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A very timely write up about how the racist policies have been overshadowed by media obsessions with racist speeches. And how dangerous that can be.

Prejudiced policy worse than racist speech
By Ethan Stanislawski

If you’ve been at this school long enough, odds are that you’ve encountered more than a few people who have absolutely no sense of humor when it comes to race. Quote Dave Chappelle or Borat, and that person will not laugh. He or she may even argue that laughing at such jokes is dangerous because there is so much racism and anti-Semitism is still present in our society; laughing at a joke that invokes racial stereotypes only serves to validate those stereotypes.

It’s true that racism is still a glaring problem in this society, but laughing at a Chapelle sketch is the least of our concerns. Over the last 30 years, we’ve seen racial protest in the U.S. switch from addressing growing social problems to addressing isolated incidents of highly public displays of insensitivity. Because we’ve confused prejudice with discrimination, we’ve lost sight of where the real problems lie.

This past year we saw an unusual number of controversies surrounding slurs and comments, be it George Allen’s use of “macaca,” Mel Gibson’s drunken anti-Semitic tirade, or Michael Richards’ screaming the N-word during a comedy club meltdown. These stories all got a lot of media coverage, but the most damaging developments in race relations and nation-wide prejudice in this country did not.

In all the talk of the “thumpin’” by Democrats in last November’s election, what got lost was that Michigan voters overwhelmingly decided to overturn affirmative action and that seven more states passed constitutional amendments against same-sex marriage. Say what you will about the effectiveness of affirmative action, but it’s one of the only tools we have to correct centuries of violence, segregation and disenfranchisement of African Americans. As for same-sex marriage, the only hope for possible legal equality of gay couples has been nearly irrevocably damaged in over half the states in the Union. Compared to those developments, whatever Michael Richards or Tim Hardaway have to say seems irrelevant.

The emphasis on prejudice has been no less prominent on this campus either. Last school year, we saw a seemingly unending string of racial incidents, between the May house “straight-thuggin’” party, the Hitchcock whiteboard incident, the Muhammad cartoon in Hoover House, and the military recruiting protest in the Reynolds Club. Based on the amount of attention drawn to those incidents, you’d think black students and Jews on this campus hide in their rooms in fear.

If you want to find the real racism on this campus—don’t look within, look outside. You won’t find racism in May House; You’ll find it on the 55 and the Red Line, where this campus’s relationship with the surrounding community can be summarized in uneasy stares, awkward silences, and condescending comments. This university has historically had an absolutely shameful in relationship with the South Side, and most students’ absolute ignorance of the lives of those west of Cottage Grove or south of 61st Street only perpetuates these biases. Which do you think is a more destructive term: “straight-thuggin’” or “those people”?

Continue reading "Prejudiced policy worse than racist speech" »

Women’sEnews has some notable Cheers and Jeers for the week.

If Dr Keroack’s resignation calls for cheers, the fact that 23% rise in pregnancy discrimination complaints indicates the sad state of affairs in the country. Following is the report:

Dr. Eric Keroack, who has been embroiled in controversy since he was appointed as the Health and Human Services Department's chief family planning officer in November, abruptly resigned his post on March 29, Reuters reported.

Keroack's selection by President Bush was met with strong criticism from women's groups over his anti-abortion stance and his previous work with five Massachusetts "crisis pregnancy" centers. Massachusetts state Medicaid officials took an undisclosed action against Keroack earlier in the week, which led to his departure.

In his federal position, Keroack oversaw $283 million in family planning grants used to provide contraception to low-income women, but his opposition to contraception provoked 107 House Democrats and three Republicans to call for his resignation in December.

"It's a good day for women's health," Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said. "Keroack was unqualified to run the nation's family planning program. The nation's family planning program should be run by a champion for women's health and safety."

Continue reading "Pregnancy Bias Claims Rise" »

A detailed report on EEOC perspective appears on the National Law Journal.

By Tresa Baldas

The federal government has launched an initiative aimed at cracking down on discriminatory hiring practices in the workplace -- a program that could land unsuspecting employers in court, employment attorneys are warning.

That's what happened to Walgreen Co. this month, lawyers note, when the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission hit the national pharmacy chain with a class action alleging widespread racial bias against thousands of African-American workers. EEOC v. Walgreen Co., No. 07-172, (S.D. Ill.).

The suit came one week after the EEOC announced "E-RACE" (Eradicating Racism and Colorism from Employment), an initiative that will have federal investigators paying much closer attention to how minorities are hired and promoted.

FOCUS ON HIRING

Specifically, the EEOC will focus on hiring decisions that are based on names, arrest and conviction records, employment and personality tests and credit scores -- all of which may disparately impact people of color.

For example, an African-American might be denied a job when an arrest record shows up on a background check or if a credit score turns out to be low. Such criteria, which have a disparate impact on minorities, were not considered in the past. But employers are increasingly considering such factors when hiring, and may unwittingly be denying jobs to large classes of minorities.

Many states have laws that restrict employers from asking about or considering criminal records when hiring. The EEOC holds that if an employer denies a job to an applicant because he or she has a criminal record, it could be considered discrimination if the person is a minority.

The EEOC also has a new specialized task force -- formed last year -- that will handle evidence turned up by E-RACE. Regional attorneys and directors will investigate in more detail and attempt to establish a pattern of discrimination within industries or employers, and present it to headquarters for possible litigation.

"I don't want employers to get the impression that they're some kind of bull's-eye," said EEOC attorney Paula Bruner, special assistant to the EEOC chairwoman. "We want them to be aware they need to step up in terms of their compliance with our laws."

According to the EEOC, race discrimination complaints continue to be the number one complaint made to the EEOC. In 2006, a total of 27,238 such complaints were filed. The EEOC also has seen a substantial increase over the past 15 years in discrimination claims based on color, which have soared from 374 in 1992 to 1,241 in 2006.

Continue reading "EEOC Cracks Down on Discriminatory Hiring Practices" »

New Jersey Police Department has come under fire for having harassed black youths based on their race. And has decided to settle the matter with a big check. The report follows:

Bias suit vs. police settled for $275,000

BY ALESHA WILLIAMS

MANALAPAN — A lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey against the Police Department alleging that three black youths were harassed because of their race has been settled for $275,000.

Court records indicate each of the youths will receive about $62,000, with the remainder, nearly $91,000, going to the ACLU for legal services.

But township police maintain there was no wrongdoing. The decision to settle was made by the attorney for the department's insurance company, department attorney Mitchell Ansell said.

The suit was filed in August 2004 on behalf of Sean Anderson, then 12, of Jersey City, Diamond Yorker, then 17, of Manalapan, and Randy Reina, then 18, of Edison.

It charged that on the night of June 21, 2003, Officers Pete Chalfin and Steve Turner
singled the trio out from three white friends while they were all walking on Parkview Way near Buck's Head Park.

According to the complaint, the officers sent the three white youths home, saying, "You don't have to see this," as they proceeded to search and question only the black youths. Reina allegedly was warned not to set foot in Manalapan again. The police ultimately left without charging anyone.

Continue reading "NJ Police settles race case" »

Seattle Times offers a very insightful critique of race relations in the (post)modern America.

We can't address discrimination with policies that ignore color

By Kenneth Einar Himma

Many whites believe governments shouldn't consider race in making any decisions. They typically believe in colorblindness as a state policy, because they think we have solved all race problems since they don't know anyone who still believes the pernicious view that blacks are inferior.

Although attitudes about race have changed for the better, there are still serious problems of race facing us. A government policy of colorblindness not only ignores these problems, but can make them even worse.

A person can consciously believe all races are equal but still have subconscious preferences that cause discrimination. Discrimination can result from racist attitudes; but it can also result from common prejudices and preferences that people don't' even know they have.

It is common for people who reject racist ideologies to unknowingly harbor disparaging stereotypes about race that affect their behavior. This is what happens when someone immediately thinks of a young black man upon hearing about a violent crime, or when a woman reacts to a young black man's presence by clutching her purse tightly.

An important ongoing study shows that most people have automatic preferences for their own race. Project Implicit administers a series of implicit association tests (IAT) that identify and measure unconscious attitudes about persons belonging to various groups. This study shows that more than 80 percent of whites display a subconscious preference for whites over blacks. In a nation in which whites are disproportionately responsible for making hiring decisions for the most lucrative and desirable positions, this results in unfair affirmative action for whites.

Conscious racial prejudice is much more culpable than subconscious preferences. Conscious prejudice is based on false and malicious views about other races, while these subconscious preferences are the result of a common tendency to mistrust difference and gravitate toward similarity in people.

But the prevalence of such preferences among whites results in much injustice — despite the progress made over the past 50 years. Here are just a few examples of continuing race discrimination.

Continue reading "When the policies ignore color" »

An engineer who specialized in airplanes filed a lawsuit against Boeing, claiming he had to work in a hostile work environment, News 4 WOAI learned Tuesday.

According to the lawsuit, Zuhair Ahmed was working at Boeing here in San Antonio when the September 11th attacks happened in 2001. Ahmed claims after the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, his co-workers began making fun of his religion and race.

Ahmed claims in the lawsuit, co-workers and supervisors at Boeing began harassing and discriminating against him because of his African and Sudanese origin. Ahmed is also Muslim, according to the suit.

In March 2005, Ahmed claims in the lawsuit he was fired after a work-related injury.

Boeing officials told News 4 WOAI they cannot comment on the lawsuit because it has not been served yet.

The company has policies in place prohibiting harassment and discrimination, Boeing officials said.

In what could be termed as turn of events following the recent uproar over the ownership of N-word, there are evident cases of situational abuses. The reality is that over time, more black people have used this word, but are they going to pay a price for the same? Would it not amount to double jeopardy at a social level? As the debate continues, a black worker stands to be charged. His periodic claims of discriminations against the company has been responded with the company's anti-N-word stance that may end up forcing this worker out. That would be a tragic irony. In the meantime, this report:

N-word, bias focus of trial Lawsuit filed by S.C. plant worker raises questions of racial discrimination By RICK BRUNDRETT

A black employee contends in a federal civil rights lawsuit that he was fired from his job at a Chester County manufacturing plant after complaining about unequal treatment of black workers.

The company says that the employee was fired for using a racial slur in the workplace.

The lawsuit, set for trial this week in U.S. District Court in Columbia, raises a sensitive, widely debated issue: Is it ever appropriate for black people to use the N-word?

The N-word has been regarded as a positive term by some African-Americans, said Adolphus Belk Jr., an assistant professor of political science and African-American studies at Winthrop University.

He noted the late rap artist and social activist Tupac Shakur once changed the spelling of the word, dropping the “E” and “R” and adding an “A,” to create an acronym that stood for “Never ignorant about getting goals accomplished.”

In his lawsuit against Guardian Industries, Eddie Curry, a packer at the Richburg plant, says the reason that he was fired had nothing to do with the N-word.

While a white employee alleged Curry used the word, Curry contends his white supervisors fired him in November 2004 in retaliation for his complaints about how other black employees were treated. In court papers, Curry said he complained at least five times between August and October 2003 about “denied promotions and equal treatment.”

Curry, a Guardian Industries employee for about two years, said he was not allowed to defend himself when he was fired and was not given specifics about the allegation against him.

Curry asserts he is the victim of racial discrimination under the federal 1964 Civil Rights Act. His lawsuit asks for unspecified actual and punitive damages from the company, which makes glass for the building and automotive industries.

Efforts to reach Curry, who lives in Lancaster, or his lawyers with the Gist Law Firm in Columbia for comment were unsuccessful.

Beverly Carroll, a Charlotte attorney representing Guardian Industries, said Curry was fired solely because he violated the company’s anti-harassment policy.

Continue reading "Black worker fired over use of N-word" »

Damned if imprisoned. Doubly damned, if imprisoned. Thats the reality check for the current crisis that posits ethical consequences of incarceration in a country infamously holding records of sorts when it comes to imprisoning the members of minority race.

