EthnicMajority

(Huffington Post) Minhee Cho went to Papa John's for some fast food goodness. Little did she know, she would get it served with a side of racism.

At around 12:30 p.m. today, Papa John's customer Minhee Cho tweeted a photo of a receipt she received at a Papa John's restaurant in uptown, New York City.

In it, under the customer's name section, the restaurant employee who rang up the order used the racial slur "lady chinky eyes" to describe her.

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(Miami Herald) In the largest residential fair-lending settlement in history, the Bank of America Corp. has agreed to pay $335 million to settle allegations that its Countrywide Financial Corp. unit discriminated against minority homebuyers, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Wednesday.

The agreement resolves a civil complaint that the mortgage lender charged black and Hispanic borrowers higher fees and steered them into costlier mortgages than other buyers from 2004 to 2008, a period when the company originated millions of home loans.

It also marks Charlotte, N.C.-based Bank of America’s latest step to move past the mortgage-related troubles that have pummeled its bottom line and stock price since acquiring Countrywide in 2008.

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(New York Times) A rare collection of almost 38,000 coins is expected to raise between $25 million and $35 million for the Hispanic Society of America, Sotheby’s New York announced Thursday. The collection, assembled more than 100 years ago by Archer M. Huntington, the founder of the Hispanic Society, will be offered as a single lot in sealed bid auction beginning Thursday and ending next March.

Considered one of the most important collections outside of Spain related to Spanish history, it includes the “50 Excelentes,” a gold coin weighing nearly five ounces created in the 15th century, during the period of Christopher Columbus’s voyages to the New World. The coin, according to a statement from Sotheby’s, “is the largest gold coin from the 15th century that survives today.” In addition, there are more than 400 Roman gold coins that span the full history of Rome, including examples struck under Julius Caesar.

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(Huffington Post) For many immigrants arriving in the U.S., maintaining ties with their countries and cultures is becoming easier. Their countries, it seems, are coming straight to their doorstep.

Increasingly, Hispanics "have access to their cultural heritage and language through product and service offerings that are targeted to the Latino community," according to Hispanic Research Inc.

Take Pizza Patron, a new Mexican-themed pizza joint opening up in Fresno, California. "From the colorful decor to some of the pizza ingredients, which include Mexican-style chorizo sausage, Pizza Patron is committed to serving the Hispanic market," according to an article by The Business Journal.

Since 2007 all Pizza Patron restaurants accept Mexican Pesos (bills only) as payment. The Dallas-based pizzeria seeking to open franchises in predominantly Hispanic communities throughout the nation and hire bilingual managers and sales teams.

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(The Black Man) I am an African American financial advisor. However, African Americans and people of color have been a very small part of my wealth management business—so small, in fact, that the phenomenon spurred me to discover if what I have experienced holds true across the country. I have come into contact with very educated and successful African American businesspeople, but the one consistent factor is that many of them lag behind in their saving and investing experiences.

What is more disturbing is that African American and Hispanic workers are just as likely as American workers to feel confident about their retirement security, even though their savings and preparations lag behind, according to findings of the Minority Retirement Confidence Survey (MRCS). While some differences in retirement preparation can be attributed to differences in income distribution, other findings show that minorities are less prepared  even when comparisons are made among workers with similar levels of household income.

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(Chicago Tribune) A federal lawsuit filed Monday in Chicago accused Comcast Corp. of discriminating against the African-American employees of its South Side facility and its own customers by requiring workers to install defective or bug-infested equipment into residents' homes.

Eleven current and former workers in Comcast Corp.'s South Side facility are seeking class action status claiming that since at least 2005, the media company "has engaged in an ongoing pattern of race discrimination against African American employees" at its South Side location, according to the complaint, filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.  

The group includes 10 current employees and one former worker who was fired in 2009. The plaintiffs on average, have worked for Comcast for 15 years, the lawsuit says.

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(BET) A federal appellate court in Chicago agreed Wednesday to hear the case of some 700 African-American financial advisors who have filed a class-action lawsuit against Merrill Lynch claiming the brokerage firm discriminated against them in promotion, compensation, client assignment and resource allocation.

The brokers’ legal crusade began in 2005, and has experienced a number of courtroom setbacks, most recently when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the case in October. One of the issues was whether the case could be certified as a class-action suit. On Nov. 16, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit agreed to begin hearing the case in Chicago, probably early in 2012.

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(Marketing Charts) More than 3 in 5 African American, Hispanic, and Asian American women in the US have a smartphone in their household, compared to just one-third of Caucasian women, according to [download page] a November 2011 report from Nielsen. Data from “Women of Tomorrow” indicates that levels of adoption among other technologies are much more similar: roughly 95% of women across all ethnicities are connected to the Internet and TV, slightly edging cell phone penetration rates. TV has the highest level of penetration for Asian American (98%), African American (96%), and Caucasian (96%) women, while the internet takes primacy among Hispanic women (97%).

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(Huffington Post) Blacks will have more money to spend on goods and services, according to a recent report.

The State of the African-American Consumer Report found that black buying power is projected to reach $1.1 trillion by 2015, The Louisiana Weekly reports.

The study, which focuses on black spending, media habits and consumer trends, reported an increase in the amount of blacks attending college or earning a degree to 44 percent for men and 53 percent for women. It also found an increase in the number of African American households earning $75,000 or higher by almost 64 percent.

"By sharing, for example, that African Americans over-index in several key areas, including television viewing and mobile phone usage," said Susan Whiting, vice chair of information and analytics company Nielsen. "We've provided a better picture of where the African American community can leverage that buying power to help their communities."

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(Marketwire) Cross-culturalism, the current trend in multicultural marketing that stresses the blurring color lines in America, fails to engage African Americans, according to an unprecedented and comprehensive exploration of African American consumers by Burrell Communications ( www.burrell.com ).

The study, conducted in conjunction with Burrell's 40th anniversary and named Burrell: Project 40, delves deep into the lives of African Americans, identifying themes in lifestyles, interests, cultural beliefs and perceptions of African Americans in the media. With more than 500 in-person interviews across 11 major markets, Burrell: Project 40 gives a true portrait of the average African American consumer. Over 80 percent of Burrell's respondents had never participated in a market research project before, so the study gives voice to the unheard and untapped majority of black consumers in a way that's never been done before.

"Most of the research conducted in the African American community is done with upper and middle-class consumers — who don't necessarily reflect the attitudes, behaviors and opinions of the majority," said Fay Ferguson, co-CEO of Burrell Communications. "Burrell: Project 40 gives a more accurate picture of a population that is often taken for granted."

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