Proliferation is an appropriate word to describe what is happening in many sectors of society under the heading of “managing diversity.” Most weeks bring to my desk a new announcement about another group that is offering to do “diversity training.” Read on…
In the last three or four years there has been a rapid growth in stated concerns for issues of “diversity” in many areas of society. Partly in response to demographic projections for the early twenty-first century there is an almost hectic move to “diversify” Boards and staffs of innumerable organizations. Read on…
To work with the urban poor to fashion a vision of wholeness of human life against the realities of economic, racial and social injustice; to hold that vision and its responsibilities before the churches of the U.C.C. and the people of Metropolitan Boston; and to work with the urban poor towards the fulfillment of that vision. Read on…
Frequently I hear someone refer to a person or a group of people as being “nonwhite,” and it usually leads me to plead that we identify people by what they are rather than by what they are not. Read on…
Every once in a while I read about a phenomenon which is described as the “new” racism. That sends my thoughts racing, trying to figure out what is “new” about the action being described. Soon my thoughts go in two contrary directions: one direction tells me that there is no such thing as a “new” racism, and the other acknowledges that maybe there is. Read on…
As I have come to see the depth and breadth of racism in our society, I have often found myself reaching for analogies which help me to understand how to break the tenacious grip by which racism holds us in bondage. Read on…
Recently, I saw an editorial in the Boston Globe (September 21, 1986), in which there was comment on a suggestion which Andrew Young evidently made about choosing a new United States Ambassador to South Africa. The editorial says, “A converted racist would be the ideal person to deal with the bigots in Pretoria.” Read on…
“Oh! Incidentally …” You’ve heard that or said something like it many times. You may have been talking with someone and the conversation suddenly called to your mind another concern about which you had forgotten. You mention it, while you are thinking of it … “Oh, incidentally … that reminds me … I just remembered …” Read on…
When I publish my dictionary, I will leave out the word “minorities.” That will not be a popular thing to do, Read on…
I felt as if I had stepped into a time machine and been thrust backward at least twenty years! It was early morning, in late July 1980, and I was walking across the Boston public gardens when a black woman friend greeted me, and pushed a local paper into my hands. “How do you respond to this?” Read on…