ZNet has a scholarly and detailed account:

Reverse Reparations: Race, Place, and the Vicious Circle of Mass Incarceration
by Paul Street

“TOWNS PUT DREAMS IN PRISONS”
Sometimes it's the silences that speak the loudest. Consider, for example, a page-one article that appeared in the New York Times in the summer of 2001 under the title "Rural Towns Turn to Prisons to Re-ignite Their Economies." According to this piece, non-metropolitan America was relying like never before on prison construction for jobs and economic development. Formerly, Times reporter Peter Kilborn noted, rural communities had depended for employment and economic development on agriculture, manufacturing, and/or mining. Now, however, they were counting on mass incarceration to deliver the goods. Reporting that “245 prisons sprouted in 212 of the nation’s 2,290 rural counties” during the 1990s, Kilborn quoted the cheerful city manager of Sayre, Oklahoma, which had just opened a prized new maximum-security lockdown. "There's no more recession-proof form of economic development," this local official told Kilborn, than incarceration because "nothing's going to stop crime."

By Kilborn’s account, “prisons have been helping to revive large stretches of rural America. More than a Wal-Mart or a meatpacking plant, state, federal, and private prisons, typically housing 1,000 inmates and providing 300 jobs, can put a town on solid economic footing.” Thanks to money brought in through taxes on prisoners’ telephone calls, sales taxes paid by prisoners and prison staff, and to water, sewer, and landfill fees, Killborn added, Sayre’s city budget increased from $755,000 in 1996 to $1,250,000 in 2001, permitting the town to set aside 15 percent of its revenues for capital improvements. No such savings or investment were possible before the prison, when Sayre “was surviving largely on federal crop support payments to its dwindling farm population” in the wake of the collapse of the state’s oil and gas industry(1).

A different story on the same topic appeared under the title "Ionia Finds Stability in Prisons" in the Detroit News just 12 days before Kilborn’s piece. It told the enlightening tale of how the semi-rural Michigan town of Ionia, located halfway between Lansing and Grand Rapids, had recently become one of the state's fastest growing and "most improved" communities thanks its five thriving penitentiaries together employing 1,584 workers who collectively made $102 million a year. "The state's urban centers dump their felons," the Detroit News reported, "in prison towns and forget about them. Suburbs balk at housing felons, envisioning escapees trampling through their gardens and hiding out in their tool sheds." But "Ionia," the paper noted, "sees things from the other end of the spectrum. The prisons bring, of all things, security." According to Detroit News reporter Francis Donnelly, Ionia’s “penitentiaries, five veritable Great Lakes of cash, provide sustenance to every sector of [Ionia’s] once-dry economy: jobs for residents, customers for stores, revenue for the city government,” including “nearly $1.2 million of the city’s $3.8 million budget” (2).

A February 2001 Chicago Tribune article titled “Towns Put Dreams in Prisons” told a comparable story from Illinois. In “downstate” Hoopeston, Illinois, the Tribune reported, there was “talk of the mothballed canneries that once made this a boom town and whether any of that bustling spirit might return if the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) comes to town.” “You don’t like to think about incarceration,” Hoopeston’s mayor told the Tribune, “but this is an opportunity for Hoopeston. We’ve been plagued by plant closings.” The mayor, the Tribune reported, was lobbying IDOC to permit his town to host a prison so that it could enjoy some of the economic benefits that came to Ina, Illinois when the “Big Muddy” prison was constructed in 1993.

Before “Big Muddy” went up, the Tribune noted, Ina “took in just $17,000 a year in motor fuel tax revenue. Now the figure is more like $72,000. Last year’s municipal budget appropriation was $380,000. More than half of that money is prison revenue. Streets that were paved in chipped gravel and oil for generations soon will all be covered in asphalt. An $850,000 community center that doubles as a gym and computer lab for the school across the street is being paid for with prison money.”

Continue reading "Vicious Circle of Mass Incarceration" »

Johnnie Cochran's law firm has been sued for discrimination:

LOS ANGELES - The law firm founded by the late Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. , who successfully defended O.J. Simpson against murder charges, has been sued for discrimination.

Attorney Shawn Chapman Holley claimed in her lawsuit filed last week in Los Angeles County Superior Court that the firm's leaders discriminated against her because she is black and eventually fired her. After Cochran's death in 2005, the firm's leadership was turned over to white men who discriminated against black lawyers and black clients, the lawsuit said.

"In deference to the memory of Johnnie Cochran and in deference to his family, I do not intend to engage in the public airing of our disagreements," Holley said in a statement through her lawyer. "The lawsuit speaks for itself, and this matter will be litigated in the courts."

A call to the Cochran firm in Los Angeles was not immediately returned. Randy H. McMurray, a partner in the firm, told the Los Angeles Times the allegations were not true and that Holley was not fired.

"We probably have the most diverse law firm in California. I don't know what race we would be discriminating against," he said, adding that he and another partner in the Los Angeles office are black.

According to the lawsuit, Holley was appointed to be a liaison between the civil and criminal sides of the firm two years ago. She had worked with Cochran for 17 years.

Holley became concerned about the firm's criminal representation but when she aired these concerns, she was demoted. Five managers of the firm, four of whom "are Caucasian males" approved the demotion, the suit said.

In January 2006, Holley was fired, the suit said.

Cochran founded the firm in 1965. For years, Cochran was famous in Los Angeles for winning a number of cases that led to historic financial settlements and changes in police procedure.

He became nationally known after successfully defending Simpson against charges he murdered his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman.

How aware are the liberals when it comes to queer culture? Alternet takes a stab.

Queer 101: A Guide for Heteros By Cameron Scott, AlterNet. As last November's election neared and a Democratic victory appeared more and more likely, Republicans warned that Speaker Pelosi would impose her "San Francisco values" on average Americans. Americans to the right of the left coast felt in their gut that San Francisco values were a shameful thing, without really knowing what they were.

Even San Franciscans scratched their heads a bit. The local paper's sex columnist, Violet Blue, pointed out that it meant sex. She argued that the twist in conservatives' panties resulted from San Franciscans' sex-positive outlook. Blue offered a paean to some of the city's sexual rituals, several of which, such as the Folsom Street Fair, are primarily gay.

But even Violet Blue didn't tell the whole truth: The phrase "San Francisco values" came directly from the right's well-worn gay-baiting playbook. In a story called "San Francisco Values Front and Center," the right's faithful warrior Bill O'Reilly shifts from talking about the city's ousting of ROTC clubs from several high schools into a discussion of gay marriage. He includes standard playbook comparisons of gay unions to polygamy, "triads" and incest.

So why hasn't anybody called a spade a spade? Many in Middle America have come to believe homosexual values must be abhorrent, based on the right's insistence that all homosexuals are radical perverts.

Blindness to difference has allowed the right wing to invent a sinister stereotype of "homosexuals" that has only tenuous links to reality. Radical right groups generate bogus statistics by conflating gay men and lesbians (the claim that homosexuals are more likely to have STDs should more accurately say that lesbians have the lowest rates of STDs of any group) and gay men and men who molest boys (imagine if they consistently referred to men who molest girls as "straight men"). The right gets away with their smears because they have persuaded Americans that sex and desire have no role in polite society.

Continue reading "Queer 101 for the Liberals" »

Taking yet another lead on creating a safer space, New Jersey state has a progressive ruling on school sex harassment scenario.

N.J. High Court Applies Hostile Work Environment Standard to School Sex Harassment
Henry Gottlieb
New Jersey Law Journal

School districts can be held liable in damages for student-on-student gay bashing and other forms of sexual harassment if teachers know about it and fail to react promptly, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled last week.

At the same time, the court declined to impose strict liability. Instead, liability will depend on how well educators respond to such situations.

"When a student is subjected to severe or pervasive bullying on the school bus, in the classroom, or at the playground and a school district fails to adequately respond to that misconduct, that student has a right to redress," Chief Justice James Zazzali wrote for the unanimous court in L.W. v. Toms River Regional Schools, A-111. "However, school districts will be shielded from liability, when their preventive and remedial actions are reasonable in light of the totality of the circumstances."

The plaintiff was a Toms River, N.J., student who complained to authorities in grammar, middle and high school that his peers abused him for years with anti-gay comments like "homo" and "faggot" and occasionally assaulted him -- treatment so bad that he felt compelled to miss classes and avoid school buses and after-school activities.

Administrators tried to deal with the problem with lectures, detentions and an occasional suspension to tormentors without effecting an end to the problem until the plaintiff transferred to an out-of-town school.

In response to a suit, the state Division on Civil Rights found that the Law Against Discrimination covered the case and it imposed $60,000 in fines on the school district.

The state Supreme Court agreed that the case was covered by the LAD and the leading case on hostile work environment sexual harassment, Lehmann v. Toys 'R' Us, Inc., 132 N.J.587.

The LAD permits a cause of action against a school district for student-on-student harassment based on an individual's perceived sexual orientation if the school district fails to reasonably address that harassment, the court said.

Continue reading "NJ Court rules against hostile schools" »

Regardless of whether sexual conducts were proven or not, resulting discussions can cost the job of the involved. And a jury has justly ruled against a university resident who asserted that he had ended his “affair” at the workplace. More on UCLA site.

Jury rules UCLA handled harassment case properly

By Carolyn McGough

In response to a lawsuit accusing UCLA of improperly responding to an alleged case of sexual harassment, a Los Angeles jury ruled 10-2 in favor of the university, saying its actions investigating the accusations made by a former psychiatric resident had been appropriate.

Dr. David Martorano filed the lawsuit, asserting that after he ended an affair with his female supervisor, Dr. Heather Krell, rumors circulated that resulted in the university taking away the position of chief resident of the psychiatry department, a job that had been promised to him.

Martorano also said Krell damaged his reputation by accusing him of making up their affair.

Krell filed a countersuit, alleging invasion of privacy and slander, and maintained that she and Martorano never had sex.

In an internal investigation into the incident, UCLA determined there was no sexual harassment.

Martorano was not given the position of chief resident because “regardless of whether or not Martorano and Krell had sex, even the perception that people are getting chief residencies because they are sleeping together is not acceptable,” said Alan Zuckerman, a University of California attorney who represented UCLA.

Jurors reached their decision Thursday, concluding that UCLA properly responded to allegations.

“UCLA immediately investigated the case. UCLA has officials trained and looking into these (harassment) situations, and when the allegation was reported to the university it immediately began investigating and interviewed all parties involved,” said UCLA spokeswoman Carol Stogsdill.

UCLA officials said in a statement they were pleased with the decision.

“UCLA is pleased that jurors in the Martorano v. UCLA-Krell case have found the university’s actions in responding to accusations of sexual harassment to be swift, thorough, appropriate and lawful,” the statement read.

Both Martorano and Krell said they were pleased with the outcome of the case, though neither was awarded any money.

Jurors said they believed Krell and Martorano had an affair that violated UCLA’s policies, but Krell lied about it, juror Ruven Domenech said.

Continue reading "UCLA case: Affair at workplace can cost the job" »

Just how difficult it is to be a mom in a postfeminist era? Or are the mothers going to redefine the movement now? New York Times probes into the new shift.

By KARA JESELLA

A BABY was passed around like the hors d’oeuvres — in this case, bruschetta, a fruit plate — among the 10 mothers who crowded into Ann Clark’s Sacramento home on a Tuesday night this month. No matter if the baby was crying; this was a child-friendly crowd.

The mothers all held jobs outside the home (pastry chef, singer in a band, lawyer, hairstylist, nanny) and many had flexible schedules to make it easier to care for their children. Like hundreds of others who have gathered over the last nine months, they huddled around a television to view “The Motherhood Manifesto,” a documentary about the obstacles still facing working mothers, including many of those in the room.

“I’m home with a 2-year-old, so there may be an interruption,” said Ms. Clark, 35, a social worker with two children and a three-day-a-week office job, as she recounted the viewing party the next day and talked about how she related to the mothers in the movie. Like them, she said, her financial situation felt precarious. She wasn’t sure she could count on keeping her part-time position next fall.

“These are issues I’m aware of and feel strongly about,” she said of the movie’s focus on subjects like universal child care, maternity and paternity leave, and workplace discrimination against mothers. That is why she joined MomsRising.org, the mother’s advocacy organization that made the documentary. “It’s a great opportunity to connect with friends — mothers — and together have a chance to change things,” she said.

