John Carroll University Division of
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
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Volume 4, Issue 5: July 22, 2021 |
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R.I.S.E.* Up Newsletter
*Reinforcing Inclusion through Skill-building and Education
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This week we are mourning the loss of another important leader of the Civil Rights Movement. Gloria Richardson, once described as "the lady general of civil rights" by Ebony magazine, died on Tuesday at age 99. Richardson was the first woman outside of the Deep South to lead a grassroots civil rights campaign.
Born to a wealthy family in Cambridge, Maryland and educated at Howard University, Richardson became an activist at age 40 out of a desire to protect the teens and young adults -- her daughter among them – who were experiencing violence at the hands of police and white residents while protesting segregation in Cambridge. She quickly became a leader in her local desegregation movement and rose to national prominence due to her sharp political acumen, confrontational tactics, and uncompromising approach, a position which alienated moderates and earned her admiration from more militant leaders such as Stokely Carmichael and Malcolm X.
“She is not as well known because she was a woman who was feisty and who refused to back down,” Lopez Matthews Jr., a historian and digital production librarian at Howard University, said of Richardson. “As a society, we tend not to value those traits in women. But it made her a great leader in the civil rights movement, because she didn’t back down."
Richardson was scheduled to address the crowd at the historic 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (where Martin Luther King famously gave his "I Have a Dream" speech). However, a march leader took her microphone away after uttering only the word "Hello,” apparently out of concern that her remarks might be too incendiary. Only one other woman (Daisy Bates) addressed the march that day, in a short speech of less than two minutes.
Just as Gloria Richardson and other women were sidelined at the March on Washington, her leadership also often goes unrecognized when the history of the Civil Rights movement is told. While many important women and LGBTQ+ leaders in the Civil Rights movement were relegated to organizing roles “behind the scenes,” Richardson stayed visible as the leader of her local desegregation movement for as long as she felt she was needed, then went on to spend the rest of her life working as a civil servant addressing the “bread and butter” issues of systemic racism – the issues that are being raised today by a new generation of activists in the Black Lives Matter movement. In a 2020 interview, she made this connection explicit: “Even today, until everyone is on the same plane, then the fight continues. This fight is still the same fight as before.”
As we continue together in the struggle to build a more just and equitable society, we honor the consistency of Gloria Richardson’s fiery legacy by sharing her advice to today’s activists: “Fight for what you believe in, but stop being so nice.”
You can learn more about -- and from -- Gloria Richardson at these links:
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Sincerely,
Tiffany Galvin Green, Ph.D.,
Vice President for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
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6-Week Reflection Series on the Spiritual Work of Racial Justice
Thursdays, July 22-August 26, 12-1 pm
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It's not too late to join us for our upcoming six-week Reflection Series following the meditations set forth in The Spiritual Work of Racial Justice: A Month of Meditations with Ignatius of Loyola, newly published by Patrick Saint-Jean, SJ, PsyD, of Creighton University.
This book, following the traditional month-long Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius, provides four weeks' worth of reflections. The summer 2021 reflection series will cover the first "week" of the book's meditations - one "day" per week -- in order to allow for deeper reflection, engagement and discussion of each individual topic.
This program is open to faculty, staff and graduate students and is worth 70 DEI Champion points. Each participant will receive a copy of the book to keep.
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Faculty/Staff Members: Become a Title IX Officer! |
The Title IX Office is seeking faculty/staff volunteers to serve as Title IX Officers for the 2021-2022 academic year.
These Title IX Officers will be trained to assist in the resolution of cases under the university’s Interim Sexual Harassment & Interpersonal Violence Policy. After attending training, Title IX Officers will be eligible to serve as investigators, hearing panel members, appeal review panel members, process advisors, and/or informal resolution facilitators.
Annual training will take place in August. There will be additional recommended training opportunities for Title IX Officers throughout the year, but they will be optional.
You’ll always be asked whether you have the capacity and availability to serve in any of the above-mentioned roles – participation is never required.
To express interest or learn more, contact Dan Fotoples, Title IX Coordinator, at titleix@jcu.edu, or click the link below. |
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This week, the Muslim and Druze members of our JCU community are celebrating the important holiday of Eid al-Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice, which commemorates the story of Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son to God, and God's intervention to save the son by giving Abraham an animal to sacrifice in his place.
Eid al-Adha begins on the 10th day of the lunar month of Dhul-Hiija, the month of the Hajj (the annual pilgrimage Muslims make to Mecca) and is customarily celebrated with family gatherings and the exchange of gifts and sweets. There is also a ritual animal sacrifice, with the meat of the sacrifice divided such that one-third is given to the family offering the sacrifice, with the rest distributed to others, especially to the poor, to ensure that everyone in the community has enough to eat on this day.
