EthnicMajority

(The Guardian) For someone who holds the relatively modest position of county sheriff, Joe Arpaio has received an astonishing amount of attention from this year's Republican presidential candidates.

He has been wooed by Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain and Rick Santorum, who all made pilgrimages to Arizona to see him in person, Santorum as recently as last week. Rick Perry invited him to tour Texas with him and Mitt Romney, for whom he acted as Arizona campaign chair in 2008, has also been in contact.

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(Yahoo Sports) Ben & Jerry's will take fortune cookies out of its new Jeremy Lin-inspired ice cream flavor after hearing complaints that the ingredient was racist.

The limited-edition flavor, "Taste the Lin-Sanity," originally featured vanilla frozen yogurt, honey swirls and bits of fortune cookies, the latter ingredient serving as an obvious nod to Lin's heritage. After the backlash, the company pulled the cookies from the mix and replaced them with waffle cone pieces that will be served on the side.

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(Yahoo) Black actresses Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer are Oscar frontrunners on Sunday, but the reality is that non-whites remain hugely under-represented at the Academy Awards, a new study says.

Halle Berry and Denzel Washington were famously lauded as having made a breakthrough for winning best actress and actor Oscars in 2002, but while there has been some progress in the decade since, it remains too little.

Also that year Will Smith was nominated for best actor, and Sidney Poitier received an honorary Oscar for lifetime achievement, said the study, "Not Quite a Breakthrough: The Oscars and Actors of Color."

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(The Root) Reuters is reporting today on a study showing that African-American donors give higher percentages of their incomes to charity than their white counterparts, with nearly two-thirds of black households making charitable donations, worth a total of about $11 billion a year. And it's not just a little more: That number means black donors turn over a full 25 percent more of their incomes than white donors annually, according to the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors research. The results have many wondering why more African Americans don't self-identify as philanthropists.

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(California Watch) More than a decade after California law banned race-conscious admissions, outreach and financial aid at public universities, the state's most selective public university system has seen a significant impact on its ability to increase enrollments of African American, Latino and American Indian students.

A ruling by the Supreme Court ending race-based preferences in college admissions would have a limited effect in California because state law already prohibits it. But as other states consider the effects of a Supreme Court ruling on their own college populations, they might observe what's happened in the Golden State.

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(Christian Science Monitor) While watching Melissa Harris-Perry debut her own show on MSNBC last weekend, I found myself reacting with a sort of battered awe: A woman of color, hosting a serious show on a serious cable-news channel? Another glass ceiling, shattered.

Ms. Harris-Perry is the first African American woman to ever solo-host a news and politics show on a major television outlet. But here’s another eureka coup: She’s a tenured professor of political science at Tulane University in New Orleans.

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(San Jose Mercury News) They know what it feels like to be overlooked. People, they say, assume they are weak, servile, out of place. So when these Asian-Americans watch Jeremy Lin slash and shoot his way through the NBA's finest, it's almost as if they are on the basketball court with the Palo Alto point guard who has set the zeitgeist on fire.

Asian-Americans have rallied around other athletes — Michael Chang, Hideo Nomo, Yao Ming, Michelle Wie, Ichiro Suzuki. Tiger Woods was embraced for his Thai side. But Lin has a new and different appeal — a homegrown star besting some of the world's greatest athletes in an intensely physical sport. Asian-Americans have done well in America in many areas, but not this one.

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(Business Insider) Microsoft has added John W. Thompson, the former CEO of security software giant Symantec, to its board of directors.

Thompson has deep enterprise experience. He started at IBM, then increased Symantec's revenue 10x, to more than $6 billion a year, during his decade as the company's CEO.

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(ABC News) The Supreme Court could decide this week whether to delve into yet another hot-button social issue: affirmative action.

At issue is a lawsuit brought by Abigail Fisher, a white student, who said she was denied admission to the University of Texas because of the color of her skin. If the justices vote to hear the case, it could mean a majority of the court is willing to curtail or further restrict race-conscious admissions policies  at public universities.

The court is set to discuss the case in its closed-door conference this week and could announce as early as Friday whether it will add the case to next term’s docket.

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(Huffington Post) Though ESPN apologized for referring to Jeremy Lin as "Chink in the Armor" Friday night, an Asian-American civil rights organization isn't satisfied with the response.

ESPN changed the headline, and apologized, but the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, an organization that promotes civil rights for Asian Americans, wants the network to do even more.

In a statement posted its site, the AALDEF said that the term used was "inexcusable" and wants ESPN to apologize on air so that "it is clear to all viewers that this racist language is unacceptable."

The AALDEF offered to meet with the network to help educate its staff and establish procedures to prevent such slurs from appearing in their work.

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