For years, mothers have been taking to the Internet to blog or post messages about the travails of motherhood, commiserating, fuming or laughing about their shared lives. But in the last year there has been a marked increase in those who are going beyond simply expressing their feelings. In a throwback to their mothers’ — or was it their grandmothers’? — time, they are organizing about family and work issues.

A generation of mothers who are largely perceived as postfeminist in every way, from sex to economic discrimination, has begun a consciousness-raising that is almost old-fashioned were it not for the technology involved. Raised to believe that girls could accomplish anything, these women have reached parenthood, only to find they faced many of the same pay, equity and work-family balance issues that were being fought over decades before. From that awakening, they say, has come the inkling of a new movement.

Continue reading "Moms Rising: A new feminist shift" »

Connecticut lawmakers are considering a bill prohibiting transgender discrimination.

(Hartford-AP) State lawmakers are again considering a bill that would prohibit discrimination based on gender identity.

One transgendered woman told the legislature's Judiciary Committee of how she struggled to find a job, despite having a PhD in chemistry. Time after time, she would apply for jobs, only to be turned down after the interview.

The bill adds gender identity or expression to the law that prohibits discrimination based on race, gender, religion, age and other characteristics.

Although the same legislation passed in the Judiciary Committee last year, it died later in the legislative process. Advocates hope this will be the year that the bill finally passes.

Three years ago, the state's hate crime law was expanded to protect transgendered people, who identify and express themselves as the opposite sex.

Saeed Shabazz invokes Dr Dubois to highlight the most lingering issue of contemporary America.

(FinalCall.com) - Eminent scholar, intellectual and founder of the NAACP’s The Crisis news publication, Dr. W.E.B. Dubois wrote the following statement in The Forethought of his book, “The Souls of Black Folk” in 1903: “Here in lie buried many things which if read with patience may show the strange meaning of being Black here in the dawning of the 20th century. This meaning is not without interest to you, gentle reader, for the problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color-line.”

Observers and analysts say that seven years into the 21st century the problem is still the “color-line” in America.

A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll released in December 2006, stated that “most Americans, White and Black, see racism as a lingering problem in the United States.” CNN also used as a consultant University of Connecticut professor Jack Dovidio, who has researched racism for 30 years, according to his website. He estimated that approximately 80 percent of White Americans have racist feelings they may not recognize.

The survey questioned 328 Blacks and 703 Whites and determined that 84 percent of Blacks and 66 percent of Whites considered racism to be a “very serious” or “somewhat serious” problem, and 51 percent of Blacks and 26 percent of Whites claim to have “been a victim of discrimination.” Percentages were lower when people were asked if they knew anyone who was “racially biased”—only 31 percent of Blacks and 21 percent of Whites said they did. Only 12 percent of Blacks and 13 percent of Whites surveyed further admitted to being racially-biased themselves.

CNN’s Paula Zahn wrote on Dec. 19 that after comedian Michael Richard’s racist rant at a Los Angeles comedy club in November, she discussed with her staff “what would possibly drive a person to say such vile and hateful things?” She said the discussions with her staff raised a series of questions: Is there an inner racist in most of us?; and, is racism thriving today? So, armed with their poll, they went throughout the nation, holding town hall meetings. According to Prof. Dovidio, the results of CNN’s poll found that “We’ve reached a point that racism is like a virus that has mutated into a new form that we don’t recognize.”

Reaction to the CNN poll was swift. In her article on GOPUSA.com, Star Parker, president of the Coalition on Urban Renewal & Education and author of the book “White Ghetto: How Middle Class America Reflects Inner City Decay,” asked “what was the point?” concerning the CNN program on racism.

“The point had to be to communicate with White America, because there certainly was no news for Blacks,” she said. “I just couldn’t help wondering if Zahn and the CNN crew really thought any of this was prime-time worthy news,” Ms. Parker stated.

However, on Dec. 14, two days after the poll’s release, a group representing Black conservatives, Project 21, issued a press release that stated: “The CNN report serves only one purpose, and that is to convince the public at large—specifically White people—that they are evil racists. It is a vulgar exercise to try to find racism in the fiber of every White.”

Ms. Zahn continued to raise questions concerning race. On Feb. 2, two days before Super Bowl 41, she devoted program time to the issue of Black coaches in the NFL; Blacks being tasered by police in Houston, and whether the fact that a Black celebrity may face jail-time because of a fatal car accident, when White celebrities in the same situation only faced civil charges.

The Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, Sr., founder and president of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition; Bob Law, former national radio talk show host and New York State co-chair of the Millions More Movement; and Mychal Massie, Project 21 chairman, were queried on whether CNN was the proper vehicle for the issue of racism in America.

“CNN does not have a single show hosted by an African American,” Rev. Jackson said, throwing the issue of racism right back into CNN’s lap. On whether he felt the shows were having any particular affect on the consciousness of Blacks, he said, “I think Black people look at these shows as just that, shows.” He said that his organization continues to put pressure on all of the networks to step up to the plate and hire more Blacks.

“We are applying pressure and opening doors,” Rev. Jackson said.

Mr. Law stated that “We all know that racism is real, but the real discussion should be centered around the question, ‘What is wrong with White folks?’ Why is it necessary for them to continue to look for White advantage, after decades—no, centuries—of White privilege?”

“Why is it that Whites are still racist—still using race as a tool—anything else is a bogus discussion,” Mr. Law stressed. He also added that CNN isn’t talking about anything that is real, but rather what we get from them are tricks.

CNN is promoting a racial divide and a double-standard, offered Mr. Massie. “And the liberal media is standing by quietly,” he said. “When I speak of credibility of a news organization, I am speaking of an organization that knows its responsibility to provide balanced news. CNN goes out of its way to create a news environment for its own benefit, which is not to show Blacks in a positive light; always there is a stereotypical slant,” Mr. Massie said.

Meanwhile, in New York City, the Rev. Al Sharpton of the National Action Network continues to hammer home the issues of race as they impact on the lives of Blacks.

On Nov. 23, Rev. Sharpton explained to CNN why he wouldn’t accept an apology from Mr. Richards: “This is not about accepting an apology. This is about starting a process to really deal with racism in this country.” Rev. Sharpton spoke out again when U.S. Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) recently referred to Illinois Sen. Barack Obama as “articulate and clean.” Rev. Sharpton, on Feb. 4, again tackled the issue of race, when he told reporters he may seek to file a class-action lawsuit over a report from The New York Times (NYT) that the New York Police Department (NYPD) had “stopped more than 500,000 people in 2006, more than five times as many as they did four years ago.”

The NYT reported that 55 percent of the people stopped were Black, while 30 percent were Latino. “Is there a measure of profiling based on race that permeates in the NYPD?” Rev. Sharpton asked.

There are other reports that observers say reflect a racist trend. On Feb. 1, the federal office of Equal Employment Opportunity Commission released a report stating that federal job discrimination complaints by workers against private employers rose in 2006 for the first time in four years. Allegations of racial discrimination rose 35 percent with over 27,000 charges. “These figures tell us that discrimination remains a persistent problem in the 21st century workplace,” stated an official of the EEOC.

Continue reading "The problem of the Continuing Color Line" »

The Seattle Times on religious tension in workplace. AP Wire refers to this here.

A Muslim immigrant working on contract for Microsoft filed a complaint against the company last month, saying he was interrogated about his Muslim-inspired, anti-war Web site, then abruptly fired.

Two former Kentridge High School students, whose Bible club was denied a charter at the school in part because it required members to swear allegiance to Jesus Christ, are awaiting a federal-court decision in their lawsuit.

And 14 months ago, the Red Robin restaurant chain settled with a server it had fired from its Bellevue restaurant for refusing to cover up wrist tattoos he said are part of his ancient Egyptian Kemetic faith.

Here and elsewhere across the country, complaints alleging religious discrimination are up dramatically, with confrontations arising over how people publicly observe their faith, when and where they pray, how they dress, what hours they work — and generally what they believe.

Between 2002 and 2006, the number of religious-discrimination complaints filed with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) nationally rose more than 30 percent from the previous five years.

For Washington state, complaints rose 60 percent for the same period. In fact, religious complaints in the state for 2006 were the highest they've been in at least 15 years.

"We're seeing an increase in religious charges involving all different faiths — across the board," said Kathryn Olson, supervisory trial attorney with the EEOC in Seattle.

Among the factors fueling the tensions are fallout from the war on terror, the growing convergence of politics and religion and an increasingly diverse population.

"I tell my [employer] clients all the time: Nothing will spread more quickly in the workplace than religious harassment," said Rick Liebman, an employment attorney in Portland.

"Where a person may not even think about making a joke about a co-worker's race or sex, they seem to have no compunction to picking on other people over their religion."

Not surprisingly, a majority of the complaints have come from Muslims. But the numbers also reflect growing tensions around the Christian faith.

Flora Wilson Bridges, an associate professor at Seattle University, said she believes those tensions are arising in part because conservative Christians have become more provocative — less tolerant of those with whom they disagree and more determined to impose their values on others. As they have become more emboldened, they've also become more inclined to take their battles to court.

Continue reading "Religious Discriminations on the Rise" »

San Diego Business Journal discusses five steps to updating Sexual Harassment Prevention Training.

Educating Supervisors Is Key to Complying With State Law AB1825

Question: As a small business, do I have to worry about the new sexual harassment training laws? What should I do to make sure my company is compliant?

Answer: Every small business runs the risk of sexual harassment claims without proper training of its employees. Although California state law AB1825 only requires supervisor sexual harassment training for companies with at least 50 employees, there are things you can do to protect your business and your personnel regardless of your company’s size.

For starters, distribute and enforce your company’s anti-harassment and Equal Employment Opportunities policies, as well as your complaint-resolution process.

Make sure supervisors know how to respond to employee complaints.

Explain to supervisors the unique aspects of California harassment law, which places greater responsibility on their actions and inactions. Make sure they understand about both types of sexual harassment (quid pro quo and hostile work environment).

Continue reading "Updating Sexual Harassment Prevention Training" »

Target Corp. has agreed to pay $775,000 to settle a lawsuit charging that the retailer created and condoned a racially hostile work environment at its store in Springfield, Pennsylvania.

The suit, filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, alleged that 14 black employees at the store were subjected to inappropriate comments and verbal berating by a white manager. The suit also claimed that Michael Hill, who was training to be a store manager, was forced to resign as a result of retaliation he faced after complaining about the racial harassment.

As part of the settlement, Target will provide managers and supervisors at the Springfield store with training regarding Target's company's equal employment opportunity policy. Target will also post a notice about the settlement, ensure that its complaint procedure is effectively communicated to the workforce, and take remedial action if an employee violates its equal employment opportunity policy. In settling the lawsuit, Target denied any wrongdoing.

District Chronicles discusses intersection between race and domestic violence.

Marie Tessier

Activists in the growing movement to support battered African-American women agree on what's needed to stem domestic violence: more services that are culturally informed and integrated into victims' communities.

''Color blindness is not what you need if you're trying to serve diverse communities,'' says Oliver Williams, executive director of the Institute on Domestic Violence in the African-American Community at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. ''The trend is toward an increase in community-based, faith-based and grassroots services.''

While the battered women's movement has long strived to serve all women, few projects can identify specific programs designed to reach out to diverse communities. That can be a barrier to safety for Black women, who tend to reach out for help through informal networks in their communities, such as a church, rather than consulting a shelter or hotline, according to experts.

African-American women face a higher risk for experiencing domestic violence than other women, according to the most recent data from the Justice Department. In fact, they are more than twice as likely to die at the hands of a spouse or a boyfriend. They are also at greater risk of more severe violence, according to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta and the Bureau of Justice Statistics in Washington, D.C.

Continue reading "Domestic violence: Is it a Black thing?" »

A top NYC restaurant has been accused of harboring anti-gay bias.

