EthnicMajority

(Sacramento Bee) Eight years ago, Illinois began requiring police departments, including the state police force, to keep track of traffic stops to see whether their officers practiced racial profiling – stopping black or Hispanic motorists more often than whites because of their skin color.

Now, a civil rights group wants a federal investigation of the Illinois state police based largely on the data collected under the law, which was sponsored by Barack Obama when he was a state senator.

After examining the data, the Illinois chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union says state troopers ask to search the cars of black and Hispanic drivers more often than those of white drivers, in cases where police have no legal grounds to search the cars on their own without the driver's consent. But state police are more than 2.5 times as likely to find illegal items (such as alcohol, drugs or stolen property) when searching the vehicles of whites compared to those of Hispanics. Alcohol is the most common item police find among all groups, the ACLU claims, but whites are the most likely to have drugs and drug paraphernalia.

The complaint is not focused on specific allegations of prejudiced behavior. What it alleges is that state officials hardly look at racial profiling information at all. The law requiring the collection of traffic stop data created a panel to review the results, but the slots were never filled and the group never met. "Nobody does anything with the data," says Harry Grossman of the Illinois ACLU. "We are the only ones that have done anything."

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(Digital Journal) Quera Pruitt, a graduate of Red Wing High School in Minnesota, is launching a lawsuit against her former secondary school after students parodied African-Americans by participating in "Wednesday Wigger Day."

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(People's World) The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) released a report of its shocking March 31 raid at the Hope of Detroit Academy elementary school, but another shock awaited those who thought ICE might admit wrongdoing.

ICE's investigation showed no wrongdoing in the raid, even though officers in tinted-glass SUVs surrounded the Hope of Detroit Academy elementary school, playground and adjacent church – a clear violation of ICE's policies to avoid "sensitive" areas.

Labor and community leaders reacted with anger to the report during a press conference this past Monday at the Detroit Hispanic Development Center. "Surrounding an elementary school with immigration agents is a serious problem that deserves a serious response, not a whitewash," said Art Reyes from the Hispanic Latino Commission of Michigan.

United Auto Workers Vice President Cindy Estrada said, "I'm from southwest Detroit (where the raid took place) and I never thought I'd see the day when immigration is actually surrounding schools and targeting our children and the parents of our children." She called ICE's failed attempt at an investigation "outrageous."

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(The Wrap) When Comcast was angling to take over NBCU, the cable giant promised prominently to increase the profile of minorities at the company and launch eight independent cable networks, including four under African-American control.

That includes a recent disastrous meeting between Comcast executives and Oprah Winfrey, in which Comcast executives rebuffed the media queen's request for support for her OWN network.

Leading entrepreneur Russell Simmons was rebuffed when he approached NBCU CEO Steve Burke about acquiring the Style network.

The National Urban League, NAACP and Al Sharpton's National Action Network, major civil rights groups, see several trouble spots with their efforts to work with Comcast, TheWrap has learned.

NBCU, for example, has yet to fill the post of chief diversity officer. It has been vacant since Paula Madison, executive vice president, retired in May.

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(Think Progress) The blog Feministing has flagged a troubling story from Cobb County, Georgia. An Atlanta-area mother attempted to cross the street with her children from a bus stop to her home, and lost her son to a hit and run:

On April 10, she and her three children — Tyler, 9, A.J., 4, and Lauryn, 3 — went shopping because the next day was Nelson’s birthday. They had pizza, went to Wal-Mart and missed a bus, putting them an hour late getting home. Nelson, a student at Kennesaw State University, said she never expected to be out after dark, especially with the children.

When the Cobb County Transit bus finally stopped directly across from Somerpoint Apartments, night had fallen. She and the children crossed two lanes and waited with other passengers on the raised median for a break in traffic. The nearest crosswalks were three-tenths of a mile in either direction, and Nelson wanted to get her children inside as soon as possible. A.J. carried a plastic bag holding a goldfish they’d purchased.

“One girl ran across the street,” Nelson said. “For some odd reason, I guess he saw the girl and decided to run out behind her. I said, ‘Stop, A.J.,’ and he was in the middle of the street so I said keep going. That’s when we all got hit.”

An all-white jury has convicted the woman, an African American, of vehicular homicide, even though she was not driving a car. Jerry Guy, the man who struck the boy with his car and fled the scene, pleaded guilty to hit-and-run, and has already served a six-month sentence. As reporter Elise Hitchcock notes, the woman “may serve more time than the driver who hit and killed her 4-year-old son.”

