Category: Race, Sex, Gender, and Sexuality

Sweet Tea, a new production of E.  Patrick Johnson’s one-man performance of the stories and lives of Black gay men in the South, began its theatrical run May 7 at the Viaduct Theatre.  The piece is based on Johnson’s book of the same name, a compendium of interviews with 63 subjects.  The May 8 performance was preceded by a panel discussion involving several of the men.  Windy City Times spoke with three of them separately by phone the day before the initial performance.

Angela Davis’ appearance at Columbia College’s Getz Theater April 30 was book ended by standing ovations.  As she strode out onto the stage, the intergenerational audience that had been buzzing in anticipation rose as one and clapped wildly.  In a mark of her status as a living cultural icon, some in the audience were sporting T-shirts with the famous image of her from the 1970s, when Davis was wanted and eventually jailed by the FBI, sparking an international “Free Angela” campaign that led to her eventual release.

There exists today a panoply of services and staff training resources to aid companies in ensuring that their workplaces achieve mandated diversity requirements.  But do these help or hinder a corporation, and how does the notion of diversity relate to the bottom line of profits?