Chic, elegant, and trendy, nothing screams "gay friendly" more than the upper echelon of the urban fine dining experience-at least on the surface. But for those working behind the scenes, that sleek exterior may mask a macho atmosphere that can include homophobia. As anyone who’s seen TV’s Hell’s Kitchen can attest, such sleekness often belies working conditions that enforce a rigid pecking order, a subculture of macho posturing, and even cases of outright discrimination against one group or another.

The gritty, not-very-pretty reality behind the gilded wallpaper and orchid floral arrangements at some of the finest dining spaces was revealed when a Manhattan waiter, Joseph Bassani, recently filed a lawsuit against Jean-Georges for forcing him to have simulated sex with a prostitute during a private party. Jean-Georges isn’t just any restaurant, or even any top restaurant. It has garnered the ultimate accolade, four stars from the New York Times, and is generally considered by foodies one of the top four or five restaurants in the city.

According to the lawsuit, "The prostitute, who was naked, pushed him onto the top of one of the dining room tables (and) straddled him. Bassani shut his eyes and waited for the assault to end." But that assault was allegedly only the worst of many such instances in which the waitron said he was harassed due to his sexual preference. Bassani claimed that his co-workers often called him a "whore" and that a supervisor once mockingly attributed his recent weight loss to his having contracted full-blown AIDS.

Continue reading "Top NYC Restaurant Accused of Anti-Gay Bias" »

A new Yale University study has found that discrimination against black doctors is pervasive and results in demoralization.

Black doctors often feel devalued, stereotyped and rejected on the job, a new Yale study has found, and pervasive discrimination can leave them demoralized and likely to seek career change.

Although race allowed them to connect better with some colleagues, patients and staff, the doctors said they were left out of crucial information and social networks that could lead to promotion.

"I do not see us in those leadership pipelines," one doctor told the researchers. "We're not in the corridors of power and it has nothing to do with intellectual capacity or ambition."

"Increasing racial and ethnic diversity in the physician workforce is a national priority and has been offered as one solution to addressing health inequities," says researcher Marcella Nunez-Smith, MD, who authored the study. "But any efforts to increase numbers also needs to address the role of race within health-care institutions to successfully recruit and retain ethnic and racial minority physicians."

The study was based on interviews with 25 doctors of African, African-American and Afro-Caribbean descent and published in this month's Annals of Internal Medicine.

In her column “Broadly Speaking”, Adda Birnir compares sexism with racism in an instructive manner, while making the intersections appear as relevant as they actually are:

Sexual harassment is tricky because of three considerations: the nature of the activity, whether the action is welcome and, most importantly, the context. Noam Rudnick, writing for the Hippolytic blog, compared Schlessinger’s actions to instances of unwanted sexual advances perpetrated on a female undergraduate by a male undergraduate at Toad’s Place. But unwanted sexual advances and sexual harassment are not the same. A guy inappropriately grabbing a girl at Toad’s is not an example of sexual harassment because Toad’s is a social space where it is reasonable and expected that people are making sexual advances toward one another. Because of its context, such an action is harassment of a sexual nature, not sexual harassment.

Basha Rubin, writing for the Broad Recognition blog, countered Rudnick’s comments by saying that it does a disservice to women in the workplace to compare Schlessinger’s actions to sexual advances at a nightclub, because it gives credence to the idea that a male boss who sexually harasses a female employee is simply incapable of controlling his sexual desire. The workplace is not a space where it is typically appropriate to express one’s sexual interest. For this reason, harassment at the workplace is critically different from harassment at Toad’s.

So if sexual harassment is based on a drive for power, why does it so often take a sexual form? I find that comparing sexism to racism is instructive because it allows for a case study in which sexual desire is not a factor. To answer this question, I would like to compare these instances of sexual harassment to the Michael Richards case. This past November, Richards, who played Kramer on “Seinfeld,” gained notoriety for shouting racist slurs at audience members during a stand-up comedy performance. Apparently frustrated by what he deemed to be rude interruptions by a group of black male audience members, Richards stopped his act to yell angrily at the men, calling them all sorts of names, including the N-word.

Continue reading "Sexism’s power struggle mirrors historical racism" »

Goodyear Tire company has settled a gender discrimination case.

Goodyear Tire Company agreed to a $925,000 settlement to be disbursed among some 800 women who were not hired for entry-level, tire-building jobs at the company’s plant in Danville, Virginia. The lawsuit, which was filed by the US Department of Labor on behalf of the complainants, alleged that the company practiced gender-discriminatory hiring from January 1998 to June 1999.

Because Goodyear is a federal contractor and therefore prohibited from discriminating on the basis of race, color, religion, gender, or national origin, the Department of Labor brought the case against the company. Charles E. James Sr., deputy assistant labor secretary for the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, said the settlement serves to put "federal contractors on notice that the Labor Department is serious about eliminating systemic discrimination," Women's eNews reports.

In addition to the settlement sum, Goodyear will also offer entry-level jobs to as many as 60 women who meet the company's employment requirements, the Beacon Journal reports.

The Supreme Court is currently reviewing a second gender-discrimination lawsuit against Goodyear Tire Company, in which the plaintiff allegedly worked for the company for 19 years for a salary that was significantly less than that of her male counterparts who had the same or less experience.

The Virginian-Pilot reports that two patrons have sued a Virginia Beach nightclub alleging race discrimination.

Two patrons who were turned away from a Virginia Beach nightclub have filed a federal discrimination lawsuit alleging they were denied entry because of their race.

The lawsuit, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court, seeks unspecified monetary damages and an injunction stopping the owner of Kokoamos from enforcing his entry rules.

Kokoamos owner Barry Davis has said he was simply enforcing a dress code, which prohibits cornrows, dreadlocks and braids.

However, the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed the suit on behalf of Kim Hines and Myron Evans, says the rule essentially prohibits mostly blacks from entering the club, located on Marina Shores Drive, off North Great Neck Road.

ACLU attorney Rebecca K. Glenberg said Thursday that efforts to resolve the issue outside of court have been unsuccessful since the hairstyle issue came to light last summer.

“We are concerned that dress codes can be used as a pretext for racial discrimination,” she said. “This sort of restriction obviously excludes a lot of African Americans.”

Continue reading "Nightclub sued for race discrimination" »

Opulence of wealth has truly married the filth of mind in an extravaganza that ridicules the last remnants of decency in our vulgar capitalism. As a result, even the age-old diplomacy that shrouded the despicable aspects of money market has given way to a new exhibitionist class society, and to that effect, New York Magazine has begun to celebrate classism and sexism.

An event titled “Natural Selection Speed Date—Rich Guys and Hot Girls” is being organized by Pocket Change and New York Magazine. Scheduled for February 7th, this Darwinian slip unashamedly declares that “Women want money in a man, men want beauty in a woman – this is a factual force of nature.”

Yes, you read it right. The Pocket Change event goes on to celebrate what it finds desirable, in its own words: “This genetic cleansing is how the wealthy stay beautiful.” Not only the event not finds such “genetic cleansing” criminal by intent and design, but it also decides to rejoice over the sordid class difference to commemorate the wealthy men, and their prize catches.

New York Magazine/Pocket Change may have found this beautiful and desirable, but we are sure for millions of sensible people, this is outright ugly, hideous and mocking. What’s worse, such an event is sexist to its core and inhuman in its essence.

In conversation with Womensrightsblog, a Pocket Change newsletter subscriber Patricia Delhannon reverberated the views of most readers that were suppressed by mainstream publications such as New York Magazine in the due course of their decision to go ahead with such an event:

"I am personally a realistic woman, I recognize gender differences and I have never really called myself a feminist. I do however believe in the strength of women and (find) this is offensive and I feel offended as a woman. I'm not really experienced at any type of social action, but thought at least something should be done. I think as women, we can't support this or even allow this type of thing to take place.”

The leading precept of this event is that men who will enter into this exclusive contest will be solely judged by their wealth. Each must have all the following properties: a minimum of half a million earning, with invested assets of more than 1 million and trust money worth more than 4 million dollars.

What happens to women who want to enter the contest? Do they also need to be “successful”? Hell no. They are not expected to be working. They should only be rich in their “beauty”, which will be judged by celebrity matchmaker Janis Spindel.

So we are back in the ages where men are supposed to earn and women to be their slaves. Precisely, going by this “Natural Selection” event that will judge the “Rich Guys and Hot Girls”.

Readers of such media are bound to get shocked in a city that witnesses deaths due to winter, homelessness and lack of health coverage. But are the media any more bothered? Hardly, saving a few.

Faking Good Breeding has covered the story. So has Sex and The Upper East Side. And finally, Feministing has a compelling note.

But that’s mostly about it. Have we just been rendered less sensitive or are we choosing to get less educated? Jack Tuckner of Tuckner, Sipser, Weinstock & Sipser, LLP, says:

“Ideally, our corporate media should find interest in running this sordid story, and that would be wonderful; but decisions are often made to run stories for their own pecuniary reasons that have nothing to do with its newsworthiness or utility. This is the world of Girls Gone Wild shown increasingly on network television. This is the world where a nanosecond of Janet Jackson's breast is considered scandalous but Viagra advertisements depicting men staring lasciviously at women's lingerie are shown during the same Super Bowl presentation with nary a whimper of protest.”

A Virginia state legislator Frank D. Hargrove told a Charlottesville newspaper, "Slavery ended nearly 140 years ago with the Civil War, and our black citizens should get over it." "Terrence Says" blog responds to the statement by asking some pertinent questions:

While I don't obsess, and quite truthfully, rarely think of African Captivity in America, usually when a racist like Hargrove and people of his ilk tell Black people, whose ancestors were captives in America, to "get over slavery" it is usually a pitiful attempt to belittle and transfer blame.

The State of Virginia, as did many other states, allowed African captivity to flourish. Instead of perceiving an apology as an act of reconciliation for the advancement of humanity, unfortunately, antagonists are reminded of the dastardly deeds of their forefathers. Telling Blacks "to get over slavery" is blame reversal and a coping mechanism for them.

Should we (Blacks) be paralyzed by such events in American history? Certainly not. But even for Blacks, like me, who could care less about an apology and are not holding our breaths for an apology for our ancestors, admonishing Blacks to "get over slavery" is counterproductive to improving race relations and mean-spirited.

What they also fail to realize is that true efforts by America to make all citizens equal didn't occur until the mid-to-late 60's. Are we supposed to forget that too? In reality, if Hargrove and people of his ilk had their way, African Captivity would still be very much an institution in America.

In the bigger scheme of things, I think that it is important for African-Americans to not get terribly bent-out-of-shape ie. offended by such comments. We should not surrender too much of our power to these racist idiots - especially one's that have one foot in the grave. Hopefully, they'll be going back to the hell they came from in (over) due time.

Almost a perfectionist in his profession, but his dirty spots are beginning to be noticed now. A classic case of race bias in the invisible workplaces.


A Top Chef’s Kitchen Is Far Too Hot, Some Workers Say

By KIM SEVERSON and ADAM B. ELLICK

DANIEL BOULUD can’t stand to see a detail out of place. As pans slam around him during dinner service in the Upper East Side restaurant that bears his first name, he will pause to request that a spoon be polished. How best to marry braised endive to seared beef can absorb him as utterly as the lilies in the dining room that haven’t opened on schedule.

He’s also a man who has cultivated the news media over his 23 years in New York. He is quick to get on the phone with a writer and can engineer a smart publicity move, like creating the world’s most expensive hamburger, which won him worldwide attention in 2003.

Outside the restaurant, Mr. Boulud is known for his generosity. Last year he helped raise nearly $2 million, much of it for Citymeals-on-Wheels, on whose board he sits.

On top of all that, Mr. Boulud is a social animal. His fellow four-star chefs would vote him the guy most likely to lead the conga line.

In short, he is a perfectionist who is accustomed to being liked. All of which helps explain why Mr. Boulud, 51, cannot grasp why a group of restaurant-worker advocates keep showing up outside Daniel with a 12-foot inflatable cockroach, singing “We Shall Overcome” and chanting that he is a racist.

“Racism is a vicious charge,” Mr. Boulud said in an interview. “It is too easy to accuse someone of that, and it is very hard to defend yourself.”

