Category: Strategies for Diversity and Inclusion

“Whom Must We Hire?” The Top 5 Questions Every College or University Should be Asking Itself (Part 3 of a 5 Part Series)

Posted on by treasureshieldsredmond
You have just finished making love to your beautiful third wife, who happens to be a 20-year old Sports Illustrated swimsuit model when you feel it. The unmistakable stutter thump of heart palpitations. You break out in a cold sweat, and a bracing pain in your lower left jaw strips you of the abi...

Who Are We, Really? The Five Questions Every College or University Should Ask Itself (PART TWO OF A FIVE PART SERIES)

Posted on by treasureshieldsredmond
Support and love are interchangeable words. And like love, support is an action word. Love without action is empty. It’s just fondness. Or maybe the absence of intentional harm. To this end, many organizations think support means to have good thoughts about, or good feelings toward, or not to b...

Are We Racist? The Five Questions Every College or University Should Ask Itself (A FIVE PART SERIES)

Posted on by treasureshieldsredmond
I have taught at colleges and universities for 15 years — art schools, community colleges, universities, even college age students in a prison — and what I’ve come to realize is that the U.S. system of colleges and universities or “The Academy,” as we like to call it, operates as a citizen in...

Top 5 Reasons Why I Prefer an Anti-racist ACCOMPLICE to an “Ally.”

Posted on by treasureshieldsredmond
In this podcast I breakdown why anti-racist ACCOMPLICE is preferable to “ally.”  I would love to hear your feedback!   _________________________________________________________________________ Paulo Friere wrote, “Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless mea...

Is there Such a Thing as a Poor White Progressive?

Posted on by treasureshieldsredmond
“We po’.” Almost everyday, my grandmother would say this simple sentence. The missing verb served to make it more immediate, like a simple equation. “We po’.” We equaled poor. Sometimes she said it in response to the evening news when groups of white men argued in Washington, DC about...

Representation Matters

Posted on by treasureshieldsredmond
I threw the bodiless blonde in the trunk of the car, hoping I’d disposed of it in such a way as to not draw attention to her abrupt disappearance. This was late night espionage. I drove around for days like this. I imagined her painted smile, and her pastel blue eyes with their fixed stare. […]...

Intimate Partner Violence as an Issue of Workplace Diversity

Posted on by treasureshieldsredmond
It wasn’t this picture that fell out of the dead man’s pocket, but it was one very much like it. When I was in the first grade, a friend of my mother’s boyfriend, a man who had sat at our table and had eaten in our home, murdered his girlfriend and then committed suicide. My […]

When Your Colleagues Just Don’t Get Diversity & Inclusion

Posted on by treasureshieldsredmond
Your company, or your school, or your non-profit claims they are “committed to diversity,” but by the look of things you can’t tell.  And the truth is, the “Strategic Plan” seems to be to talk about diversity until it’s time to revisit the strategic plan. Or even worse, your colleagues thinking...

No, People of Color are Not Here to “Spice Things Up”

Posted on by treasureshieldsredmond
In the days after the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, I posted the following on Facebook: “I wake up to a world where a black led group I was a part of told the white governor to his face: we don’t trust you. I wake up to a black president who delegated a […]

The FEMININE PRONOUN SERIES #2: Traveling Through Illinois to Read My Poetry

Posted on by treasureshieldsredmond
#2 in the FEMININE PRONOUN Series. This video is about Traveling Through Illinois to Read My Poetry. I am listed with Illinois Humanities as a “Road Scholar.” My book is available at via Argus House Press.