EthnicMajority

(Washington Post) When two Swedish economists set out to examine whether economic freedom made people any more or less racist, they knew how they would gauge economic freedom, but they needed to find a way to measure a country’s level of racial tolerance. So they turned to something called the World Values Survey, which has been measuring global attitudes and opinions for decades.

Among the dozens of questions that World Values asks, the Swedish economists found one that, they believe, could be a pretty good indicator of tolerance for other races. The survey asked respondents in more than 80 different countries to identify kinds of people they would not want as neighbors. Some respondents, picking from a list, chose “people of a different race.” The more frequently that people in a given country say they don’t want neighbors from other races, the economists reasoned, the less racially tolerant you could call that society. (The study concluded that economic freedom had no correlation with racial tolerance, but it does appear to correlate with tolerance toward homosexuals.)

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(Huffington Post) In an area known as one of the safest communities in the country, a hit list of African American students who would be "the first to die" was spray-painted in a high school bathroom.

The racist graffiti was at Agoura High School in Agoura Hills, Calif., a predominantly white community about 35 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles. The hit list is believed to have been painted during school hours Wednesday, KTLA reports in the video above.

Before that, graffiti reading "Go back 2 Africa" was found and removed off of the school walls on Sunday.

The hate crime made some parents wonder if it was safe for students to go to school, even though extra patrols will be there all week. “Does (my son) have to watch his back when he’s coming to school?” a parent asked CBS.

“(The suspects) win if our kids don’t come to school … they think they’re scared, they’re afraid," another parent said to the station.

In the video above, KTLA interviews parents whose children were on the hit list — many of whom went to campus immediately after hearing about the graffiti on Wednesday.

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(Business Insider) Teen clothing brand Wet Seal has reached a $7.5 million settlement over allegations that it horrendously discriminated against employees of color, because they didn't have the "white," "blue eye," "thin and blond" look the brand wanted, according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Three former managers filed the lawsuit last year, accusing the nationwide retail chain of actively firing and denying raises and promotions to black workers. One plaintiff, former manager Kai Hawkins, said that her boss threatened to fire her unless she hired more white employees. Another, Nicole Codgell, claimed that she was fired the day after the company's senior vice president for store operations toured several outlets and sent an email to lower managers, "African American dominate — huge issue." 

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(USAToday) Judy Martin recites the names of missing people in Cleveland like a well-memorized poem. She knows names, dates, last-known whereabouts and details about dozens of cases dating to 1997.

Martin, who founded Survivors/Victims of Tragedy, also says she knows how race and economic status play a role in how police treat cases, including those of three women held captive for years in a rundown Cleveland neighborhood.

Martin says cases involving people of color and lower incomes don't get the same law enforcement resources as others. But the Cleveland Police Department says officers did all they could find Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight, and they investigate missing-persons cases without any biases.

"When it's somebody of color or someone from in a poorer area, we don't seem to get the response that other areas of the country get," said Martin, whose group works with families of victims. "It needs to stop. When a person goes missing, it shouldn't matter whether they're white, black, Hispanic, Asian, purple, green or blue."

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(Los Angeles Times) The Los Angeles Police Department opened an internal investigation into its response at an off-campus house party near USC amid complaints from some students that the department showed racial bias and used heavy-handed tactics.

The incident occurred early Saturday morning during an end-of-semester party at a house a few blocks from campus. A neighbor called police complaining about the noise. Police arrived, and the situation escalated with the arrival of dozens of more officers donning riot gear. Six people were arrested and one officer was injured. Two of those arrested were “treated for minor abrasions,” police said.

The clash roiled the USC campus Monday, prompting a student sit-in at the center of campus.

“They were acting like they were going to war with us,” said senior Jason Sneed, 23, a political science major. Sneed, who described the scene as chaotic and hostile, said he was handcuffed and thrown inside the back of a police car.

This incident comes after two violent events that shook the USC community and were followed by tighter security measures in the area. In April 2012, two graduate students were shot to death in a botched robbery less than a mile from campus. Last October, four people were shot, one of them injured critically, outside an on-campus Halloween party.

