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. Some people are reared in a strong religious tradition. Others with none. I grew up in a home with two faith traditions. To … Continue reading Diversity and Speech #25: Growing Up Bi-Religious – by Carlos E. Cortés
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 … Continue reading Diversity and Speech No. 24: Curse of the Floating Signifiers – by Carlos E. Cortés
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 … Continue reading Speech vs. Diversity, Diversity vs. Speech – by Carlos E. Cortés
In July, 2020, the two of us met for the first time as inaugural co-directors of the University of California, Riverside, School of Medicine’s new Health Equity, Social Justice, and Anti-Racism (HESJAR) curricular initiative. The school handed us those six words. The rest was up to us. We started by looking and listening. We looked … Continue reading Diversity and Speech Part 23: Health Equity – by Carlos E. Cortés and Adwoa Osei
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 … Continue reading Diversity and Speech Part 22: The Critical Race Theory Donnybrook – by Carlos E. Cortés
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 … Continue reading Diversity and Speech Part 21: Predicting the Future of Cultural Expression – 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 … Continue reading Diversity and Speech Part 20: Communicating across Generations – by Carlos E. Cortés
The theme for this month’s edition: what gender related issues should be addressed and how can they evolve productively? Let’s up the ante. What gender related issues must be addressed? Here’s one: transgender women in sports. Oh that all equity conflicts could be resolved simply by mouthing diversity clichés. Not this one. With regard to … Continue reading Diversity and Speech Part 19: The Gendered Sports Dilemma – by Carlos E. Cortés
Hate speech may be the thorniest point of contention between diversity advocates and free speech absolutists. Of course most people oppose hate and detest hate speech. But what should we do about it? That’s where disagreements begin. Let’s look at hate speech from four perspectives. Legal: what does the U.S. Constitution say about hate speech? … Continue reading Diversity and Speech Part 18: Hate Speech – by Carlos E. Cortés
2020 turned into a momentous year for diversity training. The COVID-19 pandemic forced many diversity trainers, myself included, to re-invent themselves by adapting their workshops into an online format. The Memorial Day killing of George Floyd thrust anti-racism into the center of diversity training, challenging those presenters who had generally soft-pedaled the issue. President Donald … Continue reading Diversity and Speech Part 17: Diversity Training – by Carlos E. Cortés