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R.I.S.E. Higher: Featured Article of the Week |
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Classic Books or Diverse Books?
Roosevelt Montás, The Chronicle of Higher Education, July 19, 2021
... The choice between classic texts or diverse texts in general education is a false one.
We must teach the canon not instead of a diverse set of voices but as the precursor to that diversity and the values that sustain it. And this should be the backbone of general education — an education not only for traditional elites but for students from marginalized communities as well. It is as much a mistake to think that students from underrepresented backgrounds can see themselves only in texts written by people who look like them as it is to assume that texts that reflect our diversity can speak powerfully only to students who share the authors’ backgrounds.
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Idiomatic expression.
Describes a position of low status within a hierarchical organizational structure.
"I wasn't part of the board meeting; I guess I'm too low on the totem pole to be invited."
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A totem pole is a traditional sacred object among the Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest. It is a carved monument, usually made from a red cedar tree, carved with figures representing ancestors, legends, historical events, and/or deities.
The relative height of these various images does not, in fact, depict any kind of hierarchy (though some carvers will place the most significant figure near the bottom, at eye level). To describe one’s own place in a workplace hierarchy by reference to a totem pole, therefore, is not only a problematic reference to another culture's sacred object; it is also comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of the object itself.
Settler colonialism in the Pacific Northwest brought with it a hostility to totem poles and other Indigenous religious customs, dismissed by white Christian settlers as “uncivilized" and "heathenish." Laws in the U.S. and Canada were passed banning many Native religious ceremonies and customs - laws that, in some cases, remained on the books as late as the 1940's. As a result, thousands of sacred items and ceremonial regalia, including totem poles, were stolen and sold to museums and private collectors, or destroyed outright.
Read more about this topic here:
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The "Watching our Words" feature discusses words or phrases in common use in American English with derogatory or offensive origins or meanings. Do you have a word or phrase you'd like us to feature in "Watching our Words"? Drop it into our Suggestion Box and we will explore it in a future newsletter!
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Announcements from our network... |
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Hough Uprising: Then and Now
TONIGHT, July 22, 7:30-9:00 pm ET | online via Facebook Live
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The Next 400 Digital Roundtable with WOIO 19 discusses the anniversary of the Hough Uprising in Cleveland 55 years ago, and takes a look at the revitalization of the neighborhood. |
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Author Claudia Rankine: on writing about race in America
July 24, 7:00-8:30 pm ET | online
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Keynote speaker Claudia Rankine will talk with ideastream reporter Shelli Reeves about her writing and read from her book Just Us: An American Conversation, which uses essays, poems, and images to urge us to break silences around race and white supremacy and begin the discussions that might open pathways through this divisive and stuck moment in American history. This event is presented by the Cleveland Public Library as part of the 2021 Inkubator Cleveland writing conference.
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Quick takes: DEI in the headlines |
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Last week, the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities joined 23 higher education organizations as a coalition to launch the new national #DoublePell campaign, urging Congress to double the Federal Pell Grant. Jesuit college and university presidents across the country have participated by lobbying members of Congress as well as writing op-eds in local and national publications. The coalition hopes to raise awareness of the importance of Pell grants to help enhance access to college, increase student retention, and stimulate the national economy.
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Students attending public community colleges in California will soon be required to take an ethnic studies course in order to receive a degree. The Community Colleges Board of Governors approved the requirement this week. The studies will focus on four "historically defined racialized groups," including Native Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, and Latin Americans. Community colleges in the state are targeting Fall 2022 as the start date for the new courses, which are in line with requirements in the California State University system. (From INSIGHT into Diversity newsletter)
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Video of the Week:
"How Life Looks Through My ‘Whale Eyes’"
In a short documentary, filmmaker James Robinson devises a few experiments to help his family experience his disability — and show how a little imagination can make us all more empathetic.
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Podcast of the Week:
The Ezra Klein Show: "Ibram X. Kendi on What Conservatives -- and Liberals -- Get Wrong About Antiracism."
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Noted author Ibram X. Kendi joins Ezra Klein for a discussion about antiracist policy issues ranging from police defunding to open borders and interest rates, the research on corporate diversity and inclusion trainings, the political tradeoffs of Barack Obama’s presidency, the cases where a policy might reduce racial inequality but the backlash to it might increase it, the right-wing assault on critical race theory, visions of a positive-sum racial future and much more. |
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Other articles we're reading this week ...
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