Black Jesus is searched for online thousands of times per day. Is Jesus Black if you apply the 1% drop of Black blood rule? Why does Jesus continue to be portrayed as white, blond and blue eyed, when there is scientific, biblical and geographic proof that he was a man, Bible - Revelation 1:14 says, the color of brass with woolly hair? Why do so many people refuse to acknowledge this truth? What does this cover up have to do with the problems of race and skin color throughout the world and especially in America, UK, South Africa, Australia, Brazil, Mexico, India, Asia, Nigeria and Cuba? Let us talk honestly. We can all debate the various shades of color that Jesus could have been. But despite the white image of Jesus that's been falsely promoted globally for centuries, Jesus, also know as Yeshua, was not white. "Black Jesus" is searched for over 950,000 times a month, so clearly others are seeking the truth. Help spread this conversation world wide, by following BlackJesuscom on Twitter. If you seek and are not afraid of the truth, lets also share info affecting people of African decent globally, on a daily basis. Since human life began in Africa, then all of humanity is of African decent. We welcome intelligent observations and opinions from all races. The internet is the modern day drum, that can send out unfiltered messages globally, but you must be willing and ready to hear. Click on the 'Proof BlackJesus" link at the upper right to discover the Black Jesus facts and find out what motivated me to launch this blog. Thanks and peace to all of God's people. Remember, God/Yahweh/Allah is always watching and God's Heaven is not segregated based on skin color and income. Acknowledging This Truth Will Set Us Free!
Racism and colorism has continued to marginalize many dark skin people through out the world in countries where whites or light skin people are the dominant culture. As a consequence, we are seeing a continued growth of dangerous skin lightening creams and hair relaxers in these societies, where some dark skin people, based on overt bias and their own insecurities, are trying to assimilate and be accepted by attempting to adopt the appearance of the more dominant culture.
I have seen white people who are as pale as a glass of milk, yet I have never heard someone white talk about how white and pale another Caucasion is. Yet I have heard a few whites as well as many blacks talk about how dark an athletic, model or celebrity is. (See Study: Whites Prefer Light Skin Black Males)
Some of you may be to young to remember how Negros in college sororities in the 50"s and 60's would be given the manila envelope test. If you were darker than the manila envelope then you couldn't get in. A recent report by John Stossel on ABC 2020 showed that many producers of music videos primarily select light skin black females to be the devia's and dark skin girls to be the hoochies. On this segment, young black boys indicated their preference for light skin girls. It's apparent that white racism has lead to colorism among most people of color as evidence by the below clip.
Our kids are to young to realize that they are the victims of brain washing. Ask the average African American teenage boy to describe a beautiful girl and you will see what I'm talking about. By having so few dark and brown skin Black women who are displayed as beautiful in magazines ,commercials and movies, this allows someone else to impose their standard of beauty on you. What makes it worse is that so many people of color globally have internalized this racism keeping us at odds with one another.
Here's a recent example of How We Have Internalized This Colorism Sickness On A Global Basis largely promoted by multinational companies who use subversive advertising to promote skin whitening creams and to foster social and economic societal preferences based on skin color.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission says it is filing several racial harassment lawsuits a year involving hangman's nooses in workplaces, a trend agency officials say coincides with rising numbers of racial harassment complaints.
The noose, a symbol of violence against blacks, was recently in the news because of the national attention surrounding the Jena 6 case in Jena, La.
Since fiscal year 2001, the EEOC has filed more than 30 lawsuits that involve the displaying of nooses on the job. Some have resulted in settlements topping $1 million. The latest settlement, for $290,000, came Thursday.
Racial harassment complaints filed with the agency have more than doubled the past 17 years, from 3,075 in fiscal year 1991 to about 7,000 in 2007.
"It's time for Corporate America to be more proactive in preventing and eliminating racist behavior in the workplace," EEOC Chairwoman Naomi Earp said.
Thursday's settlement grew out of a lawsuit against Helmerich & Payne International Drilling, filed in Jackson, Miss. The EEOC alleged nooses were displayed on a rig in the Gulf of Mexico.
