Women's Rights Employment Law Blog

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.

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.

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" »

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 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" »

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" »

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