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(Guardian) An Asian American fraternity has revived allegations of racism at the University of California, Irvine, by making a parody music video in blackface and posting it on YouTube.

Four members of the Lambda Theta Delta fraternity recorded a homemade skit in which one wore black makeup to impersonate Jay-Z, prompting recriminations and apologies. The students said the parody of the Jay-Z and Justin Timberlake song Suit and Tie was intended as harmless fun but student organisations and university authorities condemned it as insensitive and racist.

"We'd like to point out that this blackface video isn't the first, nor is it the last, example of racism that's been shown on this campus," Ainaria Johnson, co-chairwoman of UCI's Black Student Union, told the Daily Pilot. Johnson noted that a second video on the fraternity's YouTube page featured a blackface.

In 2011, a chef at the university caused a spat by serving fried chicken and waffles, an African American culinary stereotype, to mark Martin Luther King day.

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(Huffington Post) Offensive posts and comments are rampant on the internet, but they don't make for particularly good business when associated with a restaurant. A Delaware eatery is learning this after derogatory comments and inappropriate photos popped up on its social media accounts earlier this month.

The News Journal reports that someone recently posted racial slurs and photos of receipts with low tips on Facebook and Instagram accounts associated with Padi Restaurant in Hockessin. The accounts have since been removed, but Daily Mail posted screen captures of the offensive posts.

Among the photos in question is an image of a paid bill of $53.80 with a tip of $5.20, which is less than 10 percent, from a customer with an Indian surname. It wasaccompanied by the caption, "What do you expect from a last name like that? Sand ni****s will never change #cheap #jew." Another reads, "Cheap a**, order takeout and eat it at the bar. #notip #monday #cheap #trash." Other posts, on both Facebook and Instagram, took shots at additional customers deemed to have tipped unsatisfactorily. Many were accompanied by hashtags including #deuchbag and #hillbillies.

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(New York Daily News) City Council Speaker Christine Quinn will oppose a bill that would allow New Yorkers to sue if they are racially profiled by cops, she said Wednesday.

In a speech outlining her public safety agenda, the mayoral contender came out against the bill to rein in stop and frisk by creating the right to sue in state court if cops  stop them because of  race, gender, sexual orientation, religion or other factors – even as she defended her support for a related measure to create an NYPD inspector general.

“I believe this presents a real risk that a multitude of state court judges issue rulings that could take control of police policy decisions away from the mayor and commissioner,” she said.

“Just as importantly, it could hamstring individual police officers, and make them fearful of the decisions they have to make on a moment’s notice, putting both their safety and the public’s safety at risk,” she said.

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(FindLaw) A CVS store is in hot water this week over a racial slur that appeared on a customer's receipt. Customer Hyan Lee was more than dismayed when she found that her CVS receipt for photographs read "Ching Chong Lee."

Lee was furious when she learned that CVS had merely disciplined and counseled the employee responsible for the slur, and has filed a $1 million lawsuit, The Huffington Post reports.

Given the current state of anti-discrimination laws and policies, Lee likely has more than one legal leg to stand on.

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(National Journal) The identities of the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing, which emerged Friday, completely negated assumptions born of racial profiling. 

In the wake of the blasts that killed three people and injured more than 175, news organizations and social-media websites picked apart photos of marathon crowds by zeroing in on brown men with backpacks. CNN's John King quoted a law-enforcement source as saying they had a suspect who was "dark-skinned".  A Saudi national, first identified as a person of interest, turned out to just be an injured witness.  A Moroccan-American teenage track athlete who appeared on a New York Post cover under the headline "Feds seek these two pictured at Boston Marathon now fears for his life. 

But the actual bombing suspects, Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, are ethnic Chechens who have lived in the United States for a decade. Their roots are tied to the Caucasus region — quite literally, they are Caucasian. One attended the same high school that Matt Damon graduated from and was on the wrestling team; the other had boxing ambitions. They both have dark hair and are relatively light-skinned. They are reportedly Muslim, and an unverified YouTube account under the elder brother’s name included videos made by Islamic fundamentalists. But it's impossible to determine their ethnicity, much less their nationality, religion, or ideology, simply by looking at them.

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