racial discrimination

Read the latest news about racial discrimination today on Newser.com

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Will.i.am Defends MTV Blackface Performance

'It's not a racial thing,' he tweets

(Newser) - Black Eyed Peas frontman Will.i.am blasted critics who skewered his blackface performance before the MTV Music Video Awards presentation. "It shouldn't be looked at as racial," he tweeted, explaining that he painted his face black "as expression and to emphasize my outfit." To those...

Justice Department Sues Arizona's Sheriff Joe

He won't cooperate with civil rights investigation

(Newser) - The feds have escalated their fight with Arizona's tough-talking Sheriff Joe. The Justice Department filed what it calls an "unprecedented" suit today against Maricopa County's Joe Arpaio because it says he won't cooperate with a civil rights investigation, refusing for more than a year to turn over records, reports...

Vegas Shooter Enraged Over Social Security Cutback

Claimed he'd been racially discriminated against

(Newser) - Police have identified the culprit in yesterday’s Las Vegas courthouse shootout as Johnny Lee Wicks, a black 66-year-old retiree who, they believe, was enraged over a recent Social Security dispute. When Wicks moved from California to Nevada in January 2008, his Social Security check shrank, because he lost a...

Swim Club Discriminated Against Minority Kids: Panel

Suburban Philly club could face millions of dollars in fines for booting camp

(Newser) - A state panel has found that a Philadelphia-area swim club racially discriminated against a day camp group of mostly black and Hispanic children when it canceled an agreement to let them swim, the Philadelpha Inquirer reports. The panel examined the Valley Club's actions and communications before and after the agreement...

Holder to Crank Up Civil Rights Enforcement

Holder restoring Civil Rights Division to pre-Bush status

(Newser) - The Obama administration plans to revitalize the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division and beef up efforts against racial discrimination, the New York Times reports. Attorney General Eric Holder has been working to redirect the focus to tackling discrimination in high-impact areas like housing, voting rights, employment, and bank lending, where...

Wealthy Blacks Say Class No Barrier to Racial Profiling

(Newser) - Money, power, and status count for little in the face of persistent racial profiling by police, African-American men tell the Los Angeles Times. Many say they know all too well how Henry Louis Gates Jr. must have felt in his home last week. The consensus generally seems to be that...

Gates' Real Offense? 'Speaking Truth to Power'

(Newser) - So much for our post-racial society, writes Carol Rose in the Boston Globe. If we needed any evidence that "racism is alive and well," look no further than the arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr. The Harvard professor was charged with disorderly conduct not because police mistook him...

Pool Accused of Racism Will Ask Campers Back

(Newser) - The suburban Philadelphia swim club at the center of a racism controversy will ask the day campers it disinvited to return, the local ABC affiliate reports. "We are very very sorry that this had to happen," the club president tells WPVI-TV. He had sparked the incident by saying...

Pool Bans Black Kids? What Decade Is It?
 Pool Bans Black Kids?  
 What Decade Is It? 
OPINION
Jul 10, 2009 10:53 AM CDT

Pool Bans Black Kids? What Decade Is It?

Racial discrimination sends us back to the 1950s

(Newser) - A largely white suburban Philadelphia swim club’s barring of black and Latino campers was so backward “I thought I had fallen into a time warp,” writes Annette John-Hall in the Inquirer. Things like this happened in the 1950s—when singer Dorothy Dandridge booked a room in a...

Black Kids Booted From Swim Club Over 'Complexion'

Suburban pool rejects summer campers, cites 'complexion'

(Newser) - A Philadelphia summer camp says it may take legal action after a suburban swim club rejected its campers, the Inquirer reports. On their first visit to the pool, the children said they’d overheard other poolgoers complaining about black people frequenting the swim club; soon after, management refunded the $1,...

Firefighter Ruling Leaves Guidelines as Muddy as Ever

Employers likely to ditch written tests altogether to avoid discrimination suits

(Newser) - Yesterday's Supreme Court ruling in favor of a group of white firefighters looks likely to be a boon for employment lawyers instead of cities seeking clear guidance, experts tell the New York Times. The court's ruling makes it harder for employers to chuck out tests that overwhelmingly favor whites, and...

Court Will Quash Key Voting Act Provision—Next Time

(Newser) - Today’ non-decision by the Supreme Court on Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act is actually a stern repudiation, Tom Goldstein writes for SCOTUSblog. Reading between the lines, Goldstein surmises that the court will strike down Section 5 when the next challenge comes if Congress does not significantly alter it...

'Nutty Old White Men' Vex GOP With Sotomayor Slams

(Newser) - GOP operatives opposed to Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor aren’t happy about the “help” they’re getting from Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh, CQ Politics reports. Limbaugh called the nominee a “bigot” for saying “a wise Latina woman” will often make better decisions than a white...

Paterson Settles Discrimination Suit for $300K

Then-state senator accused of firing white photog to hire black

(Newser) - New York Gov. David Paterson won’t have his day in court after all. The state has settled a case brought by a former photographer for the state senate who accused Paterson, then the minority leader, of reverse discrimination, the Post reports. Joseph Maioriello originally sought $1.5 million in...

White Firefighters' Bias Claims Head to High Court

Conn. team complained after promotion test dumped

(Newser) - Hoping to become lieutenants, 77 New Haven firefighters took a promotion test—but when none of the 19 black firefighters qualified, the city jettisoned the results. Their hopes dashed, 17 white firefighters sued the city for racial discrimination, and the case is now set for the Supreme Court. It marks...

Ex-GM Baylor Sues Clippers for Discrimination

(Newser) - NBA Hall of Famer and former Los Angeles Clippers general manager Elgin Baylor has sued the team, alleging that owner Donald Sterling had a “vision of a Southern plantation-type structure,” the Los Angles Times reports. The suit claims Sterling often talked about “poor black kids” and at...

High Court to Hear Challenge to Voting Rights Act

Provision forcing local governments, mainly in South, to clear changes with feds at issue

(Newser) - The US Supreme Court agreed today to hear a case that challenges a central section of the 1965 Voting Rights Act designed to protect minority voters in discriminatory districts, the New York Times reports. Section 5 of the law, which forces many Southern states and select districts elsewhere to get...

NASCAR Settles $225M Harassment Lawsuit

Former official cites racism, sex harassment

(Newser) - NASCAR has settled a $225 million lawsuit brought by a black official who charged that she was the target of racial and sexual harassment, AP reports. Mauricia Grant said she was routinely subjected to lewd advances by male co-workers and dubbed "Nappy-Headed Mo" and “Queen Sheba.” The...

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