EthnicMajority

(People's World) Civil rights activists and elected officials gathered at City Hall here this week to protest an alarming increase in the numbers of black and Latino youth who are being stopped and frisked by police.

Over 684.000 people were subjected to the New York Police Department's aggressive tactics in 2011, a 14 percent increase over the previous year.  Fifty-four percent of those stopped  were African American. Latinos comprised 34 percent of the stops.

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(FoxNews Latino) The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California is suing a school district and law enforcement authorities for allegedly racially profiling 55 Hispanic students.

The ACLU says Glendale Unified School District illegally detained and searched the students, who were rounded up and help for an hour in September 2010. The Los Angeles police departments and Los Angeles County Probation Department were also named in the lawsuit.

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(The Root) ColorLines is reporting today on a study concluding that racial profiling based on names may determine the online advertisements you see. The preliminary investigation into this issue was conducted by Tech-Progress' Nathan Newman.

Google offers advertisers what it calls "highly relevant advertising," using specially designed programs to deliver relevant ads to users by analyzing what they've searched or read on the Internet. But according to the new study, the results can be very different according to the digital profile Google creates for you. And that's based not only on your online habits but also on information about your class and geographical location, and even on the ethnicity associated with your name.

ColorLines' Jorge Riveras explains that the investigation into the way your race may affect the ads you see used nine names and then associated each of them with a number of simple terms.

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(Macon.com) More than half of all people sent to federal prison for committing felony crimes so far this year were Hispanic, a major demographic shift swollen by immigration offenses, according to a new government report released Tuesday.

Hispanics already outnumber all other ethnic groups sentenced to serve time in prison for federal felonies.

Hispanics reached a new milestone for the first time this year, making up the majority all federal felony offenders sentenced in the first nine months of fiscal year 2011, according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission.

Hispanics comprised 50.3 percent of all people sentenced in that time period, blacks 19.7 percent and whites 26.4 percent.

In comparison, last year Hispanics made up just 16 percent of the whole U.S. population.

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(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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(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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(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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(People's World) "How does a documented person look? Can a Border Patrol agent tell by physical appearance, or name, if someone is documented or not, a criminal or not?"

These questions were asked by Dawud Walid, director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in Michigan, at a June 30 press conference outside Hope of Detroit Elementary School in Southwest Detroit.

Physical appearance or religious affiliation cannot determine citizenship, Walid declared. However, he said, CAIR has documented dozens of cases where those characteristics have been used by government officials to harass people.

Walid accused Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents of "racially profiling our community, of Latinos, Arab Americans and Africans."

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(Examiner.com) US Airways, which operates a hub out of Charlotte-Douglass Airport, is accused of racism after it was discovered an unidentified white male wearing lingerie was allowed to fly six days before an African American college football player was not allowed to fly and arrested when he refused to pull up his pajama bottoms which were sagging below his waist even though the airline says it has no dress code. Joe O'Sullivan, an attorney for DeShon Marman said, "A white man is allowed to fly in underwear without question, but my client was asked to pull up his pajama pants because they hung below his waist."

Jill Tarlow, an airline passenger took a picture on June 9 of an unidentified white male dressed in female underwear that flew on a US Airways flight. A US Airways spokesperson in defending the decision to allow the white male to fly said, "We don't have a dress code policy, obviously, if their private parts are exposed, that's not appropriate…So if they're not exposing their private parts, they're allowed to fly." The attorney for DeShon Marman countered by pointing out that his client’s private parts were not exposed and video surveillance tape will prove it. After refusing to pull up his clothing, Marman was arrested for suspicion of trespassing, battery of a police officer and obstruction. Prosecutors have not filed charges in the Marman case and have until July 18 to do so.

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