Diversity Chat for the Week of March 26th, 2006
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Welcome to Diversity Chat for the week of March 26th, 2006! This week, Tony Wade and I discuss the potential impact of immigration reform on employers, the implications of new studies showing young African American men are being left behind by the rest of society, why prejudices that aren't confronted have a way of slipping out at the worst possible time, and the impact of discrimination on the health of the victims.
We also go "Out or About" this week to a presentation on current business immigration law.
Plus, we talk this week to Missouri 5th District Democratic Congressman Emanuel Cleaver II about his efforts to overcome his own stereotypes against a small demographic segment of his constituency - farmers.
First though, this round up of some of the week's top stories in human relations, equal opportunity and diversity:
The U.S. Senate is expected to take up immigration reform legislation this week. Among the most contentious issues - whether or not the Senate will include a guest worker provision to cover as many as 12-million undocumented people already living and working in the United States. The House passed an immigration reform bill without a guest worker provision last year. The House measure also makes it a crime to help those in the country illegally find jobs and social services.
Thousands of people demonstrated against harsh treatment of immigrants Friday in cities across the country - including Los Angeles, Phoenix, Atlanta and Kansas City - among others. President Bush is urging Congress to pass an immigration reform bill with a guest worker provision. He says America doesn't have to choose between tough immigration enforcement and fair treatment of undocumented people already in the country.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/03/25/immigration/
http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-imm25.html
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission this week announced the settlement of a racial harassment lawsuit against Texas-based Commercial Coating Service, Inc. for more than a million dollars. The EEOC says an African American employee of the firm was subjected to a barrage of racial epithets - culminating in an incident where white co-workers placed a noose around his neck in the company bathroom and choked him in October of 2002.
http://www.eeoc.gov/press/3-21-06.html
According to recent studies released by Columbia, Princeton, Harvard and other institutions - African American men are becoming increasingly left behind by mainstream society. Among the key findings of the studies - half of all African American men in their 20s with no more than a high school education are unemployed - and in 2004 - 21 percent of African American men who didn't attend college had been incarcerated.
A study out this week shows African-American women are much less likely to receive recommended treatments for breast cancer. That finding that may help explain why a separate study this week found African American women are 19 percent more likely to die of breast cancer than white women.
http://www.kaisernetwork.org/daily_reports/rep_index.cfm?DR_ID=36185
Gender equity has been a fact of life at the nation's law schools for years - but that's not the case when it comes to law firm partnerships. Even though most law schools routinely graduate classes that are nearly evenly split between men and women - and law firms generally hire an equal number of new male and female associates - there are far fewer female partners in law firms than males.
That's according to the National Association for Law Placement - which says only about 17 percent of the partners at major law firms nationwide were women in 2005. And that figure has risen only slightly over the last decade. The Association says in 1995 - about 13 percent of law firm partners were women.
St. Louis radio station KTRS fired talk show host Dave Lenihan this week after Lenihan - in an apparent slip of the tongue - described Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice with a racial slur.
Lenihan had been heaping praise on Rice as an excellent choice to become the next National Football League Commissioner - and apparently tried to say - as an African American - she would be a big coup for the NFL. Instead - Lenihan said twice in rapid succession that Rice would be a big coon. Lenihan immediately recognized his mistake and apologized. He was fired later that day.
High School officials in the tiny southwest Wisconsin town of Viroqua cancelled Diversity Day - which had been slated for Thursday. Scheduled speakers had included a rainbow of ethnically - racially - religiously - physically - economically - and sexually diverse people.
And that's where the problem cropped up. Turns out Viroqua High School cancelled Diversity Day after being threatened with a lawsuit if it didn't include a Christian speaker - or a speaker that had gone from being gay to being straight.
http://www.lacrossetribune.com/articles/2006/03/21/news/1news21.txt
The U.S. Air Force got a new Deputy Assistant Secretary for Strategic Diversity Integration this month. His name - Chris Patterakis - a 69-year old African American and former fighter pilot who once commanded the Thunderbirds flight demonstration team.
Patterakis has worked for the past four years as a special assistant to the Secretary of the Air Force. He says he wants to broaden the scope of Air Force diversity beyond racial, ethnic, religious and gender lines to include such issues as economic background. And according to Patterakis - he wants to convince all Air Force members that a diverse organization can do a better job.
http://www.shns.com/shns/g_index2.cfm?action=detail&pk=PATTERAKIS-03-23-06
The ugly wave of anti-Arab sentiment immediately after 9/11 may have caused a sharp increase in premature deliveries and low-birth-weight babies born to women of Arab descent in the U.S. for several months thereafter.