Helmerich & Payne spokesman Steve Mackey says the company investigated and doesn't know if its own employees or those working for other companies using the rig were responsible.
Among other cases:
-- In May, the agency reached a $390,000 racial harassment settlement with Pemco Aeroplex in Birmingham, Ala., on behalf of a class of black employees. The EEOC says employees at the company were subjected to racist graffiti and the display of nooses.
Felicia Banks, 35, who is African-American, quit in 2004. "I had no idea they would go that extreme with prejudice," says Banks, in Maylene, Ala. "I was very offended."
Pemco officials declined to comment on the settlement.
-- The EEOC in January settled a racial harassment lawsuit for $600,000 against AK Steel's (Quote: aks) facility in Butler, Pa. The EEOC alleges a noose was displayed and Ku Klux Klan videos were shown in employee lounges.
AK Steel spokesman Alan McCoy says the settlement did not acknowledge breaking laws, and the existence of any noose was not reported to management.
-- In March 2006, the EEOC reached a settlement of more than $1 million in a racial harassment lawsuit against Commercial Coating Service of Conroe, Texas. It alleged that a black employee was subjected to racial epithets, and in one incident white co-workers placed a noose around his neck. The company did not return calls for comment.
Jena 6 refers to six black teens charged with beating a white teen in 2006. The beating came after white students hung nooses from a tree at the high school.
Copyright 2007 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc. All Rights Reserved.
The upcoming Multicultural Forum on Workplace Diversity begins on March 3 in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minn. One of the event's producers, Bill Wells, joined DiversityInc Partner and Cofounder Luke Visconti to talk about the forum and Wells' National Black MBA Association.
Political scientist Jane Junn examines shifting views on racial categorization in the United States. Junn notes the increasingly common use of the "Multiracial" designation on the U.S. Census, and discusses what it may mean for American society.
Barack Obama's success so has fostered optimistic rhetoric in mainstream media about race relations in the United States. But does Obama 's Presidency transform Martin Luther King Jr.'s American dream into a reality?
A recent New York Times/CBS poll found that Americans are sharply divided by race on their views of Senator Obama and the state of race relations. In addition, with an increased presence of other minority groups, issues regarding race in political and social life are no longer black and white.
What role does race play in the 2008 election and beyond? Can America ever truly be a color-blind society? - The Century Foundation
Jane Junn is Associate Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University. She holds a joint appointment with the Eagleton Institute of Politics. She received her A.B. from the University of Michigan, and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. Her primary interests are political participation and elections in the U.S., political behavior and attitudes among American minorities and immigrants, theories of democracy, survey research, and social science methodology. Her research has been supported by the Russell Sage Foundation, CIRCLE, the National Science Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the Spencer Foundation, and the Educational Testing Service.
In 1998 she was a Fulbright Senior Scholar at Hanguk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul, Korea. She has been a member of the 2004 Social Science Research Commission on National Elections following the contested 2000 election, and a member of a National Academies of Science panel evaluating the redesign of the U.S. Naturalization test. Her latest book is New Race Politics in America: Understanding Minority and Immigrant Politics. Her book, Education and Democratic Citizenship in America won the 1997 Woodrow Wilson Foundation Book Award from the American Political Science Association for the best book published in political science in 1996.
Comedian: Russel Peters On The Whole World Is Mixing.
Would you like to see a world without blacks or whites, where everyone is one color?
Who's flooding our inner cities with cheap, available guns? No one seems to be able or willing to answer this question. When I grew up in Harlem in the 60'sand 70's very seldom did you hear of someone being gunned down, let alone children killing children. When ever there is a call for restricting gun sales, the NRA quickly steps forward to say "Guns don't kill people, people kill people."
Bill Cosby says that our children are trying to tell us something. We must begin to listen.
CHICAGO, Illinois (CNN) -- The Rev. Michael Pfleger has ordered the American flag at St. Sabina Church hung upside-down -- a historic sign of distress -- to symbolize the growing death toll among the city's youngsters.
