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative (EHLI) to eliminate potentially harmful terms used in the United States within the technology community. Most of the recommendations are trying to avoid trivializing people’s experiences and avoid devaluing others. Other recommendations, from this reader’s experience, are a stretch and assume that we are not able to distinguish the context in which a word or phrase is used.
The EHLI is a courageous and noble endeavor. I would also argue it is US-centric, Anglophilia, and elitist! And may or may not be transferrable to the larger society.
The following is a sampling of the terms/phrases in the EHLI’s thirteen pages of terms and my reaction to them.
Continue reading EHLI: Inclusive or Elitism – by Dr. Deborah Ashton
Remember the Holocaust and Lives Lost – by Rabbi Dr. Bernhard Rosenberg
I have furnished Rabbis, educators, and Holocaust commissions and libraries with a life time of readings, sermons, essays and poems which hopefully will be used for generations to come.
Hey Nancy, got a sec? – by Terry Howard
Here’s my question to the men who are about to read this piece:
Based on what you know for sure, or have been fed by the media about her, if you were to find yourself seated next to Nancy Pelosi on a five-hour cross country plane ride and initiated the conversation, what would you talk about, avoid talking about and why?
So how about I give you, say, one minute to absorb and craft your answer to that question. Go ahead. No, wait, on second thought hold off on your answer until the end of this narrative.