And yet Mr. Boulud is being forced to do just that. In December, seven current and former employees filed suit in Federal District Court in Manhattan accusing him of discrimination. Similar charges against Mr. Boulud are before the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

According to the lawsuit, dining room workers at Daniel have been denied promotion because they were Latino or Bangladeshi. The employees also say that Mr. Boulud and other managers yelled racial slurs. At one point, they say, Spanish was banned among employees; only English and French were allowed. Those are examples, they say, of how the working culture at Daniel favors white Europeans at the expense of other groups.

Continue reading "A Top Chef’s Kitchen Is Far Too Hot" »

Just about time for someone like Christopher Edley Jr. to challenge the race-blind populist policies, for the anti-affirmative action amendments may be populist, but certainly not popular.

At Berkeley Law, a Challenge to Overcome All Barriers

By JONATHAN D. GLATER

BERKELEY, Calif.: Growing up in Philadelphia in the 1960s, Christopher Edley Jr., dean of the flagship law school of the University of California, learned early about racial discrimination. After all, his father, one of the few African-American graduates in Harvard Law School’s class of 1953, could not get a job in a Philadelphia law firm.

“They’d hired William T. Coleman from Harvard a couple of years earlier,” Mr. Edley recalled, referring to the former transportation secretary, and ardent defender of civil rights. “And they were waiting to see how that experiment worked out before hiring another one.”

Mr. Edley’s father went on to become a prosecutor in Philadelphia, then the first black program officer at the Ford Foundation and president of the United Negro College Fund. He was never, Mr. Edley said, bitter about the obstacles in his way. But civil rights and related subjects were the topics of discussion around the dinner table. From age 5, the son wanted to be a lawyer.

Now Mr. Edley, in his third year at Boalt Hall, as the law school here is known, finds himself defending affirmative action policies intended to overcome barriers like those his father confronted.

The job is a challenge; under California law, the law school cannot use race as a factor in admissions. But tackling that challenge was an important reason he took it.

Continue reading "An alternative discourse at Berkeley Law" »

NY Times published a story today about a top firm mired with controversies.

Gay Lawyer’s Suit Accuses Firm of Bias

By JULIE CRESWELL

An associate at one of the country’s most prestigious law firms, Sullivan & Cromwell, filed a state lawsuit in Manhattan yesterday accusing the firm of a systematic campaign of discrimination and retaliation against him because of his sexual orientation.

Aaron B. Charney, 28, who is a fourth-year associate, asserts in the lawsuit, filed in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan, that several partners in Sullivan & Cromwell’s highly regarded mergers and acquisitions practice subjected him to “lewd and illegal conduct,” beginning in the fall of 2005. He is seeking a jury trial and unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.

In his lawsuit, Mr. Charney accuses members of the firm of demanding he be terminated for carrying on an “unnatural” gay relationship with another Sullivan & Cromwell associate; Mr. Charney denies the relationship. The suit also contends that after he filed a formal internal complaint, members of the firm suggested that he move to a foreign office and then fabricated reviews to accuse him of overbilling clients, among other things.

While Mr. Charney has not been terminated, he says he was told he should not come to the office while an internal investigation is continuing.

Continue reading "Gay Lawyer’s Suit Accuses Firm of Bias" »

Wal-Mart policies continue to hurt. Costco Wholesale employees are not amused, and a lawsuit on behalf of 700 female workers, has been finally granted. More on New York Times this Friday:

By STEVEN GREENHOUSE and MICHAEL BARBARO

A federal judge granted class-action status yesterday to a lawsuit filed on behalf of more than 700 female workers at Costco Wholesale claiming that the retailer had systematically discriminated against women seeking jobs as managers.

In the lawsuit, the lead plaintiff — a former assistant store manager who was upset about not being made a store manager — asserts that Costco discriminated against women in promotions because 13 percent of the company’s store managers were women, while nearly half of its employees were women.

The lawsuit undercuts Costco’s image as one of retailing’s most benevolent companies, with generous wages and benefits that make it more attractive for employees than competitors like Wal-Mart Stores.

In her ruling yesterday, Judge Marilyn Hall Patel of Federal District Court in San Francisco concluded that the case should be certified as a class action because “plaintiffs have presented strong evidence of a common culture at Costco which disadvantages women.”

The lawsuit, filed in August 2004, contends that at Costco, the highest-paid store management positions — assistant general manager and general manager — are doled out through an informal, word-of-mouth system that favors men over women.

Unlike most competitors, Costco neither posts openings for such positions nor accepts applications for them, the lawsuit said. Instead, it said, a largely male group of senior executives handpicks managers.

Brad Seligman, the plaintiffs’ lead lawyer, said, “Costco has a blind spot in its employment policies, which has allowed a glass ceiling to fester.” He called on the company, based in Issaquah, Wash., to start posting jobs and to adopt objective standards to determine who should qualify to be a store manager.

Continue reading "Costco Bias Suit Is Given Class-Action Status" »

A reflective piece on Sunday Washinton Post:
What's Lost in Prenatal Testing
Why Encourage Testing for Down Syndrome

By Patricia E. Bauer
Sunday, January 14, 2007; Page B07

She was a fresh-faced young woman with a couple of adorable kids, whiling away an hour in the sandbox at the park near my home. So was I, or so I thought. New in town, I had come to the park in hopes of finding some friends for myself and my little ones.

Her eyes flicked over to where my daughter sat, shovel gripped in a tiny fist, and then traveled quickly away. The remark that followed was directed to the woman next to her, but her voice carried clearly across the playground. "Isn't it a shame," she said, an eyebrow cocked in Margaret's direction, "that everyone doesn't get amnio?"

It's been more than 20 years, but I saw the face of that woman again when I read about the recommendation from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) this month that all pregnant women get prenatal screening for Down syndrome. I worry that universal screening brings us all closer to being like that woman at the sandbox -- uninformed, judgmental and unable to entertain the possibility that people with disabilities have something to offer.

Continue reading "What's Lost in Prenatal Testing" »

Maternity company settles suit alleging pregnancy discrimination

PHILADELPHIA - A maternity-clothing retailer has agreed to pay $375,000 to settle a lawsuit alleging it refused to hire qualified applicants because they were pregnant - and then fired an assistant manager who complained about it.

The suit filed last year against Philadelphia-based Mothers Work Inc. was based on alleged incidents at a Motherhood Maternity store in Florida.

Continue reading "Mothers Work Inc. settles pregnancy suit" »

Racism against American Indians is well alive. A recent meet highlighted the issue.

American Indians address racism

BY JOHN R. CRANE
Racism against American Indians is alive and well in Cortez and the Four Corners and a solution must be found, said attendees at a meeting Wednesday night to address prejudice against American Indians.

Violence and prejudice against American Indians has been a fact of life in Montezuma County for too long, said Art Neskahi, founder and director of Southwest Intertribal Voice.

Three attacks on American Indians occurred in Cortez around Thanksgiving. One involved a homeless man who suffered fractured ribs after being assaulted by two Hispanic male youths. In the others, two white males attacked two homeless American Indian men, and two white males assaulted an American Indian couple from Luckachukai, Ariz., throwing the female on the ground and kicking her.

No one has been charged in the attacks, mostly due to lack of victims' identification of suspects.

"This has been going on a long time," Neskahi said. "I'm hoping to figure out what we can do so our children don't have to go through this."

Continue reading "American Indians address racism" »

Taylor Mason of New Music First, writes about the discrimination suit pending against Sony-BMG.

Former BMG marketing rep Tamieka Blair is expected to file a racial discrimination lawsuit against Sony BMG Music, alleging her wrongful termination upon the merging of Sony and BMG in 2004, according to Billboard.

The suit follows on the heels of the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's (EEOC) finding that Blair was "a victim of race discrimination" last fall when an investigation by the EEOC revealed that 42 percent of African American employees of the sales enterprise unit were involuntarily terminated after the merger. Though Sony offered their employees a voluntary separation package, Blair was under the impression that her field marketing position in the BMG sales unit was secure and hesitated to accept the package out of fear that it might signal that she wanted to leave. The EEOC’s investigation concluded that Sony BMG "failed to provide a verifiable explanation for the overwhelmingly negative impact on black BMG employees, that is, that 42 percent of blacks and no whites were involuntarily terminated," the letter states. Officials at Sony BMG told the EEOC that they "sought to retain the 'best players,' but there is no documented procedure regarding the retention of said 'best players.'" At this time, there are no related claims pending on Sony BMG with the EEOC. The EEOC stated that they worked with associated parties after the conclusion, but there was no settlement.

Diverse Issues in Higher Education quotes a new study by a UCLA Professor which may prompt a lawsuit. The reason: Hollywood’s institutionalized discriminations.

“Spiderperson 4”— Coming to a Theater Near You
Hollywood has given us “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” (1967) and “Crash” (2005) — just two of the several movies that have tackled issues of race. But now a California scholar is hurling charges of racism and sexism against casting directors for “gender and race-based casting.” A Title VII lawsuit is just around the corner.

The study, “Hollywood's Race/Ethnicity and Gender-Based Casting: Prospects for a Title VII Lawsuit,” conducted by Russell K. Robinson, acting professor of law at the University of California, Los Angeles, is intended to confront hidden discrimination — but is he taking political correctness to the extreme? The study points out that 82 percent of lead roles in major motion pictures are filled by Whites, while Blacks claim only 11 percent of the roles. That stat would be hard to argue, but the same report also considers denying an actress a role intended for a man to be discriminatory.
Just imagine British actor Hugh Grant in “Big Momma’s House” or Halle Berry as “The Terminator.” It just doesn’t work.

It’s true, more often than not, that Hollywood promotes stereotypes; and Robinson, a former entertainment lawyer, sees sinister forces lurking behind the camera.
“What appears to be audience preferences for White, male protagonists are socially constructed choices based in part on the industry’s history of discrimination and stereotyping in casting,” he says. 
Let the legal battle begin.

Supreme Court has agreed to hear Coca-Cola's appeal in a race discrimination case. 0

The Supreme Court Friday agreed to consider a discrimination case in which a Coca-Cola bottling company fired a black employee, one of seven cases the court added to its docket. Coca-Cola asked the Supreme Court to hear the lawsuit, which involves allegations that a supervisor of employee Stephen Peters was motivated by racial bias and influenced a human resources manager to fire the worker.

Such circumstances are sometimes referred to as "cat's paw" or "rubber stamp" liability. Coca-Cola fired Peters for insubordination after he refused a request to work on a weekend during his scheduled days off.

A federal appeals court reinstated a lawsuit brought on Peters' behalf by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The appeals court said a federal judge placed too much emphasis on the fact that Peters' immediate supervisor made no express recommendation to fire him.

In asking the court to hear the case, the company asked the justices to consider when an employer may be held liable for intentional discrimination when the person who fired an employee harbored no discriminatory bias. Peters worked at the Coca-Cola facility in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The case is BCI Coca-Cola Bottling Company of Los Angeles v. EEOC, 06-341.

Chronicle of Higher Education reports that a former Dean has accused University of Wisconsin at Whitewater of race bias. A federal lawsuit has been filed.

A former dean at the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater has filed a federal racial-discrimination lawsuit against the university, after campus officials demoted him when an audit found he had misspent university money, the Associated Press reported late Tuesday.

Lee J. Jones began working as dean of graduate studies and continuing education at Whitewater in 2004. In the fall of 2005 the university completed the audit and stripped him of his dean’s position, reassigning him as a tenured professor of education. Mr. Jones then filed a racial-discrimination complaint with Wisconsin’s Equal Rights Division, saying the audit had “found no intentional wrongdoing” and charging that his demotion had been “motivated by unlawful race discrimination.” He resigned from the university last April.

In 1999 Mr. Jones helped found Brothers of the Academy, a nationwide group aimed at increasing the number of black men who earn Ph.D.’s and work in academe.

Washington Blade says among others, what caused biggest headlines were the midterm Democratic victories raising gay hopes, the gay elections, hate crimes and Mary Cheney’s pregnancy. More written by JOEY DIGUGLIELMO :

Mark Foley wasn’t the only gay story of 2006. The year will be remembered for the Democratic victories in the midterm elections, the somber 25th anniversary of AIDS and big changes in the way gays are treated by some of the world’s major religions.