So far this school year, 36 children and teens have been murdered -- more than one a week -- and Pfleger is among a chorus of weary Chicagoans who say the slayings aren't getting the attention they deserve.
Had 36 kids died of swine flu this year, "there would be this great influx of resources that say, 'Let's stop this, lets deal with this,' " Pfleger said.
Instead, because violence is driving the epidemic, "We're hiding it. We're ignoring it. We're denying the problems," he said.
Pfleger is not the first Chicagoan to express the sentiment. In 2007, after the city recorded 31 murdered children during the school year, Arne Duncan, then-CEO of public schools, expressed similar disappointment.
Duncan, who now serves as President Obama's secretary of education, said "all hell would break loose" if these killings took place in one of the metro area's upscale enclaves.
"If that happened to one of Chicago's wealthiest suburbs -- and God forbid it ever did -- if it was a child being shot dead every two weeks in Hinsdale or Winnetka or Barrington, do you think the status quo would remain? There's no way it would," he said.
Yet the problem has only worsened since Duncan publicly shared his observation. With about a month left in the school year, Chicago's public schools have topped the number of students slain in the 2007-2008 and 2006-2007 school years -- 27 and 31, respectively.
One of the most disturbing slayings came last week when the family of Alex Arellano found the 15-year-old's body. He had been beaten, burned and shot in the head.
"It's sad because they didn't have to torture him that way. He never did nothing wrong, never. He was a good kid. It just gets to me. It's crazy," Alex's friend Ashley Recendez said.
Indeed, police say the teen had no criminal record, no gang affiliation. His family says he was well-behaved and shy, almost fearful of strangers. They had recently taken him out of school to protect him after gang members threatened him.
He was last seen May 1, leaving his girlfriend's house. His girlfriend told his family that several young men chased him and beat him with baseball bats. She didn't know why.
The family found his brutalized body in an alley the next day, which at the time made Alex the 34th child slain this school year in the city, according to an unofficial tally kept by the Chicago Tribune.
"Why would they do this to a child that has nothing to do with nothing, and just, on top of that, brutally killing him?" asked Alex's uncle Juan Tirado.
Chicago Police Superintendent Jody Weis said scuffles among youth have become more violent and a conflict that 20 years ago would have warranted a pushing or wrestling match now sometimes results in gunfire.
"There's simply too many gangs, too many guns and too many drugs on the streets," he said. "We've got a problem with some of our young people are resorting to use of weapons and violence to solve any type of conflicts they may have."Weis said he concurred with Duncan's remarks from two years ago and bemoaned that society had become desensitized, almost to the point of acceptance, by the violence in some of America's major cities.
"That is a very sad state of affairs," he said. But not all officials are convinced the level of violence against children is unique to Chicago.
Mayor Richard Daley said the numbers appear worse in his city because the public school system considers teenagers students even after they drop out.
The rest of America doesn't count them. You're a dropout forever. We don't think they're dropouts. They're students," he said.
He further said Chicago's problems are no worse than those in any other American city.
"It's all over, the same thing," he said. "You go to a large city or small city, it's all over America. It's not unique to one community or one city."
Despite Daley's remarks, CNN has learned that none of the city's 36 victims this year was a dropout.
Also, Daley's statistics on the number of youths killed in other cities don't appear to match reports from American cities.
Los Angeles, California, notorious for its gang problems, is larger than Chicago. It has reported only 23 child slayings this school year. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is about half the size of Chicago, but it has witnessed only a ninth of the child slayings: four this school year.
In 2007, Diane Latiker, founder of the community group Kids Off the Block, began a memorial on a vacant lot in Chicago. She bought 30 landscaping stones and wrote the name of a slain school-age child on each of them.
Her hopes were that the stark sight of the memorial would shock the city into action.
Today, the memorial includes 153 stones, some for children as young as 10, and there is little indication the pace is waning, as at least two children were killed since Alex Arellano's body was found Saturday.
