Morse Moving & Storage to Pay $30,000 to Settle EEOC Retaliation Lawsuit

Moving Company Fired an Employee Because She Complained of Harassment, Agency Says

DETROIT - Morse Moving & Storage, a residential and corporate moving services provider based in Romulus, Mich., will pay $30,000 to settle a retaliation lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the federal agency announced today.

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Lawler Foods to Pay over $1 Million to Settle EEOC Race and National Origin Discrimination Suit

Bakery Refused to Hire Applicants Based on Their Race/National Origin, Federal Agency Alleged

HOUSTON - A large local bakery will pay $1,042,000 as part of the settlement of a class race and national origin discrimination lawsuit brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the agency announced today.

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Survey: African-American students cite poor diversity in turning down UC

By Fermin Leal, EdSource

Many African-American students admitted to University of California campuses said they chose to enroll at other universities because of the UC system’s lack of diversity, its high costs to attend and poor outreach to them while they applied, according to a new UC survey.

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Race, Graffiti and an Arrest

U of Wisconsin police pull black student from class to arrest him for allegedly spray-painting anti-racist messages across campus, prompting criticism that university cares more about graffiti than bigotry.

By Jake New, Inside Higher Ed

Prompting widespread anger from faculty and students, University of Wisconsin at Madison police on Thursday pulled a black student from class and arrested him for allegedly spray-painting anti-racist messages across campus.

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Related content:

• Diversifying the Humanities (Inside Higher Ed)
• Inside How Missouri’s Leadership Scrambled to Quell a Campus Crisis (The Chronicle of Higher Education)

Union and Apprentice Program To Pay $1,650,000 to Settle Part of EEOC Race Bias Lawsuit

New Jersey's Local 25 Sheet Metal Union Failed to Employ Black and Hispanic Journeypersons, Federal Agency Charged

NEW YORK - Local 25 of the Sheet Metal Workers' International Association and its associated apprenticeship school will pay a combined $1.65 million and provide substantial remedial relief in partial settlement of race discrimination claims made against them by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the federal agency announced today.

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Is Affirmative Action Failing the Students It Was Designed For?

By Kevin Brown, Diverse Issues in Higher Education

According to the 1960 census, Whites constituted 88.8 percent of all Americans, with an additional 10.6 percent classified as Black. In addition, less than 1 percent of Blacks who were married were married outside of the race and interracial marriage was still illegal in over 20 states. Also, the 125,000 foreign-born Blacks in the United States comprised only 0.7 percent of the Black population.

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Related content:

• Students, staff of color critical to institutional success (Education Dive)

Chicago Police Dept. Plagued by Systemic Racism, Task Force Finds

By Monica Davey and Mitch Smith, The New York Times

CHICAGO — Racism has contributed to a long pattern of institutional failures by the Chicago Police Department in which officers have mistreated people, operated without sufficient oversight, and lost the trust of residents, a task force appointed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel has found.

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Related content:

Emanuel acknowledges racism in Chicago Police Department (Chicago Tribune)

Illinois reaches settlements with Tim Beckman, former women's basketball players

By Shannon Ryan, Chicago Tribune

Illinois has reached financial settlements totaling $625,000 with former football coach Tim Beckman and seven former women's basketball players, the university said in separate news releases Tuesday.

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‘Whitened’ Resumes Earn More Callbacks, Even by Employers that Favor Diversity

By Rebecca Prinster, INSIGHT Into Diversity

A study by researchers at the University of Toronto and Stanford University finds that resumes that have been “whitened” by minority job seekers are twice as likely to receive callbacks in job searches, even by companies that claim they value diversity.

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Related content:

• A Workplace-Diversity Dilemma (The Atlantic)

Senate Bill Takes Aim at 1,933% Increase in Data Collection Proposed in EEO-1 Pay Data Revisions

Jackson Lewis PC, Lexology

Senate Bill 2693, the “EEOC Reform Act,” would put a halt to implementation of the proposed pay data revisions to the EEO-1 report so the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission instead can focus on the tremendous backlog of “76,408” discrimination charges pending at the close of fiscal year 2015.

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Related content:

• EEOC Seeks More Pay Data (Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP)
• Lawmaker Challenges EEOC's Collection of Pay Data (Manatt Phelps & Phillips LLP)

Women and Minorities Are Penalized for Promoting Diversity

By Stefanie K. Johnson and David R. Hekman, Harvard Business Review

Roughly 85% of corporate executives and board members are white men. This number hasn’t budged for decades, which suggests that white men are continuing to select and promote other white men.

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Related content:

• A Workplace-Diversity Dilemma (The Atlantic)

Students to Education Dept.: Small changes can make big payoffs in graduation rates

By Nick Anderson, The Washington Post

Sometimes it pays for Washington officials to hear directly from the kinds of students they want to help. About a dozen students and recent graduates from minority-serving colleges visited the Education Department in Washington late last week to tell about their experiences and what they think helps and doesn’t help in the quest to get a college diploma. Among them were African Americans, native Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos and first-generation immigrants.

