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Mapping of Muslim Communities? What Was L.A.P.D. Thinking?
Compiled by the DiversityInc staff
November 09, 2007
Mapping of Muslim Communities? What Was L.A.P.D. Thinking?
Why is the Los Angeles Police Department's latest anti-terror plan causing problems? It calls for mapping out Muslim communities, which the ACLU, Council on Arab-Islamic Relations and other advocacy groups liken to racial profiling. "When the starting point for a police investigation is 'let's look at all Muslims,' we are going down a dangerous road," Peter Bibring, a lawyer with the ACLU of Southern California, told The New York Times. The ACLU sent a letter to top Los Angeles officials raising concerns about the plan. "Police can and should be engaged with the communities they are policing, but that engagement can't be a mask for intelligence gathering," said Bibring.
(See also: The Truth From a Small-Town Muslim American)
Noose Display Gets City Worker Fired
In Harahan, La., William Hartline, a public-works department supervisor, has been suspended for allegedly displaying two nooses, a bullwhip and a dart board with a black man as the bull's eye in his office, reports The Associated Press. The FBI is investigating the incident in Jefferson Parish. The investigation will be based in part on photographs taken in 2005 of Hartline's office in which "nooses hang from a wooden contraption that reaches the ceiling. A bullwhip hangs from a wooden post labeled as a whipping post. A black man stands at the center of the dart board, and his groin area makes up the bull's-eye," reports the AP. Check out the exclusive DiversityInc Noose Watch, which charts noose-hangings nationwide.
(See also: Why Nooses Now?)
Rabbi Offers to Pay for More Jewish Marriages
Rabbi Donald Weber of Marlboro, N.J., wants to see more Jewish marriages, as polls show the number of American Jews marrying each other on the decline. To motivate Jewish men and women to date each other, Weber, in his Yom Kippur sermon at Temple Rodeph Torah, offered to personally pay for six-month memberships for any singles in his congregation to JDate, a Jewish online-dating service, reports USA Today. JDate charges $149 for a six-month membership. Nine people from Weber's congregation have taken him up on his offer. Weber pledged $2,000 as more people wanted to participate. About half of American Jews marry outside the religion, according to widely reported national surveys, reports USA Today. Weber punctuated his sermon by citing a recent study from the Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion, indicating that fewer than 10 percent of grandchildren of intermarried parents identify as Jews.
(See also: Which Races Intermarry Most? 40th Anniversary of Loving Case)
Oprah's Burden: South Africa's Epidemic of Child Rape
South Africa is a country where alleged sexual offenders are rarely brought to court swiftly--if at all, reports Newsweek. South Africa has one of the world's most numerous incidents of child rape, including attacks on infants. The country's conviction rate of rape cases is only 5 to 6 percent of all cases reported. Underreporting of rape cases is a serious problem. It is estimated that the 98,000 rape and sexual- abuse charges reported to police between April 2006 and March 2007 represent as little as 10 percent of the real figure. Oprah Winfrey has dealt with the alleged molestation case at her school openly and in the public eye. Winfrey described the incident as "one of the most devastating experiences" of her life and praised police action, saying, "I am grateful for [police] compassion and sensitivity to the girls during this difficult time."
Dominican Star Rocks Latin Grammy's
Juan Luis Guerra led the 8th Annual Latin Grammy Awards with five nominations--and on Thursday night in Las Vegas, he won them all. Included in Guerra's take was the most-coveted trifecta: album of the year, record of the year and song of the year. Guerra and his band, 440, also won trophies for best merengue album and tropical song for their album "La Llave De Mi Corazon" and its title track. Guerra is known for remaking traditional genres and his five wins bested Latin pop stars such as Ricky Martin, Shakira and Calle 13. "I have a lot of confidence in tropical music, the genres I work in--salsa, merengue and bachata," Guerra told reporters backstage, reported FOX News. "Merengue will never go out of style, nor will salsa or bachata."
George Wallace Shooter Gets Out of Prison
Arthur Bremer, the man who shot Alabama's segregationist Gov. George Wallace during a presidential campaign stop in 1972, is scheduled to be released from a Maryland prison Friday. A judge cut his sentence from 53 years to 35 years, citing good behavior by working jobs in prison, reports The Associated Press on MSNBC. Wallace is famous for standing in front of the entrance to the all-white University of Alabama in 1963 to stop two black students from enrolling.
Women Board Members Make More Than Men
While fewer women than men sit on corporate boards, women board members make more money than their male colleagues, reports Newsday.com. Average compensation for female directors in corporate America is $120,000, compared with $104,375 for male board members, reports the Corporate Library in its annual director-pay report. Women, however, are still outnumbered on corporate boards 8-to-1. The report looked at pay data for more than 25,000 directors at more than 3,200 companies.
(See also: Bringing New Voices to the Board of Directors)
Why Didn't N.J. Stem-Cell Bill Pass? Supporters Blame 'Weak' Effort
New Jersey supporters of a failed stem-cell-research bill are saying their efforts to get the bill passed were "weak," reports The New York Times. Their campaign started two months before Tuesday's election, and they only spent about $600,000 and used a TV commercial featuring a rap group whose last hit was 25 years ago. In seeking voter approval for the $450-million bond issue for the research,"We were behind the eight ball right away, and we knew we had our work cut out for us," said Russ Oster, a political consultant with New Jersey for Hope, a political-action committee formed in support of the bond issue. "The right-wing groups really got a jump on this and had an instant campaign. They ran 365 days a year. We didn't have a natural campaign in place."
(See also: Election Day Fallout: N.J. Voters Say No to Stem-Cell Research)
Will Woman Succeed Morgan Stanley CEO?
Inside sources at Morgan Stanley report that CEO John Mack has endorsed Zoe Cruz, a co-president with broad oversight for risk and trading, as the leading candidate to succeed him, reports The New York Times. Cruz's reputation has not been marred by the firm's trading miscue and the subsequent write-down, which was the largest in the firm's history. Other possible contenders include Walid Chammah, chairman of the firm's European and Middle East operations, and James P. Gorman, who heads the brokerage division. Mack is under pressure to identify a successor following the resignations of Citigroup's and Merrill Lynch's CEOs, who left without successors in line.
(See also: Why Are So Few CEOs People of Color and Women?)
In Immigration Fight, Businesses Pick Up Where Congress Left Off
A growing number of businesses--30,000 and counting--have signed onto a federal computer program that checks the legal status of new hires, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) says 1,000 more are joining every week. Critics worry the program will lead to legitimate job applicants being wrongly denied jobs, reports National Public Radio. The program, called E-Verify, identifies false Social Security numbers, but it has not been able to detect legitimate documents that have been stolen. A new system hopes to solve that by letting employers compare photos on certain immigration documents, and DHS wants state motor-vehicle agencies to include driver's-license photos. Homeland Security has also begun running radio and print ads in Arizona--in English and Spanish--that explain employees have the right to keep working while they contest E-verify's results.
(See also: Latino Population Growth in Untraditional Areas Shows Benefit to Economy)
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