"They come by here and they do this, and they come by here in cars and families come and cry," Latiker said of the burgeoning memorial.
Asked who was failing the kids -- police? schools? city officials? -- she replied flatly, "We all are."
Other community activists said they're at a loss to find any simple explanation. In May 2007, public outrage overflowed after the death of 16-year-old Blair Holt, an honor student and aspiring songwriter.
According to various media reports, Holt was riding a city bus when a gunfight erupted between two gang members. Holt tried to shield a young girl who was in the line of fire and was fatally shot in the stomach.
His death sparked public protests, and grieving family and activists listed a host of scapegoats: lax gun laws, insufficient policing, bad parenting. But two years later, families and activists say they're tired and discouraged by the torpid pace of change.
Lakeesha Stevens, whose son was shot as he slept in the car last year, said, "It can happen to anyone... you can be walking, you can be anywhere."
Fortunately, Martrell Stevens survived the shooting, but kindergarten proved a lot tougher for the youngster after the bullet left him partially paralyzed.
Weis said Chicago police work tirelessly to keep the violence out of the schools, and he expressed relief that the city is "providing a safe place for our young folks to learn."
However, he acknowledged that the conflicts sometimes begin in the schools and are finished off-campus. The violence will continue to be a priority for Chicago police, he said.
"I can promise you the Chicago Police Department is outraged and we will continue to work these cases with high energy and a great deal of enthusiasm," he said
What Do you think needs to be done to stop the violence?
Below is another example of predators coming into the Black community to financially rape and rob home owners of hundreds of millions with little or no coverage by the media on a national scale. Yet as soon as there is a crime committed by a Black male of a few hundred dollars from a convenience store, it immediately gets massive repeated TV, radio and newspaper coverage.
By the way, that petty thief is given swift justice, while there is still debate as to whether these so called greedy black homeowner are to blame for their own sorry situation and not those who deceived them.
New York Times Reporter Michael Powell wrote the below article:
As she describes it, Beth Jacobson and her fellow loan officers at Wells Fargo Bank “rode the stagecoach from hell” for a decade, systematically singling out blacks in Baltimore and suburban Maryland for high-interest subprime mortgages.
These loans, Baltimore officials have claimed in a federal lawsuit against Wells Fargo, tipped hundreds of homeowners into foreclosure and cost the city tens of millions of dollars in taxes and city services.
Wells Fargo, Ms. Jacobson said in an interview, saw the black community as fertile ground for subprime mortgages, as working-class blacks were hungry to be a part of the nation’s home-owning mania. Loan officers, she said, pushed customers who could have qualified for prime loans into subprime mortgages. Another loan officer stated in an affidavit filed last week that employees had referred to blacks as “mud people” and to subprime lending as “ghetto loans.”
“We just went right after them,” said Ms. Jacobson, who is white and said she was once the bank’s top-producing subprime loan officer nationally. “Wells Fargo mortgage had an emerging-markets unit that specifically targeted black churches, because it figured church leaders had a lot of influence and could convince congregants to take out subprime loans.”
Ms. Jacobson’s account and that of the other loan officer who gave an affidavit, Tony Paschal, both of whom have left Wells Fargo, provide the first detailed accusations of deliberate racial steering into subprimes by one of the nation’s top banks.
The toll taken by such policies, Baltimore officials argue, is terrible. Data released by the city as part of the suit last week show that more than half the properties subject to foreclosure on a Wells Fargo loan from 2005 to 2008 now stand vacant. And 71 percent of those are in predominantly black neighborhoods.
Judge Benson E. Legg of Federal District Court had asked the city to file the additional paperwork and has not decided whether the lawsuit can go forward.
Wells Fargo officials have declined detailed interviews since Baltimore filed suit in January 2008. In an e-mail statement on Friday, a spokesman said that only 1 percent of the city’s 33,000 foreclosures have come on Wells Fargo mortgages.
“We have worked extremely hard to make homeownership possible for more African-American borrowers,” wrote Kevin Waetke, a spokesman for Wells Fargo Home Mortgage. “We absolutely do not tolerate team members treating our customers or others disrespectfully or unfairly, or who violate our ethics and lending practices.”
