Black folk and other marginalized groups all over have asked for centuries, without a clear answer
It is maddeningly obvious that “the beat goes on…it’s still moving strong, on and on” in Black lives not mattering at all in the US, from Daunte Wright to Ma’Khia Bryant and Andrew Brown, Jr, and now more about the late Ronald Greene. Even with Derek Chauvin likely incarcerated for…
The truth is, I need help to get this next book published the way I’d like to
This is my final (maybe?) essay in my series More Confessions From an Educated Fool. I do need help, to keep me from self-publishing a third book, to make the leap into writing beyond the freelancing. I ask, but I don’t think I ask correctly. Or, maybe people just don’t…
Between academia, the nonprofit world, and publishing, it’s been a not-so-funny comedy of toxicity, and all the mistakes are mine
This is the fourth essay in my series arc of More Confessions From an Educated Fool. …
Stealing someone’s words can erase their dreams and their worth
This is the third of my multi-part series on my paths as a writer. This piece is one that I’ve work on for nearly a year. Mostly because of the issue to out or not out the guy who plagiarized me in 2002. Partly because I do not really want…
My difficult ride in book publishing since 1999
This is the second of several posts I’ve put together about my journeys as a writer. Please laugh when and where appropriate.
“You always gotta do things the hard way, don’t you?” my one-time professor Barbara Sizemore said with some sighed frustration. It was in response to me telling her…
I took 40 years to come full circle as a writer, and I am a fool for taking so long
This is the first of a series of essays and posts that I am doing this month about my journey as a writer, an educator, and a fool over the past four decades, simultaneously between Medium and my blog. I hope to educate, to entertain, to make people laugh and…
How so many of us are like slaughtered lambs, killed for sport in and out of higher education
Most people I’ve met and known over the past 30 years have no clue as to what it is to teach high school, college, master’s and doctoral students. None. They think we who are serious educators just wing it and lecture to death, with no preparation at all. They have…
Do White-owned platforms and institutions really provide opportunities to challenge America’s White supremacy?
Black people and especially Black women can’t catch a break. Just in the past week, the IOC banned alternative swim caps to protect Black women athletes’ hair. The US Anti-Doping Agency handed down its heartless 30-day suspension and the IOC its 2021 Tokyo Olympics ban of sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson for…
Yes! And don't forget, John Eligon was the one who penned that "no angel" bs in his bloviating postmortem on Mike Brown. Anti-Blackness and using our pasts to justify White violence is given credence, even among Black, Brown, Indigenous of color. Which makes every single day a potentially bad day for all of us who aren't White men.
Solid piece. I think all that you wrote here makes you a realist, not a pessimist at all. DEI, even at its best, is a hearts-and-minds approach to systemic racism, a very limited tool. If this is the main practice for creating an anti-racist movement, all these sci-fi shows with their subtle predictions of a racism-less future are completely wrong. DEI for so many, though, is total bullshit, a way for institutions to paint themselves as anti-racist without really doing anything, Or, for some to make good money. Either way, thanks for dropping the knowledge!
Donald Earl Collins
Freelancer via @washingtonpost | @TheAtlantic |@AJEnglish | @Guardian; American Univ. & UMUC history prof. Invite me to write/speak: donaldearlcollins@gmail.com
