Your daily dose of civil rights and related news. I’m going to New York this afternoon and won’t be back until late tomorrow, so the roundup will be off until Monday What is the world coming to when hippies attack the homeless? An Arizona sheriff is being accused of racial profiling in his aggressive efforts to roundup undocumented immigrants. The University of Texas is working to make sure websites which document human rights atrocities don’t disappear. Prison guard fired for wearing...

Your daily dose of civil rights and related news Is our natural inclination when seeing others in distress indifference? Montgomery County, Maryland just became America’s first jurisdiction to pass a law protecting the workplace rights of nannies. Immigrant students in college (here legally, I might add), face severe harassment and discrimination on campus. The focus, unfortunately (since I rather like the state), is on Somali students at the University of Minnesota. The US might finally lift...

Your daily dose of civil rights and related news This is a theme I’ve been seeing a lot of lately: Immigrants being mistreated at detention centers. Obama continued to hit the responsibility theme in his speech before the NAACP. It was a message met with “loud applause” by the influential civil rights groups. On that point, Ta-Nehisi Coates (who is a strong supporter of the “responsibility” meme) is sick of media coverage that acts as if this message is something new...

Your daily dose of civil rights and related news In today’s no-kidding file: NAACP head: Obama win won’t solve racial injustice. The Washington Post has an article about out gay youth. The nation’s oldest Black sorority is celebrating its 100th anniversary. Historians to judges: Stop pretending to be historians. You suck at it. Seattle is settling its third excessive force case in less than a year. The Seattle Times opines: “Dump Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”. A...

I’m going to the Hill again this morning, hence, the civil rights roundup will be delayed.

The 7th Circuit has held that a condo association rule which prevents Jews from putting up Mezuzot does not violate the Fair Housing Act. The opinion and dissent are here, my thoughts on the case are here. The rule, of course, was defended on the grounds that it was “neutral” (it banned all objects on doors, not just Mezuzot). I just call that a data point for the insufficiency of “neutrality” to protect religious liberty for minority faiths in America. On the other hand,...

Your morning dose of civil rights and related news An Ohio jury has ruled that a Black community in the Appalachian region was denied water service for decades on account of race. The pitch is out for a designer for the new African American History museum, scheduled to open in 2015. The Washington Post calls for the repeal of DADT. The Post also issues a call for states to reduce the number of non-violent offenders they’re imprisoning. US diplomat asks for reduced sentence for sex with under-aged...

Your morning dose of civil rights and related news The American Medical Association is set to apologize for its racist past, including excluding Black doctors and largely sitting out the civil rights movement. The NAACP alleges that Nashville’s new zoning plan will alter the racial dynamics of the city so much that it actually re-establishes segregation. A performing arts charter school in LA with a focus on hip-hop is probably going to be shut down after its charter expires. You’re saying...

Your daily dose of civil rights and related news (abbreviated and late due to work, alas) CNN has now picked up the story of the racist Mexican cartoon character I posted on in yesterday’s roundup. An atheist solider is suing the military, alleging discrimination. A Louisiana judge has overturned the conviction of Albert Woodfox, an ex-Black Panther and one of the “Angola three”, who was held in solitary confinement for thirty years. Can a diversity advocate serve two masters? A...

I’m going to the Hill today, so the Civil Rights Roundup won’t go up until the afternoon. In the meantime, enjoy this piece on how Turkey’s military and supreme court are taking on each other’s roles.

Daily Roundup of Civil Rights and Related News A new study confirms that having gay members in the military doesn’t damage unit cohesion, or have any negative effects whatsoever. Elie Wiesel testifies in case of assailant. He feared he was being kidnapped — the perpetrator has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. A Turkish Studies Institute has been roiled by charges that its Turkish funders seek to suppress inquiry into the Armenian genocide. Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales...

Several liberal bloggers are chiding President Bush for omitting a portion of a Thomas Jefferson quote he used during a 4th of July speech in Charlottesville. In a massive upset victory for non-partisanship, I not only defend the President, but argue that the omission was actually the right thing for him to do given the context of the speech.