City and state officials across the nation have investigated and sometimes sued Wells Fargo over its practices. The Illinois attorney general has investigated whether Wells Fargo Financial violated fair lending and civil rights laws by steering black and Latino homeowners into high-interest loans. New York’s attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo, raised similar questions about the lending practices of Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup, among other banks.
The N.A.A.C. P. has filed a class-action lawsuit charging systematic racial discrimination by more than a dozen banks, including Wells Fargo.
At the heart of such charges is reverse redlining, specifically marketing the most expensive and onerous loan products to black customers.
The New York Times, in a recent analysis of mortgage lending in New York City, found that black households making more than $68,000 a year were nearly five times as likely to hold high-interest subprime mortgages as whites of similar or even lower incomes. (The disparity was greater for Wells Fargo borrowers, as 2 percent of whites in that income group hold subprime loans and 16.1 percent of blacks.)
“We’ve known that African-Americans and Latinos are getting subprime loans while whites of the same credit profile are getting the lower-cost loans,” said Eric Halperin, director of the Washington office of the Center for Responsible Lending. “The question has been why, and the gory details of this complaint may provide an answer.”
The affidavits of the two loan officers seem to bolster Baltimore’s lawsuit. Mr. Paschal, who is black and worked as a loan officer in Wells Fargo’s office in Annandale, Va., from 1997 to 2007, offers a sort of primer on Wells Fargo’s subprime marketing strategy by race.
In 2001, he states in his affidavit, Wells Fargo created a unit in the mid-Atlantic region to push expensive refinancing loans on black customers, particularly those living in Baltimore, southeast Washington and Prince George’s County, Md.
“They referred to subprime loans made in minority communities as ghetto loans and minority customers as ‘those people have bad credit’, ‘those people don’t pay their bills’ and ‘mud people,’ ” Mr. Paschal said in his affidavit.
He said a bank office in Silver Spring, Md., had an “affinity group marketing” section, which hired blacks to call on African-American churches.
“The company put ‘bounties’ on minority borrowers,” Mr. Paschal said. “By this I mean that loan officers received cash incentives to aggressively market subprime loans in minority communities.”
Both loan officers said the bank had given bonuses to loan officers who referred borrowers who should have qualified for a prime loan to the subprime division. Ms. Jacobson said that she made $700,000 one year and that the company flew her and other subprime officers to resorts across the country.
“I used to joke that ‘I’ll pay for your kids to go to private school if you give me clients,’ ” Ms. Jacobson said in the interview.
Loan officers employed other methods to steer clients into subprime loans, according to the affidavits. Some officers told the underwriting department that their clients, even those with good credit scores, had not wanted to provide income documentation.
“By doing this, the loan flipped from prime to subprime,” Ms. Jacobson said. “But there was no need for that; many of these clients had W2 forms.”
Other times, she said, loan officers cut and pasted credit reports from one applicant onto the application of another customer.
These practices took a great toll on customers. For a homeowner taking out a $165,000 mortgage, a difference of three percentage points in the loan rate — a typical spread between conventional and subprime loans — adds more than $100,000 in interest payments.
The accusations contained in the affidavits, which were given to Relman & Dane, a civil rights law firm working with the City of Baltimore, have not drawn a specific response from Wells Fargo. But city officials say the conclusion is clear.
“They confirm our worst fears: that this is not just a case based on a review of numbers and a statistical analysis,” said the city solicitor, George Nilson. “You don’t have to scratch your head and wonder if maybe this was just an accident. The behavior is pretty explicit.”
Both sides expect to appear in court at a hearing in the case in late June.
As we look back on a week of tragedy at the Holocaust Museum we see what hate can do to destroy lives. Not only was a hard working Black man killed, he was also a loving father. It hurt my heart to listen to officer Stephen John's 11 year old son talk about the great dad he lost. This young boy's visible pain brought back vivid memories for me 47 years ago when at the age of six my own mother told me my dad had died. All children need their father.