In no particular order, here are the Blade’s picks for the biggest gay news stories of the year.

Democrats retake Congress

November’s midterm elections, in which Democrats won majorities in both houses of Congress after 12 years of Republican control, were viewed by many gays as a tremendous victory.

While it remains to be seen how much of a priority gay issues will be for the new Congress, members are expected to take up pro-gay legislation in 2007, including the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which calls for banning private sector employment discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity; and the Local Law Enforcement Enhancement Act, which calls for giving the federal government authority to prosecute hate crimes based on a victim’s sexual orientation, gender identity or disability.

At least eight other gay- or HIV-related bills have been introduced in Congress in recent years but have died in committee after Republican leaders refused to bring them up for a vote.

25th anniversary of AIDS

June 5 marked a quarter-century since AIDS was first reported by the Center for Disease Control in 1981.

Since then, activists pointed to several key developments to celebrate in the ongoing fight against the epidemic. The Ryan White CARE Act, the federal government’s largest program for providing medical treatment and support to uninsured and low-income people with HIV and AIDS, was reauthorized by Congress this month after a lengthy delay. HIV-positive people who have access to drug cocktails developed in 1996 are also living longer without AIDS than was conceivable at the disease’s outset, raising the hope that eventually HIV may become a chronic but manageable disease with which the infected can expect normal life spans.

Despite some undeniable advances, HIV and AIDS continue to wreak havoc in the U.S. among gay men, especially black gay men.

Of the more than 1 million Americans living with HIV, 74 percent are men and between 67-72 percent of them contracted the disease through gay sex, according to government statistics. National estimates suggest that 25 percent of white gay men in the U.S. are living with HIV compared to 50 percent of black gay men.

Blacks are about 12 to 13 percent of the U.S. population but account for 47 percent of Americans living with HIV.

AIDS activists are concerned that there’s a false perception among young gay men, who were either not yet born or too young to experience the toll the early years of the disease took on the gay community, that AIDS has become a manageable disease.

Continue reading "LGBT Headlines of 2006" »

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New York Times has an article on the difficulties of being a woman in the business of construction. Things sure seem to be changing, but not much better than they historically have been.

One Degree in Fine Arts, and One in Plumbing
By JOSEPH P. FRIED

WHEN Elaine Ward became an apprentice plumber in 1986, the only female plumber most Americans had ever seen was Josephine the Plumber, a character in 1960s and ’70s commercials for Comet cleanser.

But Ms. Ward’s choice of a vocation wasn’t the only thing that made her unusual. After all, how many plumbers of either sex have a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree?

Today, Ms. Ward remains anomalous. She is still one of a small number of women who work as plumbers in New York City; one of an even smaller number of women who own plumbing businesses in the city; and, according to the Buildings Department, one of very few women licensed by the city as master plumbers.

That rank, held by about 1,400 plumbers, and achieved in part on the basis of a city-administered written and practical test, exceeds the journeywoman status that Ms. Ward worked under for a decade before starting her company in 2001. For a plumbing contracting business in the city to operate legally, at least 51 percent of it must be owned by one or more licensed master plumbers.

Continue reading "Women plumbers: More distress than progress" »

American Medical News in its January 2007 issue deliberates on the need for every physician practice group to have an equal opportunity provisions in its employee handbook.

Steven M. Harris writes: It seems as if every other call I receive these days is from a client telling me about a complaint charging his medical practice with some form of discrimination.

And with that complaint often comes a claim of retaliation -- that the employee who felt discriminated against also felt that those in the practice engaged in mistreatment because he or she filed the complaint or spoke up about something wrong in the practice.

One client who successfully fought a discrimination and retaliation complaint then asked how he could minimize the adverse effect of such claims. I advised him that the best strategy is to include an equal employment opportunity provision in the practice's employee handbook, or to create a stand-alone equal employment opportunity policy. That way, the practice could demonstrate a commitment against discrimination and retaliation. Also, it might allow complaints to be handled internally, rather than involving outsiders.

At the very least, every physician practice group should have an equal employment opportunity provision in its employee handbook. Here is an example:

"[Employer] provides equal opportunity for all employees and applicants for employment and makes all employment decisions without regard to race, religion, color, age, sex, national origin, disability or any other status protected by federal, state or local law."

Most employers find that the equal employment opportunity provision is not enough and therefore choose to create a policy stressing that the physician practice group prohibits any form of retaliation against any employee for filing, in good faith, a complaint under the equal employment opportunity policy, or for assisting in a complaint investigation.

New York Times continues its discussions on gender inequality series. Latest is about the stagnation in pay gap.

Gender Pay Gap, Once Narrowing, Is Stuck in Place
By DAVID LEONHARDT

Throughout the 1980s and early '90s, women of all economic levels — poor, middle class and rich — were steadily gaining ground on their male counterparts in the work force. By the mid-'90s, women earned more than 75 cents for every dollar in hourly pay that men did, up from 65 cents just 15 years earlier.

Largely without notice, however, one big group of women has stopped making progress: those with a four-year college degree. The gap between their pay and the pay of male college graduates has actually widened slightly since the mid-'90s.

For women without a college education, the pay gap with men has narrowed only slightly over the same span.

These trends suggest that all the recent high-profile achievements — the first female secretary of state, the first female lead anchor of a nightly newscast, the first female president of Princeton, and, next month, the first female speaker of the House — do not reflect what is happening to most women, researchers say.

A decade ago, it was possible to imagine that men and women with similar qualifications might one day soon be making nearly identical salaries. Today, that is far harder to envision.

"Nothing happened to the pay gap from the mid-1950s to the late '70s," said Francine D. Blau, an economist at Cornell and a leading researcher of gender and pay. "Then the '80s stood out as a period of sharp increases in women's pay. And it's much less impressive after that."

Continue reading "Gender and Pay Gap in America" »

The spur in Family Responsibility Discrimination cases has attracted the attention of American Public Media.

A new area of anti-discrimination cases has arisen suddenly, and employers and their attorneys are looking for ways to understand the law and train their managers. Hillary Wicai reports.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island stated in a press release that the Rhode Island Department of Education has not properly looked over an abstinence-only-until-marriage course of schoolwork that threatens to harm students, particularly GLBT students and those students in gay families. The course of study was developed by Heritage of Rhode Island, a family and faith-oriented organization that believes "one of the biggest hazards to our children’s futures is their sexual health and related high-risk behaviors," according to their official Web site.

One of the major problems the ACLU has with Heritage of Rhode Island’s course is that it "isolates" GLBT students and students in gay families. The reason, says the press release, is that it suggests "that marriage is responsible for better health, lower rates of injury and illness, lower rates of depression and an increased [according to Heritage’s course] ’likelihood that fathers and mothers have good relationships with their children.’"

The ACLU states that they believe this focus "appears to be a roadmap to instilling depression, if not fear, in gay and lesbian teens who cannot benefit from marriage and in other students who live in non-traditional households." Rhode Island has non-discrimination policies for GLBT youth, which this coursework "undermines," according to ACLU Rhode Island Executive Director Steven Brown. ACLU believes this curriculum also places teens in danger of having accidental pregnancies and STDs.

Continue reading "ACLU Accuses Rhode Island Department of Education of ’Isolating’ GLBT Students" »

Studies show that research supports are provided less to women scientists than their male counterparts. In addition, qualitative growth of women in academia has not been significant in proportion to their numerical presence.

New York Times today has an article about women in science:

Women in Science: The Battle Moves to the Trenches
By CORNELIA DEAN

HOUSTON — Since the 1970s, women have surged into science and engineering classes in larger and larger numbers, even at top-tier institutions like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where half the undergraduate science majors and more than a third of the engineering students are women. Half of the nation’s medical students are women, and for decades the numbers have been rising similarly in disciplines like biology and mathematics.

Yet studies show that women in science still routinely receive less research support than their male colleagues, and they have not reached the top academic ranks in numbers anything like their growing presence would suggest.

For example, at top-tier institutions only about 15 percent of full professors in social, behavioral or life sciences are women, “and these are the only fields in science and engineering where the proportion of women reaches into the double digits,” an expert panel convened by the National Academy of Sciences reported in September. And at each step on the academic ladder, more women than men leave science and engineering.

So in government agencies, at scientific organizations and on university campuses, female scientists are asking why, and wondering what they can do about it. The Association for Women in Science, the National Science Foundation and the National Research Council are among the groups tackling these issues. In just the past two months, conferences have been held at Columbia University and the City University of New York graduate center. Harvard has a yearlong lecture series on “Women, Science and Society.”

This fall, female scientists at Rice University here gathered promising women who are graduate students and postdoctoral fellows to help them learn skills that they will need to deal with the perils of job hunting, promotion and tenure in high-stakes academic science.

“The reality is there are barriers that women face,” said Kathleen S. Matthews, the dean of natural sciences at Rice, who spoke at the meeting’s opening dinner. “There are circles and communities of engagement where women are by and large not included.”

Organizers of these events dismiss the idea voiced in 2005 by Lawrence H. Summers, then president of Harvard, that women over all are handicapped as scientists because as a group they are somehow innately deficient in mathematics. The organizers point to ample evidence that any performance gap between men and women is changeable and is shrinking to the vanishing point.

Instead, they talk about what they have to know and do to get ahead. They talk about unspoken, even unconscious sexism that means they must be better than men to be thought as good — that they must, as one Rice participant put it, literally and figuratively wear a suit and heels, while men can relax in jeans.

They muse on the importance of mentoring and other professional support and talk about ways women can provide it for each other if they do not receive it from their professors or advisers.

And they obsess about what they call “the two body problem,” the extreme difficulty of reconciling a demanding career in science with marriage and a family — especially, as is more often the case for women than men in science, when the spouse also has scientific ambitions.

Continue reading "Women in Science: Structural Disparity" »

Holidays may not be all fun, what with the social demands and expectations raising stress levels, which in turn perpetuates the agonies of domestic violence victims, current and potential. Examiner has a report on the holiday trends affecting domestic violence.

Brentwood, MD - The holiday season brings cheer and joy to most people but also brings together factors that cause domestic violence, experts believe.

“There is more stress during the holidays over money, and people consume more alcohol at parties,” said Rena Pina, who works with the District of Columbia Coalition Against Domestic Violence. “It’s a combination of a lot of things.”

Denise McCain, the director of the Family Crisis Center in Prince George’s County, said her organization sees more victims seeking assistance in January, after the holidays pass.

“The incidents occur during the holiday period, but there is a strong desire to want to put up a front during the holidays and to be with your family during the holidays,” McCain said. “They know they need help, they just wait until January.”

McCain’s organization will have an extra counselor to help the violence victims because of a $66,500 grant the center received Wednesday from Verizon Wireless. The money will give the center five full-time and two part-time counselors.

The crisis center’s grant was part of the $300,000 award Verizon distributed Wednesday among 11 nonprofit organizations throughout Maryland in honor of outgoing Maryland Attorney General J. Joseph Curran.

In Montgomery County, the Family Support Center Inc. received a $10,000 grant from Verizon to assist the Keeping Sisters Strong Program, which teaches women how to protect themselves against becoming domestic violence victims.

“Few social issues touch individuals and families as profoundly as domestic violence and its devastating aftermath,” said Paul Wood, Verizon Maryland vice president.

Michael Cohen, of the Maryland Network Against Domestic Violence, said some crime statistics show that more domestic violence cases are reported to police during the summer months than other times of the year, including the holiday season.

“No one’s ever done a good study of why that happens, but there is plenty of speculation,” she said. “Maybe it is because the kids are out of school so women are more likely to report it. Or the windows are open more often so the neighbors hear it and call the police.”

