Mea Culpa
Almost daily I tell folks in my workshops and discussions that it’s okay to make mistakes. When we talk about topics like race, gender, sexuality and other social categories, it’s […]
Tag Archives: race
Invitation to Discomfort
For the first time since the slaughter of the children at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, hearing news made me cry. Make no mistake there has been a nonstop […]
Carrot and Stick
I don’t know about you but I seem to have an almost magical ability to catalog every moment in my life where I fell short. All those times I was […]
Blindspot
Watching the students who survived the school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School become activists has both been beautiful and heartening. Seeing their grief and outrage evolve into a […]
Job vs Career
When I tell the story of my career path I often use the image of a mosaic. I sometimes use the words “Once upon a time…” to help bridge the […]
The Sum of Our Parts
I live in a segregated neighborhood. That may seem like an odd way to describe my corner of our racially and socio-economically diverse inner-ring suburb, but the truth is I […]
Burning Down the House
While I was facilitating a discussion about race this week it came up that some people “didn’t want to get into it” because black people are “always so angry.” There’s […]
Talking About Race
Given their druthers race is not usually the go to conversation topic for most people. It’s not hard to understand really, when you think about the ever present fear of […]
The Right to Be Right
The comment was “Anyone who doesn’t think we are living in a police state is deluding themselves.” It was made in response to the video of the public defender who […]
Claudette Colvin, Rosa Parks and the Brutal Truth of Video
There is a moment in every public discussion of race where the topic is no longer the justice or injustice of an action, the existence of structural discrimination, or lack […]
Bias and Believing
Thank god for cell phones. The images of the protests and police reaction in Ferguson, Missouri over the past week are grotesquely similar to images from the civil rights confrontations […]
No Duty To Retreat
An uncomfortable truth is hidden under the national discussion about music being played too loud, and the hoodies that criminals wear. Racism is not going anywhere. I feel this observation […]
Context Matters
Context matters. Until it doesn’t. Watching and listening to the story unfold of how NFL player Richie Incognito bullied and used racial slurs against teammate Jonathan Martin, I noticed a […]
Deserving Poor
If there is one phrase I could will out of existence it would be “the deserving poor.” Amidst endless obfuscation and obstruction of the Affordable Care Act and the de-funding […]
Hoodie
I have been struggling to write about the George Zimmerman verdict while I got my thoughts together. Unfortunately, even though this post has been in draft since 7/15, my thoughts […]