And then there is the 32 year old son Erik von Brunn of the white supremacist killer. He tells below what life was like growing up in a home full of hate.
Museum shooter's son condemns father's actions- Michelle Basch, WTOP Radio
The man charged with murdering a security guard at the Holocaust Museum this week remains hospitalized in critical condition, but his son is speaking out.
Erik von Brunn, 32, says the shooting was an unforgivable act of cowardice. In a written statement, the son apologized to the family of the murdered security guard, special officer Stephen Johns.
The younger von Brunn tells ABC News his father's white supremacist beliefs "destroyed our family and ruined our lives as well."
James von Brunn, 88, is charged with first degree murder for Wednesday's shooting.
Investigators say the weapon used to kill the guard was a 22-caliber Winchester rifle made between 1908 and 1928, before records of gun purchases were kept.
A memorial will be held Saturday for the slain guard, Stephen Tyrone Johns.
The public service starts at 11 a.m. at the 7th Day Adventist Church at 727 West Montgomery Avenue Rockville, Md.
A scholarship drive is being launched for Tyrone Johns Jr., the guards son.
The below information appears on American Jewish Committee's Website:
The American Jewish Committee’s Washington DC chapter has established a memorial fund for Stephen Tyrone Johns, who was killed in the line of duty at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
Stephen T. Johns Memorial Fund
In light of the tragic shooting at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, AJC has created a fund for the family of Officer Stephen T. Johns who bravely gave his life protecting others as well as the peaceful values that the museum embodies. This horrific event reminds us that AJC’s fight against intolerance and extremism are as critical as ever, and it is essential that we respond swiftly in the wake of tragedy.
Please join us in honoring the life and bravery of Officer Johns and consider making a donation to this fund.
The local chapter of the American Jewish Committee and Johns' employer, Wackenhut Services, are also establishing memorial funds.
AJC thanks you on behalf of the family of Officer Stephen T. Johns who bravely gave his life protecting others as well as the peaceful values that the museum embodies. This horrific event reminds us that AJC’s fight against intolerance and extremism are as critical as ever, and it is essential that we respond swiftly in the wake of tragedy.
Thank you,
Melanie B. Maron Executive Director American Jewish Committee, Washington Chapter 1156 15th Street NW, Suite 1201 Washington, DC 20005 (202) 785-5475 (202) 785-0390 fax
When I was a kid growing up in Harlem, as I walked across 125th Street end to end there were 3 firehouses. As I peeked inside on many occasion, I only recall seeing 2 black firemen among all 3 that employed about 30 per shift per station. They were all Irish and Italian, just like most of the city’s police force.
I would see the same as I passed by construction sites. For those jobs you had to be in the union and to be in the union someone had to sponsor you and of course, then, no whites would sponsor someone Black. All children tend to choose careers based on the role models they see. As a child I couldn’t understand why I saw so few minorities in these visible, respected positions.
There is always the implied false opinion by some that Blacks are not as smart and that's the reason for our absense. I knew a lot of dumb white kids in the mostly white schools I've attended. So I knew better. But what I did come to know then and its true now, is the insidious and incestuous means that are employed to keep others out from Wall Street to main street.
You will find in most of the major US cities, that many of the Italian and Irish fire fighters are the sons and grandsons, uncles, nephews and cousins of those who came before them. They not only pass on experience and wisdom they also pass along questions and answers for many of these qualifying exams. So like applicants are never without help from their own.
Black’s are told that we need to pull ourselves up by our boot straps and work harder, while some others sit back knowing that they already have all the answers or can easily get them. You take 3 generations and multiple versions of the same test and you compile them in a family, friends accessable data base that you share with your own kind and you too will begin to believe the lie that you are geneticly superior just because of your pigmentation.
If your home was burning and you called the fire department would you tell the operator only to send white firemen? No, that would be absurd.