Dr. Jillian Todd Weiss has five concerns regarding the new NJ Law:

I am concerned that "transgender" may not retain its positive, non-derogatory meaning. In an example from the transgender context, in the early 1980s, Seattle passed a trans-inclusive nondiscrimination law using the broad term (they thought): transvestite. This term has since taken a negative and more limited connotation, causing the Seattle City Council to need to revise its nondiscrimination law only about twenty years later. Terms from other contexts involving groups of people who experience discrimination that demonstrate my concern about popular terminology acquiring a negative connotation include "colored people" and "handicapped." "Transgender" may not always have a positive connotation and may
fall out of favor.

The second concern is that the bill, before the amendment, utilized the best approach for discrimination protections: it used terminology that covers all people, rather than a specific, protected group of people. American non-discrimination laws are generally framed to prohibit discrimination on the basis of certain characteristics, like sex or race, not specific examples of people within those categories, like women or African-Americans. Just as it was unnecessary and would have been inadvisable to add "Race includes black status" to race discrimination laws, this "transgender status" clarifying amendment could unintentionally have a limiting or confusing effect on interpretations of the law. Adding just this one group-based identity to the bill’s language makes the bill conceptually incoherent and inconsistent with similar laws; either problem could negatively affect the interpretation of its provisions.

Our third concern is that this language is out-of-step with other laws protecting transgender and gender non-conforming people from discrimination. Eight states have passed similar laws, and none of them use the term "transgender people" or any similar term. No other state legislature, administrative agency or court has found that this type of clarifying amendment was necessary, nor has there been confusion that transgender people are not covered by these laws. Also, in drafting the federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which is expected to be introduced this Spring, the LGBT attorneys involved in drafting, including myself, specifically rejected using the term "transgender" for many of the reasons covered in this letter. For consistency throughout the nation, and for New Jersey to be in-step with the federal bill that will eventually become law, it is best that New Jersey use relatively similar language. With similar language throughout the U.S., courts can utilize each other’s interpretations to develop a common case law that all jurisdictions can draw upon. For your reference, the definitional language of the eight states is attached as an Appendix.

Our fourth concern is about the term "status." How it would be interpreted in this context is unclear. Would transgender people have to prove that they have achieved "status?" Would someone in the early stages of transition (often when discrimination occurs) qualify as having attained that status? "Status" implies a fixity that does not capture or address the reality of discrimination against transgender people.

Our fifth concern is not about New Jersey's interpretations, but is about future interpretations of other state and federal laws. Including this term in New Jersey's law could cast doubt on what is covered by laws in other jurisdictions that do not include such language. It could beg the question, are transgender people not covered if the law only includes "gender identity or expression?" From a national perspective, the language used in New Jersey could influence other jurisdictions to either adopt the same language (cause for concern by itself for the above-mentioned reasons) and/or could negatively affect the interpretation of similar laws that lack New Jersey's additional sentence.

Starting in 2004 with the Marriage Affirmation Act, which outlawed any partnership contract purporting to provide the benefits of marriage, Virginia’s conservatives crusaded for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, which passed last month and goes into effect Jan. 1. The state also does not allow for second-parent adoptions for unwed couples, rendering Poe a legal stranger to her daughter in the eyes of the law.

Washington Blade has an exclusive story: Fight or flight?
By KATHERINE VOLIN

When Mary Cheney, the lesbian daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney, announced her pregnancy through a spokesperson last week, reactions were mixed.

Gay rights opponents were predictably appalled at the idea of a gay couple raising a child, while supporters expressed frustration that by working on her father’s re-election campaign, Cheney had supported a political regime that would deny her own partner’s parenting rights.

Cheney, who did not respond to interview requests, is pregnant with a child due in the spring that she and her partner of 15 years, Heather Poe, intend to raise together. Adding to the irony of the story is that the moms-to-be live in Virginia, which has some of the most restrictive anti-gay laws in the country.

Starting in 2004 with the Marriage Affirmation Act, which outlawed any partnership contract purporting to provide the benefits of marriage, Virginia’s conservatives crusaded for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, which passed last month and goes into effect Jan. 1. The state also does not allow for second-parent adoptions for unwed couples, rendering Poe a legal stranger to her daughter in the eyes of the law.

“After Jan. 1, when the amendment becomes effective, I’m afraid to say that we suspect there will be someone whose goal is to disrupt Virginia families for one reason or another and then it’s just going to have be played out in court,” says Jay Squires, a local lawyer and head of the board of directors for Equality Virginia, a gay rights group.

Squires also says that there are concerns that “some judge some place is actually going to hold that the amendment has the effect of invalidating agreements that were legally binding.”

In the meantime, he recommends a wait-and-see approach for gay parents in Virginia regarding the implications of the amendment, but it’s possible that families will be torn apart by the Commonwealth’s new law.

SOME OF VIRGINIA’S gay parents are divided over whether they should stay or flee the state for more gay-friendly environs.

Continue reading "Gay parents face difficult choices in anti-gay Virginia" »

A new United Nations act recognizes that women and girls with disabilities are often at greater risk, both within and outside the home of violence, injury or abuse, neglect or negligent treatment, maltreatment or exploitation.

"States Parties recognize that women and girls with disabilities are subject to multiple discrimination, and in this regard shall take measures to ensure the full and equal enjoyment by them of all human rights and fundamental freedoms.

States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to ensure the full development, advancement and empowerment of women, for the purpose of guaranteeing them the exercise and enjoyment of the human rights and fundamental freedoms set out in the present Convention."

Click here to access the Final report of the Ad Hoc Committee on a Comprehensive and Integral International Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Rights and Dignity of Persons with Disabilities.

UNFPA Welcomes Adoption of Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities:

UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, today welcomed the adoption by the world community of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities - the first global human rights treaty to elaborate the rights of disabled persons and to specifically mention the right to sexual and reproductive health. The Convention was adopted by consensus by the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday.

“This is an important step forward for the promotion and protection of human rights of persons with disabilities,” said UNFPA Executive Director, Thoraya Ahmed Obaid. The world’s 650 million disabled persons have suffered discrimination and neglect and this treaty paves the way for corrective action so that they can attain equal enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms. The international goal to achieve universal access to reproductive health by 2015 cannot be achieved unless persons with disabilities are brought into the mainstream and included in policies and programmes to improve sexual and reproductive health.

Historically, disabled persons have been marginalized, stigmatized and deprived of opportunities and freedoms. They have endured forced sterilization and forced abortion. Studies show that persons with disabilities are up to three times more likely to be victims of physical and sexual abuse, and are at increased risk of HIV/AIDS.

According to Article 25 of the landmark Convention, States Parties should, “Provide persons with disabilities with the same range, quality and standard of free or affordable health care and programs as provided to other persons, including in the area of sexual and reproductive health and population-based public health programs.”

The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is the first major human rights treaty of the 21st century. Following its ratification, countries introduce laws, policies and programs ensuring that disabled people are treated according to its provisions.

Continue reading "New Rights of Persons with Disabilities adoptions welcomed" »

The colorblind anti-affirmative action crusader is on the prowl. And this time, he aims at 9 more states to replicate what Washington, California and Michigan have done in recent past to ignore the need to consider race and gender as decisive factors in American life.

For Ward Connerly, the architect of reversal in the 1954 desegregation ruling, recent triumph in Michigan came about even as it houses 80% whiter, 14% black, 2.3% Asian American and 3.8% Latino population. And this man’s famous opening line: "It is not essential that black kid sits next to white kid. That's where we went wrong with Brown vs. Board.”

San Francisco Chronicle interviews Connerly about his wider crusade:

Connerly gearing up for wider crusade: Affirmative action foe considers launching campaigns in 9 states

Leslie Fulbright, Chronicle Staff Writer

Ward Connerly, the anti-affirmative action crusader who helped persuade voters to ban race and gender from consideration in public hiring, contracting and school admissions in California, Washington and Michigan, said Wednesday he is exploring moves into nine other states.

The former University of California regent, whose campaign first saw success in 1996 with Proposition 209 in California, seems to be following through on his often-repeated promise that he will persist until affirmative action is banned nationwide.

Connerly said he will visit Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, Oregon, South Dakota, Wyoming and Utah over the next 60 days and then decide how many campaigns to launch.

Twenty-three states have systems for putting laws directly before voters in the form of ballot initiatives.

"Three down and 20 to go," Connerly said during a conference call. "We don't need to do them all, but if we do a significant number, we will have demonstrated that race preferences are antithetical to the popular will of the American people."

Continue reading "Connerly gearing up for wider crusade" »

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A nationwide study conducted by the University of Arizona has found a spiraling growth in workplace discrimination cases being reported. In fact, last year (2005) alone, there have been 95,115 claims of employment discrimination in the United States.

Arizona Daily Star reports:

'Litigation explosion'

By Becky Pallack

More rights at work have brought a boom in lawsuits by employees who think they've been wronged, according to a new study from the University of Arizona.

Since the Civil Rights Act of 1991 gave teeth to workplace anti-discrimination laws, there has been a "litigation explosion," said Barry Goldman, an associate management professor who co-authored the study with professor Barbara Gutek and doctoral student Jordan Stein.

The researchers analyzed data from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and found 95,115 claims of employment discrimination nationwide in 2005. Federal employment discrimination lawsuits are up 268 percent since 1991, rising at a rate nine times as fast as other types of federal civil litigation, Goldman said.
Anti-discrimination laws protect people from discriminatory treatment in the workplace based on their color, national origin, race, religion, sex, age and disability. There's also a law that gives rights to equal pay for equal work.

Companies are paying more for successful discrimination suits, although cases tend to fail, the study shows. And retaliation cases are on the rise, possibly because more companies have formal complaint policies. For employers, the fallout from the lawsuit boom is expensive. Employers facing discrimination lawsuits were ordered by courts to pay $101.3 million in 2005, up nearly 600 percent from $14.7 million in 1992; and employers paid another $271.6 million in settlements, up 130 percent since 1992.
"It's big bucks," Goldman said.

Continue reading "WORKPLACE DISCRIMINATION CLAIMS SOAR" »

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As the Brown v. Board of Education is being revisited in a manner that may lay a foundation for "discrimination" to be perceived entirely from different lenses than ever before, two major strands of opinion develop.

One hints at the positive outcome of integration that should uphold the judgments. The other categorically refutes the need of the judgments (even while being considered as noble) to sway official policies, as long as people make voluntary decisions to segregate, if one may call it thus.

But, I think both major opinions leave out a significant “other” question: Is the so-called voluntary segregation a natural outcome of human preferences as now being adjudged, or is it thus, as a result of an effete, ineffective and reactionary tradition of official policies that have alienated the racial categories of people so much as to install distrusts among themselves?

If the latter is true, its not merely that the 1954 decision needs to be upheld, but in fact, the state and its citizens through progressive public policies will do well to recognize that the socio-economic foundation of American society needs a fresh breath of radical change for the economic emancipation of peoples eventually to be developed into proactive communities, than isolated racial groups posited against plutocratic dominations.

New York Times today has an opinion piece worth a note:

Brown v. Board of Education, Second Round By ADAM LIPTAK

IF there is a sacred text in the American legal canon, it is the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education. It is the court’s one undisputed triumph, and no Supreme Court nominee who expressed doubt about the decision would ever be confirmed. Who can argue, after all, with the wisdom of putting an end to state-sanctioned racial segregation in the public schools?
But, as an extraordinary two-hour Supreme Court argument last week demonstrated, the meaning and legacy of Brown remain up for grabs. The court was considering whether school systems in Seattle and Louisville, Ky., could take account of students’ races to ensure racial balance.

Continue reading "Revisiting Brown v. Board: What it entails? " »

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Cincinnati based The Enquirer has an editorial on the need for clarity in race matters pertaining to schools.

U.S. Supreme Court justices on Monday plunged back into the divisive issue of reverse discrimination by hearing Louisville and Seattle school cases over assigning students on the basis of their skin color. The original lawsuits were brought by white parents denied their first choice of schools.

The court's decision could affect hundreds of districts, including those in Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky, where many public school districts are even more racially imbalanced than in Louisville and Seattle. Louisville / Jefferson County's plan to keep its schools from becoming "re-segregated" may be even more vulnerable than Seattle's, which uses race only as a "tie-breaker" on families' choice of high schools.
Comments from a majority of justices on Monday did not sound favorable to either district's race-based policies. Districts fear an adverse ruling will increase the number of "failing" schools. It would be most helpful if the court can give clearer guidance on the limits of considering individual students' skin color to achieve racially balanced schools.