Diane Lauderdale of the University of Chicago says her study shows Arab-American women who gave birth six months after 9/11 were 34 percent more likely have a low-birth-weight baby - when compared to Arab-American women in the same six month period of a year earlier. She says the post-9/11 babies of the Arab-American women she studied over the same period were 50 percent more likely to be born prematurely. Lauderdale's study can be found in the latest issue of Demography.
Well - it didn't make many headlines here in the United States - but on Tuesday, March 21st - the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization - better known as UNESCO celebrated its 40th International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. The day commemorates the 1960 Sharpeville massacre in South Africa.
United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan - in his message on the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination - said none of us is born to hate. Intolerance is taught and can be untaught. We must not tolerate the creeping rot of routine discrimination.
http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.php-URL_ID=46470&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html
http://allafrica.com/stories/200603210192.html
The World Diversity Leadership Council named Milwaukee-based Johnson Controls Inc. as the winner of its global corporate diversity innovation award. Johnson Controls won the honor based on its supplier diversity joint-venture program - and for excellence in collaborating with suppliers in urban and diverse communities.
http://milwaukee.bizjournals.com/milwaukee/stories/2006/03/13/daily35.html?jst=b_ln_hl
The National Black Caucus of Local Elected Officials - or NBC-LEO awarded seven U.S. cities its annual City Cultural Diversity Awards this week. The cities include Durham, North Carolina - Enterprise, Alabama - Federal Way in Washington State - Louisville, Kentucky - Little Rock, Arkansas - and Phoenix, Arizona.
NBC-LEO president Felicia Moore - a City Councilwoman from Atlanta, Georgia - praised the award-winning cities for improving and promoting cultural diversity.
http://www.fedwaymirror.com/portals-code/list.cgi?paper=91&cat=23&id=610861&more=
The NAACP says a growing number of legal challenges to minority-based scholarships are driving some universities to dilute their efforts to recruit minorities in order to avoid court battles.
Southern Illinois University - the State University of New York - Washington University in St. Louis - and the University of Michigan - are all among schools that altered various admissions, scholarship or fellowship policies aimed at attracting minority students - after court or government complaints about their programs.
http://www.blackenterprise.com/ExclusivesekOpen.asp?id=1562
The National Science Foundation this week awarded a 300-thousand dollar diversity research grant to hotel-chain Marriott International. Marriott will partner with George Washington University in Washington D.C on a three-year research project to examine the dynamics of employee engagement among diverse work groups - and its impact on business performance.
http://finanzen.net/news/news_detail.asp?NewsNr=382236
John Brooks Slaughter - president and CEO of the National Action Council for Minorities in engineering - says the U.S. engineering profession has largely ignored - failed to recognize - or refused to admit - that diversity drives engineering innovation. Slaughter calls the relative absence of women and minorities in scientific and engineering careers the new American dilemma - and says the U.S. risks losing its competitive edge if its engineering professionals don't better reflect the changing demographic makeup of America.
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/opinion/14176282.htm
The U.S. Navy's Diversity Directorate hosted its third semi-annual Fleet Diversity Council last week in San Diego. Commander John Hefti - the Navy's Diversity Director - calls the Councils a great way to gauge the Navy's diversity efforts and get a pulse on the fleet. The feedback from the council is up-channeled to the Chief of Naval Operations.
http://www.news.navy.mil/search/display.asp?story_id=22849
Jesse Jackson's Rainbow PUSH Coalition issued a corporate diversity report card on the top 50 public companies in Illinois this week. Half of the companies earned As or Bs - but Jackson says he isn't satisfied with the results.
Companies near the bottom of the list questioned the accuracy of Jackson's report card - which the Coalition said was researched through phone calls and Web site searches. Thirteen companies received no points because they failed to respond to the survey.
http://www.chicagobusiness.com/cgi-bin/news.pl?id=19974
A new law in Mississippi will help school districts there develop and pay for civil rights curricula in public schools.
Susan Glisson - executive director of the Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation at the University of Mississippi - helped champion the law. She says doesn't know of any other state with a similar program devoted solely to civil rights history. But while the state will help pay for civil rights education - school districts aren't required to provide it.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1110AP_Civil_Rights_History.html
Laws passed in the 1980s to protect children from drug dealers don't deter narcotics sales near schools. They also unfairly target minorities and subject them to stiffer penalties than drug pushers in predominantly white communities. That's the conclusion of a report released this week by the Washington D.C.-based Justice Policy Institute. The report examined the effectiveness of drug-free zones nationwide.
http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/index.ssf?/base/news-0/11430934128790.xml&coll=1
Housing advocates are continuing to say the sub-prime lending market unfairly targets minority and low-income neighborhoods. A Federal Reserve study in September showed African Americans and Hispanics are far more likely to receive high-cost home loans than whites - even when adjusting for factors such as income and location.
