This collection centers one of the most significant issues in American society today—diversity. As headlines continue to relay news about democracy in peril or police violence, conversations about diversity become a sine qua non that will help define Americans' shared future. As part of this vital conversation, this text functions as a conduit enabling readers to interpret highly complex issues while affirming why engaging with them is so important. Contributors ponder how Americans move from talking to doing, emphasizing the need for action now by highlighting the events that led to the January 6 insurrection. The book succeeds in underscoring this urgency by what Williams calls “tilling the ground”—excavating and elevating the complex layers of pressing diversity matters through stirring narratives. For instance, Nancy Wellington Bookhart examines the Black Lives Matter movement's influence on the fight against racism. Willette Neal discusses the mutually constitutive nature of organizational culture and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Samantha Calamari’s final chapter is also a classic example of “tilling the ground,” focusing on inclusive instructional design, crucial to advancing DEI in educational institutions. This is a useful resource for sociology, organizational studies, communication studies, public policy, history, and higher education administration. Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty; professionals.

Choice Reviews

Emily Allen Williams has curated an impressive collection of writings by scholars and practitioners bearing witness to this critical moment of racial reckoning in American history and to inaction of true service to the ideals of inclusivity, diversity, equity, and access. Looking at current social justice movements from within the United States and through an African diasporic lens, the authors till the soul/soil of history, culture, policy, and education, exploring how America got 'here,' where it needs to go, and how it might get there.

Maureen Elgersman Lee, The College of William & Mary

With her introduction 'Finding Our Way Together: Discussions on Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access,' Dr. Emily Allen Williams, along with experienced professors and practitioners, deliver an outstanding volume of essays for those who wish to move from discussions to action regarding diversity, inclusion, equity, and social justice. In her words, Dr. Williams wrote, it is time '…to match rhetoric to reality and to avoid endless engagement in discourse intent on defining only more discourse and verbosity on rhetoric versus reality…'

Jack L. Daniel, University of Pittsburgh

Diversity Matters: The Color, Shape, and Tone of Twenty-First-Century Diversity examines America's sincerity to once again, during this resurrected period of reconstruction or reckoning on race, explore and honor expressed commitments to improve race relations in terms of diversity, inclusion, and equal access to goods, services, and opportunities as it relates to Black America. Dr. Williams and the other authors offer sound reason and stimulate provocative thought in their examination of America's current state of racial affairs.

Helen Higginbotham, founder & CEO, When Black Women Gather, LLC