Such school "diversity" policies are difficult to defend against charges that they violate the Fourteenth Amendment's "equal protection" clause. Opponents call them racial quotas. Nonetheless, demonstrators from Louisville, Chicago and other cities marched in a brisk wind outside the Supreme Court with such signs as "We won't go to the back of the bus, integration is a must."

CINCINNATI WATCHING
Cincinnati Public Schools will be looking to see how the court rules. Its desegregation settlement did allow its neighborhood schools to be racially isolated, because CPS magnet schools continued to consider race in admitting students. An adverse court ruling could require CPS to shift to a strictly first-come, first-served policy at magnet schools.

An Enquirer study two years ago found Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky students attend overwhelmingly segregated schools, and the latest United Way assessment of this region still listed residential segregation as one of our top negatives.

Continue reading "School Diversity Policies: Need to Rethink?" »

Central Pennsylvania region is challenged by legislative inaction to make anti-bias laws as inclusive as desired. CentreDaily reports that the current discrimination laws do not protect sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression.

The idea is to make local anti-bias laws "as inclusive as we possibly can," said W. Terrell Jones, chairman of the Centre County Advisory Council to the state Human Relations Commission. "I think people are starting to act more locally."

In recent years, thirteen Pennsylvania municipalities have prohibited workplace discrimination that's based on sexual orientation. The rules often extend to operations deemed "public accommodation," such as restaurants.

State and federal laws do not forbid discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation as they do other forms of discrimination, including bias based on race, religion and gender.

KITV/Honolulu Channel reports:

An Oahu jury on Friday awarded more than $1 million to a Hawaii woman in what is being called the state's largest verdict awarded to an individual for a sexual harassment case.

The jury decided to make HIS Hawaii, a travel company employing about 80 people in the islands, to pay.

Attorneys for Rieko Aoki said the former customer service agent was fired after she spoke up against being sexually harassed by the manager and other co-workers.

“There were repeated occasions where the manager of the department and others attempted to remove Ms. Aoki's bra during work hours. In addition, malicious rumors were spread about Ms. Aoki in the work place. There were other occasions where she was lifted up to expose her undergarments under her skirt," attorney Larry Remillard said.

Remillard said the verdict is in part so large because HIS Hawaii rejected Aoki's claims of sexual harassment and instead promoted the harasser.

AP/News4 reports:

The top female trooper at the Nevada Highway Patrol has filed a federal sexual harassment suit against the agency, claiming command officers contributed to a hostile work environment.

Captain Jacquelyn Sandage first made the allegations against Colonel David Hosmer last summer. The suit filed in Reno federal court seeks 500-thousand dollars in damages. Sandage is the first woman to achieve the ranks of lieutenant and then captain with NHP.

Hosmer resigned in June and Major Robert Wideman, who was chief of the northern command, was demoted to captain after a team of consultants first investigated her allegations. Her lawsuit charges the atmosphere hasn't changed and that harassment of female employees continues within NHP.

A Hollywood producer faces another lawsuit: this time sexual harassment at workplace.

Wenn.com reports:

BARBRA STREISAND's ex-boyfriend JON PETERS has been slammed with another lawsuit from a former employee accusing him of sexual harassment.
In a lawsuit filed Tuesday (05DEC06) in California, the SUPERMAN RETURNS producer is accused of sexually harassing former employee SHELLY MORITA and exposing himself to her three-year-old daughter.


Morita, who is the plaintiff in the case, claims that during the year she worked as Peter's personal assistant, ending in February 2006, she was "harassed, verbally abused, and intimidated," to the point where she was forced to resign.
She alleges that during a car ride the two shared during a trip to Australia, "Peters kept on asking plaintiff to smoke marijuana, and when plaintiff refused, he tried to blow the smoke on Plaintiff's face, leaned towards plaintiff and started kissing plaintiff."

Morita also alleges that Peters, who has also produced CADDYSHACK, FLASHDANCE, RAINMAN and BATMAN, exposed himself to her young daughter, asking the child, "Do you want to see how boys go pee?" This isn't the first time the 61-year-old producer has been accused of sexual misconduct toward an employee. In 1998, COLLEEN BENNETT, Peter's former executive vice president of finance, filed suit, alleging that Peters groped her, exposed himself to her and conducted meetings in his underwear.
LA Times story here.

As if religious discriminations were not rife already to require some stringent actions, now employment discriminations at religious workplaces are going to be legally permitted!

Race based discriminations in religious places are an open secret now. But what has become even more noticeable of late is the widespread occurrences that go unchecked. And to add to that legacy, the Connecticut Appellate Court has now ruled in favor of a church that allegedly practiced race based discrimination.

AP story follows:

Priest locked out of church loses discrimination case

(AP, Dec. 6, 2006 5:00 PM) _ An appeals court says a black priest locked out of his Vernon church has no right to pursue a claim that he was denied a promotion because of his race.

The Connecticut Appellate Court has ruled for the first time that employment discrimination cases involving priests and other religious leaders are exempt from state jurisdiction.

The court says that's because the First Amendment protects religious institutions from government interference.

The Rev. Justinian B. Rweyemamu is from Tanzania. He says he was unfairly passed over for a promotion at Saint Bernard Church in Vernon because of his race. Rweyemamu says he returned to the rectory one night to find the locks had been changed.

Norwich Bishop Michael Cote says the priest refused to obey repeated orders to leave and race played no role in the controversy. He says parishioners raised questions about Rweyemamu's homilies as well as his administration of a private charity not affiliated with the diocese.

Rweyemamu's attorney says he will probably appeal.

An Iowa judge is on defense to clarify his stand in regards to a sexual harassment claim by a former female co-worker against him.

KTIV-TV reports:

The judge at the center of a sexual harassment claim took the stand, today, during a civil suit filed by the former head of Juvenile Court Services.

Bridget Hayes claims Judge John Ackerman touched her inappropriately; and other co-workers discriminated against her during her three years on the job.

Hayes claims derogatory "cartoons" were posted around the work place about her during her job performance evaluation. She says the cartoons read, "you're outta here", and "another one bites the dust." But, during cross examination, the attorney for the state, Grant Dugdale, asked Hayes why she thought the cartoons were directed at her. Hayes said, because someone told her.

Next on the witness stand, three different character witnesses, including Larry Williams, the Superintendent of Sioux City's Community Schools. All three said Hayes was easy to work with, and proficient in her job as the Chief Juvenile Court Officer. Dugdale questioned how well they knew her, and said their ability to observe Hayes performance on the job, was limited.

Dugdale also brought up each account that Hayes gave during her testimony about the alleged sexual harassment, and inappropriate touching by Judge John Ackerman.

Continue reading "Judge alleged of sexual harassment" »

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Posted In: Discrimination, News, Sex

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Students in a Kentucky based paper have expressed resentments about their university policies regarding sexual harassment.

In the past five years, four Eastern faculty members accused of sexual harassment have gone relatively unpunished by Eastern. They lost their jobs, yes; but they were allowed to resign or simply didn't have their contracts renewed. While they were warned of impending termination, not one was actually fired.

None of the accused faculty, even if they truly sexually assaulted students or not, can be prosecuted for a crime according to Kentucky law, unless the cases involved sexual assault.

Turns out, though students are always encouraged to report sexual harassment, once they do, not much is done by the state or by Eastern.

The issue then becomes not just whether the alleged faculty really did sexually harass students, but whether Eastern or the state punishes them enough if they've done so.

Kentucky law currently says that if Eastern employees are accused of sexual harassment and about to be fired, they must be given ten days notice. During that ten day period, the university must give the employee the chance to resign.

In other words, the current procedure slaps handcuffs on the person, gives them the key and says, "Look, we're going to arrest you in five minutes. But if you want to leave, the choice is yours."

What idiot Eastern employee accused of sexual harassment wouldn't resign?

Let's face it, the law - meant to protect the innocent - sometimes ends up protecting the guilty.

So, bad news kids. It seems that whole hour your professor spends the first day going over the syllabus - which almost always undoubtedly includes what to do if you're sexually harassed - is officially a waste.

We, as students, obviously need to do a lot more than just report sexual harassment from now on. From the looks of things, we should also report to Eastern and the state how impotent their sexual harassment policies really are.

The Contemporary Moral Problems Blog found the following article from LA Times pertinent to the ongoing discussion on Affirmative Action.

Court to Revisit Historic Brown Decision By David G. Savage (c) 2006, Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON -- For the first time in a decade, the Supreme Court will revisit the legacy of a landmark: the Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954 that declared unconstitutional the racial segregation of public schools.

Separate schools for black and white children are "inherently unequal,'' Chief Justice Earl Warren said in an opinion that helped launch the civil-rights movement.

State-enforced segregation laws are long gone, but for school officials today, a key question remains: Did the historic decision commit them to a policy of seeking integrated schools, or did it tell them not to assign students to a school based on their race?

Monday, lawyers in a pair of integration cases will debate whether school boards may use racial guidelines to assign students. Both sides will rely on the Brown decision to make their case.

With the arrival of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., civil-rights lawyers believe there may be a five-member majority determined to strike down race-based integration programs.

In Seattle, the school board adopted a policy -- now suspended -- that gave "nonwhite'' students an edge if they sought to enroll in a popular, mostly white high school. In Jefferson County, Ky., which includes Louisville, the school district said black children should make up between 15 percent and 50 percent of the enrollment at each elementary school.

In both cities, several white parents sued to have the plans declared unconstitutional after their children were barred from enrolling in the school of their choice because of their race. Although they lost in the lower courts, the Supreme Court voted in June to hear their appeals, leading many to predict the justices are poised to outlaw "racial balancing'' in the public schools.

Continue reading "Is there a need to revisit Affirmative Action policies? " »

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CommonDreams.org has this thought-provoking feature story on why Wal-Mart is not the place to shop this holiday season.

Thalia Syracopoulous writes:
As a mother, grandmother and now even great-grandmother I have lots of shopping I want to do for this holiday season. This is a busy time of year and there is much I'd love to buy. Like many others, I don't have enough money to do it all, so I have to think before I shop.

I have to think about what to buy and where to shop. Good quality and affordable price are major considerations but they are not the only important things. I want my choices to be for the good of my family and my community, and women are an incredibly important part of my community.

So, despite the lure of low prices, I'm joining other women in Seattle on Thursday to urge shoppers to think before they shop at Wal-Mart.

I won't be shopping at Wal-Mart because Wal-Mart really is bad for women.

Of course, discrimination against women is common in corporate America and I can't guarantee that every place I shop treats women well. But Wal-Mart is the world's largest employer and one of the worst abusers of its women employees in the U.S.

It isn't just that Wal-Mart doesn't pay a living wage; it's that they pay women even less than men in the same positions. Women make up more than 70 percent of Wal-Mart's hourly employees but less than one-third of its store management. Only one of its top 20 officers is a woman. And, in 2001, the few women who become managers earned $14,500 less than their male counterparts. Women hourly workers earned $1,100 less than men. These are a few of the reasons Wal-Mart is the subject of the largest class-action suit ever in this country. The lawsuit represents more than 1.5 million present and past employees of Wal-Mart and its affiliate, Sam's Club.

It goes beyond that. This year, Wal-Mart instituted a salary cap on its employees so they can only earn so much. Wal-Mart now uses more part-time workers. If you work fewer than 34 hrs/week, you have to wait a year before being eligible for health insurance and, even then, your children cannot be included in the coverage. Full-time employees have to wait 180 days before they become eligible for health benefits. That's six months before you or your children can go to a doctor for any reason, even an emergency. Should a woman be one of the lucky ones who is eligible, and can afford to buy the insurance, she will learn that her health plan does not cover contraception.

We women are the shoppers in this country. In particular we are the ones who are most likely responsible for buying the basics -- food, clothing, shoes, school supplies, toilet paper and toys. These are the things Wal-Mart sells. If I choose to save money on each item b