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Similar colleges. Similar population of black students. So why the disparate graduation rates?

By Danielle Douglas-Gabriel, The Washington Post

Rutgers University-New Brunswick and Purdue University share a few things in common. They have roughly the same size student body, similar admission requirements and a similar percentage of black students. Yet in the decade ending 2013, graduation rates for African Americans at Rutgers climbed about 12 percentage points, while they slipped five points at Purdue.

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Related content:

• Graduation Rates for Black Students Aren’t Increasing at Same Pace as for Other Students (The Chronicle of Higher Education)
• Report: Many Black, Hispanic Science Majors Err in Choosing Elite Cal Campuses (Diverse Issues in Higher Education)

Windings to Pay $19,500 to Settle EEOC Race Discrimination Lawsuit

Company Refused to Hire Biracial Applicant Because of His Race, Federal Agency Charged

MINNEAPOLIS - A manufacturing company based in New Ulm, Minn., will pay $19,500 to settle a race discrimination lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the federal agency announced today.

Read the press release here.

FACT SHEET: Spurring African-American STEM Degree Completion

U.S. Department of Education

Early in his Administration, President Obama made improving science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education a priority. To meet the nation's evolving workforce needs, America will need to add 1 million more STEM professionals by 2022. [ 1 ] To meet this need and bring welcome diversity to STEM industries, we must continue to support and encourage STEM degree completion, especially for African-Americans and others who are underrepresented in these fields yet have a long history of achievement in STEM fields.

Read the press release here.

Related content:

• ‘To be left behind in tech is to be left behind.’ Jesse Jackson on digital diversity (Digital Trends)

Race on Campus, Nontraditional Leaders, Rising Confidence: A Survey of Presidents

By Doug Lederman and Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed

College and university presidents overwhelmingly describe race relations on their campus as excellent or good, are increasingly upbeat about their institutions' financial situations, give President Obama's higher education record a grade of C, and generally dismiss the push to hire campus leaders with nonacademic backgrounds.

Read the story here.

Related content:

• Missouri: A Thin Line Divides Engaging With Activists and Alienating Them (The Chronicle of Higher Education - requires paid subscription)
• Mizzou Diversity Officer Ready ‘to Help Effect Transformational Change’ (Diverse Issues in Higher Education)
• San Jose State Scrambling to Address Racial Tensions (Diverse Issues in Higher Education)
• Students Should Feel Like ‘Equal Partners,’ Says Missouri’s First Chief Diversity Officer (The Chronicle of Higher Education)
• Missouri Interim President: Faculty on Frontline of Quest for Diversity (Diverse Issues in Higher Education)
• Mentorship, promotion among challenges of keeping black faculty (Missourian)
• ACE Survey: Policy Change not Widely Enacted to Address Campus Racial Issues (Diverse Issues in Higher Education)
• The Importance of Identity: How the University of Maryland Uses Self-Discovery to Explore Diversity (INSIGHT Into Diversity)
• University of Missouri Unrest Reverberates at ACE (Diverse Issues in Higher Education)

US Labor Department sues B&H Foto & Electronics Corp. for hiring, pay, promotion discrimination; harassment

US Labor Department sues B&H Foto & Electronics Corp. for hiring, pay, promotion discrimination; harassment

NEW YORK – A lawsuit filed by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs alleges that B&H Foto & Electronics Corp. has systematically discriminated against Hispanic employees and female, black and Asian jobseekers at its Brooklyn Navy Yard warehouse.

Read the press release here.

Related content:

• OFCCP Sues B&H for Alleged Discrimination (Proskauer Rose LLP)
• Federal Contractor Sued Over Alleged Hiring Discrimination Against Women, People of Color (NBC News)

The Concentration of Poverty in American Schools

An exclusive analysis uncovers that students of color in the largest 100 cities in the United States are much more likely to attend schools where most of their peers are poor or low-income.

By Janie Boschma and Ronald Brownstein, The Atlantic

In almost all major American cities, most African American and Hispanic students attend public schools where a majority of their classmates qualify as poor or low-income, a new analysis of federal data shows.

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Feds launch probe into racism allegations at Boston Latin School

By David Harris, Boston Business Journal

Federal authorities have launched an independent investigation of alleged civil rights violations involving alleged race-related incidents at the prestigious Boston Latin School, the nation's oldest public school.

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Related content:

• U.S. launches probe of alleged civil rights violations at Boston school (Reuters)
• U.S. Attorney’s Office To Investigate Civil Rights Complaints At Boston Latin School (WBUR)

Black Workers Really Do Need to Be Twice as Good

African American employees tend to receive more scrutiny from their bosses than their white colleagues, meaning that small mistakes are more likely to be caught, which over time leads to worse performance reviews and lower wages.

By Gillian B. White, The Atlantic

For decades, black parents have told their children that in order to succeed despite racial discrimination, they need to be “twice as good”: twice as smart, twice as dependable, twice as talented. This advice can be found in everything from literature to television shows, to day-to-day conversation. Now, a new paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research shows that when it comes to getting and keeping jobs, that notion might be more than just a platitude.

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