The subject areas listed below guide readers to content on this site that has been used to teach and reflect on topics in diversity & multiculturalism. Also, click below to find out more about…
Diversity Training.
Training, teaching, and thinking about diversity and multiculturalism entails learning about and celebrating our differences, often—though not always—pleasant tasks. Truly accepting, not just tolerating, our differences is harder. Harder still is dealing with racism.
Below racism is paired with “white privilege” for many reasons. Besides personal prejudice, racism involves profound and stunning systemic inequalities in economics, institutional structures, health, education, and much more that gives tremendous advantages to “whiteness”—which doesn’t just refer to skin color. Acknowledging this privilege, however, is one of the hardest things to do. Race relations would improve 100% overnight if we did. Race, however, has been called America’s “Original Sin” and is so difficult to talk about productively that we would rather talk about anything else—anything. I hope the material below opens up some space for discussion, no matter how difficult, and gives you ideas for your own thinking, teaching, and working on these important issues wherever you are.
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—Links go live when material becomes available—
These representative items link you to many others not listed here.
♦ DIVERSITY INITIATIVES and COURSES.
In INITIATIVES look especially at CORE and projects for the United Methodist Church, and in COURSES especially at Multicultural Literature, Global Literature, Sacred Texts, and the graduate courses The “Third World,” and Race, Ethnicity, and the American Experience.
♦ ARTS, ENTERTAINMENT, SPORTS
- Lincoln: Common Notions
- The Gateways Festival Orchestra: The Color of Concert Music
- Voices and Freedoms—a Radio Series on Jazz (links to excerpts of shows)
- Chris Rock: Nat X’s Top 5 Reasons Brothers Don’t Play Hockey
- Diversity USA: 2012 Olympics (Gabby Douglas, “White Studies”)
- Think Like a Man
- Green Book … and other Oscar winners that don’t hold up
- Django Unchained: Fantasies of Revenge
- Me and Brother Ray—5-part video series on Ray Charles
- The Genius Hits the Road: Ray Charles Down South?
- A radio show on the Blues.
- Gospel Extravaganza: 25 Years of Praise (includes Video)
- Brad Paisley’s “Accidentalism”
- “Authentic” World Music
- Filipinos in the Land of the Hyper-Real (includes Video)
♦ LITERATURE
- Black writers
- World writers, and writers from Chicago
- Black Writing from Chicago
- Lead post for The “Third World”
- James Baldwin — America’s preeminent writer on race touches virtually all areas on this page.
♦ RACISM, SLAVERY, WHITE PRIVILEGE
- The Cost of Racism: 16 Trillion Dollars
- Does It Matter If I’m a Racist? (Lead Post to a Series)
- Peggy McIntosh’s “Invisible Knapsack“
- Reparations
- Chris Rock: Racism Almost Over?
- Louis C.K. on Racism: So I guess we’re even? (includes Video)
- Turning a Corner on Racism
- Lena Dunham’s Privileged Girls: Duh?
- Language and Race: Mr. Jefferson’s Forced Labor Camp
- Slavery at Mr. Jefferson’s University (also addresses Education)
- Friendship and Race Relations (also addresses Religion & Society)
- Students “Write” Race and Diversity (links to student projects)
- Unpacking Racism (a series based on a UMC Laity Convocation)
♦ RELIGION, CULTURE, EDUCATION
- Remembering London
- Sermons: Pentecost Means No Supremacies and Theology and Race (includes videos)
- Miscegenation and Me
- A Return to Plessy vs. Ferguson (also addresses Inequality)
- Sacred Texts as Literature
- Why Muslims Can’t Be Good Americans
- New York Times “Asia” articles (addresses all items on this page)
- “Lift Every Voice:” Juneteenth 2021 (Lead post to a series)
- Writing About the Philippines
♦ INEQUALITY, SOCIETY, POLITICS
- Red State, Blue State, Civil War
- The Racial Wealth Gap and Home Ownership
- “Every Person’s God-Given Ability to Contribute” — The Neighbor Project is an organization dedicated to helping people build stability and wealth through home ownership. Lack of good home ownership opportunities is the single greatest driver of the wealth gap.
- Graphic Inequality: 1 inch vs. 5 miles
- MLK Jr: Why I Oppose the War (also addresses religion, includes Video)
- Trayvon Martin: “Race aside…” and the Limits of American Law
- Whitewashing the Great Depression
♦ DIVERSITY IN THE WORKPLACE
- Culture and Commerce
- Race and Business Branding (ah, Starbucks!)
- Websites on Workplace Diversity