EthnicMajority

(Atlantic Wire) Sure, it's an informal survey, but a New York Times reporter's finding that eight black college students he spoke to have been stopped by police a collective 92 times is still a disturbing reminder of how the NYPD wields its stop-and-frisk tactics too heavily against the city's minorities. In The Times article on New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly's aboutface on the efficacy of stop-and-frisk, Michael Powell talked to group of eight black men currently attending the Borough of Manhattan Community College. "Cumulatively, they said they had been stopped 92 times."

That 11.5 friskings per-person, on average, is shocking, although it's anecdotal evidence, but it's the stories of these these kids being frisked for seemingly doing nothing other than driving or riding the subway while black that are alarming.

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(Huffington Post) Three years since a Wells Fargo Bank loan officer shared the details of how she and her colleagues targeted and directed prospective African American homebuyers into taking out expensive high-interest subprime mortgages to The New York Times, racial discrimination in the housing market is still an issue.

According to a new investigative report by the National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA), a coalition of fair housing non-profit organizations, six major banks are engaging in discriminatory practices in the maintenance and marketing of foreclosed Real Estate Owned (REO) properties in predominantly Latino and African American neighborhoods.

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(Business Insider) After the dust settles over the recession, it's becoming increasingly clear that African Americans will have the most lost ground to cover–especially in retirement planning. 

A new report by Aon Hewitt and Ariel Investments shows just how much damage deteriorating finances and a weak job market has done to their nest eggs.

(Daily Online) A Burger King commercial featuring Mary J. Blige singing about fried chicken has been pulled after it was branded racist.

In the ad – which premiered this week – the Grammy winner sings soulfully about chicken snack wraps, leading some in the African American community branding it as stereotypical. 

But the fast-food chain is blaming music licensing issues for the decision and not criticism of the ad.

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(CNN) – Racial profiling "should be a hate crime investigated by the FBI," filmmaker Tyler Perry wrote in a Facebook posting Sunday in which he described his own tense encounter with police.

"It was so hostile," Perry, who is African-American, wrote. "I was so confused. It was happening so fast that I could easily see how this situation could get out of hand very quickly. I didn't feel safe at all."

Perry, one of America's most successful film and television producers, said "although we have made significant strides with racial profiling in this country, the world needs to know that we are still being racially profiled."

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(NPR) Over the weekend, The Orlando Sentinel reported that two experts it consulted believe the voice heard calling for help in the background during a 911 call to police is not that of George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch volunteer who says he acted in self defense when he shot and killed Trayvon Martin on Feb. 26 in Sanford, Fla.

And one of those experts, Tom Owen of Owen Forensic Services — who is chair emeritus at the American Board of Record Evidence — has told MSNBC that he believes the tests indicating it isn't Zimmerman's voice would stand up in court.

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(Los Angeles Times) African American women in six U.S. cities are becoming infected with HIV at a rate five times the national average for black women, and closer to the rates of some African countries, according to a new study.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University and around the country who made the findings suspected the rates were relatively high in these "hot spots" that have battled the epidemic for decades, but the numbers still came as a surprise in a field that tends to focus more on black and gay men.

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“Every leader that commits to this work can have a massive impact on their kids, regardless of background,” said Griffith, who has worked at the education corps for 10 years. “But I’ve also seen how a corps member of color can be a role model for his/her students that has a profound impact beyond being an excellent teacher.”

Griffith, 32, said that seeing more black male teachers can inspire students in and outside the classroom.

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(The Root) Don't get enough of the Obama family from their annual family photos and occasional inside-the-White House interviews? The next-best thing might be The First Family from Byron Allen's Entertainment Studio. The sitcom, about an African-American family living in the White House, is set to air on NBC this fall.

From the Times Leader:

Entertainment Studios, Inc., (www.es.tv) the largest independent producer and distributor of first-run syndicated television programming for broadcast television stations, and owner of seven 24-hour HD television networks, announced that is has ordered 104 episodes of the new show.

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(Fresno Bee) Radio audience ratings company Arbitron Inc. says it is paying $400,000 to settle a case in California in which it was accused of under-representing black and Hispanic listeners in its surveys in the state's largest cities.

Lawyers for the state and the cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco said Arbitron's "Portable People Meters" system "dramatically" under-recruited from those populations when it began in 2008.

Arbitron found participants mainly by calling land-line telephones, a process that tends to under-represent minority populations.

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