There was a time when Supreme Court justices peered into federal statutes outlawing discrimination and found between the lines the right of the aggrieved to take his complaint to court. What good was the law, they reasoned, without a means to enforce it?

Those, Justice Antonin Scalia said last week, were “the bad old days.”

The increasingly conservative court has said often of late that it is getting out of the business of finding a right to sue that is not explicitly stated in the law — what lawyers call an “implied cause of action.”

Two discrimination cases that the court heard last week, both concerning retaliation, made plain that a sizable number of justices are deeply resistant to finding such rights and to expanding those it previously recognized.

Full story… 

A U.S. delegation has vigorously defended the U.S. record on efforts to combat racial discrimination before the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. The committee has just completed a two-day review of the United States compliance with the 1969 International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination, which it ratified in 1994. Lisa Schlein reports for VOA from Geneva.The U.N. Committee of 18 independent experts peppered the U.S. delegation with numerous questions. It challenged assertions that the government was doing enough to combat alleged racial discrimination in the detention of African-Americans and other minorities.

Full story…

At a time when Americans are congratulating themselves for having a diverse field of political candidates, their business leadership still doesn’t equally value diverse employees and managers. In fact, progress for women and minorities in terms of both pay and power has stalled or regressed at many of the nation’s biggest companies. This inequality shapes perceptions about who can or should be a leader.

More than 40 years after job discrimination was outlawed, the wage gap between white men and just about everyone else persists. The one exception is for Asian-American men, whose median wages were just 1% less than those of white men who worked full time, year round, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ survey in 2005, the latest year for which data are available.

Full story…

A CDC study on domestic violence released earlier this month found there was a significantly higher number of intimate partner violence (IPV) cases among minorities.

But some Penn State staff said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) research is not consistent with their knowledge of domestic violence.

The CDC study found that multiracial, non-Hispanic, American Indian and Alaska Native women reported more cases, defined IPV as a threat, and were victims of physical, sexual or emotional abuse from a former or current partner on at least one occasion.

Full story…

According to a new study, released by the University of California, Los Angeles, (UCLA), college admission rates of Asian American students at select public universities have thrived in the absence of affirmative action, whereas the admission rates of Black, Hispanic and White students have declined.

In a review of enrollment statistics from three states where affirmative action bans are in effect ? California, Florida and Texas ? the report also revealed that across all races, the male population drops in schools with blind admissions processes. Researchers examined admissions at five select institutions ? the University of California, Berkeley; UCLA, the University of California, San Diego; the University of Florida; and the University of Texas at Austin.

Full story… 

As we spend this month celebrating the achievements of African Americans, I’m saddened by a report that concludes that the subprime mortgage crisis has caused the largest loss of wealth for black and Latino homeowners in modern U.S. history.

The erosion of wealth is staggering.

Subprime borrowers of color will lose between $164 billion and $213 billion for loans taken in the past eight years, according to United for a Fair Economy, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization. For the past five years, the group has examined the racial wealth divide in this country.

Full story… 

Now he does, but it’s too late: White, a 61-year-old African-American from a suburb of Madison, Wis., was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s more than four years ago when he was in his late 50s and lost his job as a parole officer because of the memory loss.

A survey of more than 2,000 people nationwide, including 1,210 black Americans, shows most people don’t know about the connection between cardiovascular conditions and the risk for dementia.

Full story… 

A human rights group said the United States has failed to comply with its obligations under an international treaty to end racial discrimination.

Human Rights Watch said it documented U.S. non-compliance with the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICE RD) in seven key areas, the non-profit group said Thursday in a release.

The 1994 treaty requires “affirmative steps to eliminate discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national or ethnic origin in all areas of public life.”

Full story… 

When Tommy Amaker and Sydney Johnson were hired last spring to coach basketball at Harvard and Princeton, respectively, they brought to six the number of African American men’s coaches in the eight-team Ivy League.That gave the Ancient Eight, in which some schools have started opening their doors to students from lower economic backgrounds - athletes who may not have had a chance to attend one of the elite universities - the highest ratio of African American coaches in college sports.

Full story…

A generation ago, most African-American political candidates pursued elected office as an extension of civil rights activism. Today, a new crop has emerged: post-civil rights, change-chanting candidates who defy conventional racial and political categories.

Illinois Sen. Barack Obama is leading the way. As the son of a Kenyan father and a white mother from Kansas opens new territory in race and politics, his success signals a transformation for the black civil rights establishment that came before him.

Other young African-American politicians, less well-known than Obama, are on the same path. From Tennessee to Massachusetts to New Jersey, they have won elections on race-neutral campaigns that emphasized bridging political and ideological divides rather than the social justice activism of the past generation.

Full story…