Your daily dose of civil rights and related news An inspiring story in the Boston Globe of a graduate of one of Boston’s struggling public schools. The Globe also has the story of a teen mother from the same school who is heading off to college. Chicago is bracing for challenges to its gun ban in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Heller decision. The Washington Post reports a new surge in law students studying immigration. Anecdotally, when I’ve asked folks attending law school what...

Your morning roundup of civil rights and related news. The review will be off for July 4th, and will return to action Monday morning. TMV note: I still haven’t quite made a permanent decision on how I want to do this, but for now I think I will continue cross-posting this feature in full here at TMV. But if you don’t see it here, it may well be at my place. The NAACP has made its way to Utah to fight mortgage discrimination. A Texas death row inmate’s execution has been delayed...

One of the things I do for my job at the LCCR is help “clip” articles from around the country relating to civil rights and related areas each morning. The articles are saved into del.icio.us and come up in a feed on our website. So I figure: so long as I’ve got all this stuff in front of me, why not share it with you? All this is to announce what I hope to be a daily feature (at least through this summer): Civil Rights Roundup — a collection of news stories related to civil...

CNN reports that Israel has agreed to a prisoner swap with Hezbollah, which hopefully will bring home two Israeli solidiers abducted by the terrorist group when it sparked the 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon. Reports are sketchy, however, on whether the two solidiers are alive, and on the contours of the deal itself. CNN notes (accurately) that Hezbollah’s top priority in these negotiations has always been to secure the release of Samir Kuntar, currently serving a life-sentence for the...

Congress Introduces Bill Improving Access to the Earned Income Tax Credit. It’s an issue I previously blogged about here, but this article you can find over at The Debate Link the website of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. Expanding my online empire, one website at a time.

I had the great honor of attending this historic event. Here are my brief thoughts on the hearing. And if Glen Lavy represents the best the right has arguing against us on this point, we should win this one in a landslide. Talk about an utterly embarrassing performance.

How the intense stigmatization of such things as rape and racism actually help reify their presence in society.

The Earned Income Tax Credit is one of America’s most successful programs battling poverty. Originally passed in the Ford administration, the EITC supplements the wages of poor, working families, giving them a boost as they work their way up the economic ladder. Its innovative “plateau” formula means that it acts to promote, not discourage, work: the credit rises alongside income up to a certain level, then (after flat-lining for awhile), begins to phase itself out as families transition...

The question isn’t “is it ever justified”. Of course, sometimes it is — if America engaged in a massive genocide of the Jews, Jews would be justified in hating America. The question is, what would America have to do to an individual person for us to say, “that person is justified in hating America”? And more specifically, does years of extra-legal detention in an isolated prison where innocent people are tortured qualify?

Tomorrow is the 4th birthday of my blog, The Debate Link. But I likely will be distracted from celebrating. I began blogging the summer before I entered Carleton College. Which means today is a new chapter in the blog, but more importantly, in my life. For I have, as of 11:30 this morning, officially graduated from Carleton College, magna cum laude and with distinction in Political Science. But for once, I don’t want to talk about myself, but about my friends. The number of wonderful people...

I’ve written on several occasions about my favorite quote by W.E.B. Du Bois, responding to a student who asked: “Do you trust White people?” You do not and you know that you do not, much as you want to; yet you rise and lie and say you do; you must say it for her salvation and the world’s you repeat that she must trust them, that most white folks are honest, and all the while you are lying and every level, silent eye there knows you are lying, and miserably you sit and lie on,...

I’ve been meaning to link to this Hilzoy post for awhile, because it gets at a very important point: If people want to redefine the word “racist” so that only actual slaveholders count, let them. I’m more interested in the “critical reflection” [Ta-Nehasi] Coates rightly says that the “I’m not a racist” move is designed to shut down; in asking: does race play a role in someone’s thought and action that it ought not to play? rather than in...

After I wrote my well-received post on Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Black Conservatism, my former history professor contacted me and asked if I would like to lead a seminar on it for his African-American history class this term. I happily agreed. But when I met with him a few days ago, he said that we might have to change the topic. “Wright is old news,” he said. But it seems he spoke a bit too soon. While Obama’s resignation from the Trinity Church was not precipitated by Wright but...