My husband slid down the stairs this morning as he excitedly yelled to me, “You are never going to believe what the Mayor of East Haven said!” East Haven is a small town in Connecticut that is infamous for racial insensitivity.  East Haven’s reputation amongst people of color r/… Read full post »

Breast Cancer Awareness Month is marked by a number of quiet contradictions. Pink, a color which once connoted naïve girlie softness, was reclaimed and is the symbol of women on a mission to stamp out breast cancer by any means necessary. We laugh with newly made friends as we participate in… Read full post »

Imagine being a an 18-year old college student and hearing your professor say that Latinas are dressed more “provocatively” than women in the United States. That was a reality for students at the University of Florida (UF) when Timothy Taylor, a professor of food and resource economics at… Read full post »

Yesterday seemed like a day of zero-sum games. When I asked my Legal Aspects of Human Resources class to describe the role of today’s HR manager, my students painted HR managers as either a watchdog for the company or an employee advocate. When, I spoke with first- year medical students about… Read full post »

Last Saturday, Ines Sainz, a woman reporter for Mexico’s Azteca TV became the fresh meat of the Jets locker room.  As she tried to do her job as a reporter, she was interrupted by lewd sexual comments by some of the players.  While most of the reports about this story have/… Read full post »

When the news leaked that President Obama’s Chief of Staff called liberals an expletive laden form of “retards”, I remembered a similarly clumsy incident with a diversity officer for a major corporation.

During a diversity event to highlight the achievements of the company… Read full post »

So, by now you have probably heard the jokes and fallout over MSNBC political pundit Chris Matthews’ “postracial” comment.  In a moment of frat boy giddiness, an amped up Matthews was so excited by the greatness of the President’s State of the Union address that he &ldquo/… Read full post »

Last Thursday, I huddled around a big bowl of microwave popcorn ready to dismiss ABC’s new show about young good looking lawyers as dangerous fiction that falsely lures smart college kids who sucked at math to pursue law.  However, there is a kernel of reality in this show that every black/… Read full post »

After 24 years of celebrating Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, I should have a game plan for how I want to celebrate this holiday—but I don’t.  

Life was much simpler in 1986 when the holiday was signed into law and observed.  I was/… Read full post »

I have to admit that there are benefits to being a man’s man. When my cousin, one of the most macho men I know, heard about Tiger’s 2 a.m. car crash, he confidently said, “I bet you there’s another woman involved.”  My cousin could have broken the story that has mon… Read full post »

I recently came across a survey of the top ten stressors during the holidays. Surprise, family was ranked as one of our top ten stressors.  As a diversity attorney, this makes perfect sense to me.

Diversity in our families is often eschewed.  Let’s be honest, rarely do we think of… Read full post »

During a recent trip to Chile, I had an interesting conversation with a Brazilian traveler about—of course—ethnicity and class.  When we landed on the topic of race, he could not understand why Americans use race as a prefix for our nationality—for example, Black American, Asia… Read full post »

I’m usually the last person to hear about pop culture scandals and other news I can’t use. When Dreamgirls star Jennifer Hudson and VH-1 reality contestant “Punk” had a baby last month, I was shocked. When I watched this year’s MTV Video Music Awards, I wondered who the… Read full post »

September seemed like the month where we should have been sending some adults back to school—obedience school. We had Kanye West, the self-appointed arbiter of good music, snatching microphones out of MTV music award winners’ hands. We had Joe Wilson, today’s most popular Congressm… Read full post »

Over a week ago, Joe Wilson, the Congressman from South Carolina, hurled the heckle heard around the world--and we’re still talking about it. Post outburst, he stands by calling the President a liar and believes that the healthcare bill would be wrong for the American people because of provisio… Read full post »

After President Obama’s historic election win, the premature declaration of the day was that America was a post racial society.  Both, the well meaning and impatient, were eager to put America’s shameful history of discrimination and harassment against racial groups—particularl… Read full post »

Teacher U, a collaboration of teaching organizations—including Teach for America—made a frail attempt to exhume the 1990’s Ebonics debacle by acknowledging African American English in their training curriculum.  After having their teachers-in-training read the article,… Read full post »

Last week, as I was piecing together a diversity training presentation, I came across my “Two Wongs Don’t Make a White” slide.  This corny play on words was used as a t-shirt graphic by the clothing company Abercrombie & Fitch in the earlier part of this decade. Thank goodn… Read full post »

Yesterday, I cheered when I read the transcript of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's response when a student asked about Bill Clinton's thoughts on foreign policy. Her words crisply asserted that she was the Secretary of State and that she would not be "channeling" her husband's thoughts on any fo… Read full post »

Earlier this week I realized how easy it is to throw out an affirmative action baby with the bathwater.  I took a day off from my diversity consulting practice to participate in a mock interview session for an organization that provides mentoring and other support for attorneys of color. I sat… Read full post »

My husband has often tried to convince me that men are simple to understand. For the most part, they are motivated by their sexual desires. Each time I try to argue with him otherwise, a man proves me wrong. This time it was Donny Deutsch.

Yesterday morning, on… Read full post »

Last night’s teachable moment was a bust for me.  My grandiose expectations in the days leading up to what was supposed to be a conciliatory meeting were steadily deflated. The meeting, which some viewed as a grown-up way of dealing with a tense issue that was blown out of proportion, was… Read full post »

Thomas Friedman probably did not intend to offer any insights about white-male bias in yesterday’s New York Times Op-ed “59 is the new 39,” but the diversity consultant in me could not ignore how his underlying theme explained why diversity is a dilemma in Corporate America and law… Read full post »

After gathering the pertinent facts surrounding last week’s arrest of distinguished Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates—reading the police report, reviewing Massachusetts’ disorderly conduct statute, and watching the Cambridge police’s press conference—I’m confiden… Read full post »

Ornery senators and the cable news pundits don’t know what to make of her. We’ve all heard about her passion on the bench and this so-called temperament, but all we’ve seen during the Sotomayor Senate confirmation hearings is a serious jurist who describes her commitment to the rule… Read full post »