11-year veteran firefighter James Watkins, who passed the promotional exam but didn’t score high enough to make the first round of promotions. He said he turned down an offer to join the “New Haven 20” Ricci lawsuit. He accused the Supreme Court of “changing the rules in the middle of the game” by coming up with new criteria for how cities should apply Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. And he said he expects a backlash from victorious white colleagues and firefighter unions.
(Click on the play arrow to watch those comments.) On the other hand, he and NAACP President James Rawlings repeatedly said they saw silver linings in Monday’s ruling that will enable them to continue filing lawsuits and taking other actions in the name of advancing diversity. Which they plan to do. “It doesn’t end here,” Tinney said.“Folks can pop champagne bottles,” firefighter Douglas Wardlaw (pictured) said Tuesday, referring to the victorious plaintiffs in the case.
“They can smoke cigars all they want. But it’s not over. We’re still saving fighting the fight. We’re still saving lives. We’re still producing African-American, Latino and female heroes to look up to.” Whither Title VII? Though a “disappointment to civil rights,” the 5-4 majority opinion leaves open the door for people to file lawsuits challenging employers with discriminating under Title VII, Rawlings said.
He and Tinney said they feared that the conservative-leaning court would strike down the entire act. Instead, it ruled that New Haven’s specific actions in ignoring the results of this test were invalid, they said. Tinney added that the ruling doesn’t even necessarily order the city to certify the results of the test in question, a 2003 exam in which no African-Americans scored high enough to qualify for immediate promotions to lieutenant or captain.
Three black candidates passed the captain’s exam, none qualifying to be eligible for promotion to seven vacancies. A total of 19 black firefighters passed the lieutenants’ exam. None qualified to fill an initial eight vacancies, but at least three would have been eligible for subsequent promotions, according to court records.
“We believe this decision reinforces the ability of minorities to challenge questionable and discriminatory promotional examinations,” said Tinney. “It only affects the city of New Haven by defining and heightening the standard by which a city must adhere in order to voluntarily comply with Title VII in the face of exams that appear to have a discriminatory impact.”
The majority opinion, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, did resist an apparent effort by Justice Atonin Scalia to go further and rule unconstitutional the ignoring of test results based on their having a “disparate impact.” But the decision didn’t just kick the case back to the lower court. It reversed a lower-court ruling that had been in favor of the city. It gave the plaintiffs the summary judgment ruling they were looking for from the beginning. It ruled against the city specifically on the question of whether “disparate impact” — i.e. results that leave out minorities, as opposed to proof that a test was flawed — is enough of a criterion to toss an exam. Furthermore, it decreed a new standard for interpreting Title VII.
Kennedy’s opinion overturned decades of bipartisan precedent by decreeing that no longer can a city be liable for ignoring test results simply on the basis it expects to be sued — which is what New Haven did here. Even Mayor John DeStefano — who disagreed with the decision and was the target of the ruling — said Monday that he believes the decision will in fact lead the lower court to certify the results of the 2003 exam. And he and Pulitzer Prize-winning Supreme Court-watcher Linda Greenhouse said Monday that, by their reading of the various opinions issued, this decision could well presage a further eroding of civil-rights law.
National Picture Gary Tinney and James Rawlings insisted that the Firebirds and NAACP won’t give up. They will file suit to challenge the test results if indeed the lower court ends up certifying the 2003 promotional exams, Tinney said. Reverse-discrimination suits like Ricci are spreading across the country, Tinney said.
One such suit is taking place in Bridgeport; Bridgeport Firebirds President Shane Porter accompanied Tinney at Monday’s press conference. Tinney repeatedly emphasized the low numbers of not just black and Hispanics, but women, too, in fire department ranks, especially in leadership roles.
Only 13 of the New Haven department’s 89 leadership positions are filled by blacks or Latinos, he said; the department’s 411 firefighters include only 11 women. In Hamden, he said, a city that’s 33 percent black, just nine of 115 firefighters are black. Just 3 percent of New York City’s 11,000 firefighters are black, he said. Reversing numbers like these requires a lengthy battle, and strong civil rights laws, he said.