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(Current) Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann (R-MN) used her tour of flood damage in Iowa Monday as an opportunity to assert that it was a waste to pay African American farmers who sued the government over discrimination.

Bachmann and Rep. Steve King (R-IA) told reporters that funds intended for a 1999 settlement of the Pigford case should be diverted to flood victims along the Missouri River, according the The Associated Press.

The U.S. government agreed to pay African American farmers $50,000 each if they had been unfairly denied loans by the United States Department of Agriculture. In 2010, President Barack Obama signed legislation authorizing $1.2 billion for black farmers who were denied payouts in an earlier settlement.

King charged that most of the latest settlement "was just paid out in fraudulent claims."

"That's another at least $1.3 billion," he said. "I'd like to apply that money to the people that are under water right now."

Bachmann agreed.

"When money is diverted to inefficient projects, like the Pigford project, where there seems to be proof-positive of fraud, we can't afford $2 billion in potentially fraudulent claims when that money can be used to benefit the people along the Mississippi River and the Missouri River," she explained.

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(Huffington Post) Approximately 20 protesters stood on the curb outside the U.S. Airways ticket counter at San Francisco International Airport Monday afternoon shouting calls of justice for Deshon Marman.

Marman's story instantly became a national lighting rod after airline employees ejected him from a U.S. Airways flight for wearing pants they deemed too baggy. The 20-year-old African American man was later arrested after refusing to comply with crew member instructions to leave the aircraft as it was parked at the gate.

Holding a sign reading, "U.S. Airways must be sentenced repentance," Rev. Renard Allen of San Francisco's Third Baptist Church said the protestors, organized by the local chapter of the NAACP, were there to "protest injustice, inequity, decimation and racial profiling." He added, "we're saying this will not fly in the land of the free and the home of the brave."

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(Atlanta Post) English novelist and essayist George Orwell once stated, “Political language…is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”  Indeed, throughout history, the political landscape has been littered with mental trash that subsequently has been accepted, processed and etched into the minds of certain individuals as truth.

To date, members of various ethnicities continue to witness the deep democratic struggles and the courage of people of African descent, who continually clothe themselves with love and justice in the face of monolithic adversity, resistance, malevolent acts, and attempts to diminish and eradicate black beauty, intelligence and potentiality.

As we embark on communicating the whole truth, it is essential that we persist in debunking lies intended to hold blacks captive.  To be sure, the following is but a snapshot of popular myths and does not represent the full breadth of lies leveled by politicos on both sides of the aisle.

The recent Family Leader Pledge, which was signed by Michelle Bachmann and Rick Santorum, initially stated that a “black child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American President.”   After receiving much attention, the group removed the statement because it had been “misconstrued”.  Really?  How ridiculous and absurd is the notion that a Black child was better off during the barbaric, deplorable and inhumane conditions of slavery than they are now.  In many cases, families were painfully and systematically separated as they were viewed and treated as personal property.  This counterfactual statement originally found in the pledge lacks intelligence, prudence and compassion for what our ancestors endured for nearly 400 years.

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(Chicago Sun Times) Black and Latino drivers pulled over in Illinois traffic stops last year were more likely to end up with a ticket and have their vehicle searched than their white counterparts, according to a new Transportation Department study.

Minority drivers also were involved in traffic stops at a higher rate than their share of the state population would suggest, even though illegal contraband was more likely to be found in vehicles being driven by whites.

The average length of a traffic stop was the same for all races: 10 minutes.

The American Civil Liberties Union said Wednesday that the study supports its request for a federal civil rights investigation of the way Illinois State Police handles driver searches. It also called on state leaders to address the issue in all police departments.

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(Fox Phoenix) Controversy always follows Sheriff Joe Arpaio's immigration raids, and now one of them is proving costly.

Maricopa County has agreed to pay out $200,000 dollars to two men who were caught up in one raid.

They were detained along with others who were in the country illegally — the only problem is — they weren't illegal immigrants.

This stems back to an incident that took place two years ago, on Feb. 11, 2009. Julian Mora and his son Julio claim their civil rights were violated when they were stopped and detained during that illegal immigration raid.

A federal court judge ruled that the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office violated the 4th Amendment in stopping and arresting the Moras, and Thursday, the two received compensation.

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