Category: Diversity and Inclusion
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Bias By Us: How Our Unconscious Programs Us to Harm the Other
Black, White, or Other? “Pedro, Pedro, go back to Mexico.” “Pedro, Pedro, go back to Mexico.” “Pedro, Pedro, go back to Mexico.” Being Black and growing up in the South—between Virginia and Mississippi—with a name like Pedro Senhorinha Ramos Montero Silva brought in many unwelcomed experiences in my life. One of which was the othering…
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History is Not a Competition
We are often led to believe that everything in our society is a competition. But some things aren’t. And history is one of them.
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Diversity and the Rightness of Being Wrong
Doing the Right Thing the Wrong Way Did you know that by doing the right thing the wrong way, you could do a lot more harm than good? You don’t have to look any further than the many tone deaf ad campaigns that somehow still make it out in the world and see that if…
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Fear of an Equitable Workplace (FEW) and the Quiet Quitting Deception
By now, you’ve probably come across a plethora of articles aiming to explain this seeming phenomena being touted as “quiet quitting” or “quitting in place”. As I see it, this label attributed to folks who–for the most part–have failed at QUIT QUITTING, is a way of adding fuel to the fire known as THE GREAT…
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What is Worth Knowing?: From a Knowledge Economy to a Know Less Economy
The fact is that many of us get overwhelmed trying to keep up with all of the information that is thrown at us. It’s challenging to figure out what’s worth knowing. So, many of us just decide to limit our sources to those that challenge us the least. We then convince ourselves that our limited…
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Despite Reverence for Variety and Diversity…
In reflection, I wonder if what makes so many “well meaning” folks show up so hypocritically (myself included) is the unexamined discriminatory brain function that tells me, “Weeds are magnificent models of creation and I don’t want them in my yard.”
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Bring Your Aliveness To All You Do
Right now what makes me come alive is helping other people come alive and helping organizations become spaces for cultivating aliveness among the members of their work community so that they can create products and services the world needs. Because when we bring our aliveness to all we do, it creates opportunities for flourishing for…
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Employment, Engagement, and Empowerment: The Way of Enough
When I entered seminary back in 2009, it was because, after working on a very disappointing Diversity Recruiting project with a certain company, I became convinced that a seminary degree would be just what I needed to “evangelize” the good news of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging in organizations. After all, at their best, I…
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Diversity and Subcultures: Lessons from the Bronies
Recently, when speaking at a TEDx MileHigh Rethink Event, I shared a humbling experience I had with the Brony subculture back in 2013 that helped expand my awareness of cultural formation and how gathering or collectivizing around a certain set of values helps people transcend divides. Although “corporate culture” has made its way into the…
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Two Ideas One Mind: The Vices and Virtues of Cognitive Dissonance
I sometimes wonder if hypocrisy comes from a person’s inability to harmonize the seemingly divergent awarenesses that arise as a result of them experiencing cognitive dissonance. Take for example someone like the segregationist Senator, Strom Thurmond who, despite adamantly advocating against civil rights for Black Americans and pushed for state’s rights to impose segregation, was…
The Roofless Church 