Finally Justice For Black and Hispanic Firemen In NYCSome 1,500 Black and Latino applicants to the Fire Department of New York have settled a long-running lawsuit with the city and the Justice Department over racially discriminatory hiring practices at the nation's largest fire department. The agreement grants almost $100 million in back pay to those impacted. When the case was filed in 2007, the Fire Department was 90 percent white, even though African Americans and Latinos totaled half the city's population. Under the new agreement, the Fire Department will be required to change its recruiting policies in order to increase diversity and make the department more representative of the city's population. We discuss the settlement with two guests: Paul Washington, past president of the black firefighters group, the Vulcan Society of Black Firefighters, and captain of Engine 234 in Crown Heights, Brooklyn; and Richard Levy, the case's lead attorney.
Glenn Beck calls President Barack Obama a racist who hates white people and CNN Anchor Lou Dobbs, a closet birther uses his bully pulpit to insinuate that thePresident is illegitimate until he produces a real birth certificate. These disrespectful extremists are able to spew their lies and hatred with the blessing of certain advertisers who we support. If you really want to get even and send a message to CNN and Fox corporate, then send a message to the advertisers who support these programs, by telling them you may no longer buy their products.
MSNBC's Deutsch encourages viewers to demand advertisers on Beck's show spendmoney elsewhere.
Please pass this email on below from the ColorOfChange.org
Dear friends,
As you may know, right-wing talk show hosts have been bringing race-based fear mongering into the mainstream, but FOX's Glenn Beck just took it to another level.
On Tuesday, Beck said: "This president has exposed himself as a guy over and over and over again who has a deep-seated hatred for white people... this guy is, I believe, a racist."
It's part of a larger argument Beck has been making: that President Obama wants to serve the needs of Black communities at White people's expense. This kind of talk stirs up fear, hate, and it can lead to violence. I've joined ColorOfChange.org's effort to stop Glenn Beck.
ColorOfChange is already putting calls into Beck's advertisers, asking them if they want to be associated with this kind of racist hate and fear-mongering. When the advertisers see that tens of thousands of us are behind that question, I believe they'll move their advertising dollars elsewhere, and his show and platform will be history.
Will you take a stand and be counted, and invite your friends and family to do the same? It takes just a moment: Color of Change.org
Glenn Beck is appealing to the worst in America. Of course, some Americans refuse to accept the fact that our president is Black or the idea that he could truly serve all Americans. But the only way these views fade away is if they're not reinforced by mainstream society. Instead, folks like Glenn Beck, Lou Dobbs, and Rush Limbaugh are exploiting racism and race-based fear to bump their ratings, stirring up racial discord in the process.
The dangers of these tactics are real. We saw the same dynamic during the presidential race: By the end, the McCain/Palin campaign was unable to control the violent energy whipped up by their race-baiting. It resulted in an unprecedented number of threats on Obama's life, a rise in the number of hate groups, and an increase in the number of threats and crimes against immigrants and Black people.
FOX has a horrible track record on pushing racist propaganda, but Glenn Beck appears to be taking the network to an even lower standard. He's trying to divide and distract America when we should be coming together and talking about issues that really matter--like health care and the economy.
The good news is that we have the power to stop this. All major media is funded by advertising. And advertisers care more than anything what consumers think. If we want to change what's happening and put an end to folks like Glenn Beck having a platform, we can do it.
UpDate 8/12/09 - These former Glenn Beck advertisers know who their customers are.
GEICO is the latest corporate sponsor refusing to be associated with Beck. GEICO joins Lawyers.com, Procter & Gamble, Progressive Insurance, Men’s Wearhouse, State Farm, Sargento and SC Johnson in boycotting the Glenn Beck Show.
This display of corporate responsibility is admirable. Yet there are still some corporate hold-outs. General Electric, Farmers Insurance, Office Depot, Nestlé (Gerber), Red Lobster, Travelocity, the U.S. Postal Service, Walmart and Wyeth, are all targets for the on-going boycott being sponsored by ColorofChange.org .
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