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'Driving While Black' (And Transgender)
Compiled by the DiversityInc staff
February 12, 2008
Transgender Drivers Face Racism, Discrimination
The transgender community has experienced a boom in visibility in the last decade. The National Center for Transgender Equality estimates that there are about 300 million transgender people. However, left unexamined has been the issue of racism and how transgender men and women experience it, reports Alternet.org. Increasingly, Black transgender men say they are experiencing racism and didn't think the "driving while black" stereotype would apply to them. Louis Mitchell expected it when he began taking injections of hormones eight years ago but did not count on it affecting the way he drove, saying he has been pulled over "300 percent more" now than in his "23 years of driving, most immediately."
"A white person who transitions to a male body just became a man. I became a Black man. I became the enemy," London Dexter Ward, an LAPD cop who transitioned in 2004, told Alternet.org. Read how a federal gay-rights bill stalled in Congress over controversy about whether to include protections for transgender people.
'Eat the Jews'? Hamas Cartoon Teaches Hate
Hamas has introduced a new cartoon aimed at brainwashing kids to kill Israelis. Assud the rabbit is the newest star of "Tomorrow's Pioneers," a Hamas-authorized children's show that airs on Gaza TV and is broadcast around the Arab world, reports New York Daily News. Assud, a six-foot-tall bunny, is the latest character by the Hamas terrorists "to teach hate and violence," Itamar Marcus, director of Palestinian Media Watch, told the Daily News, but he's not the first. "The program is telling us that they see children as tools in their propaganda and their war," Marcus said. In recent days, Assud has appeared with a little girl in a headscarf named Saraa, who listens as the rabbit rants, "I, Assud, will finish off the Jews and eat them."
Want a College Degree? Go Online
The University of Maryland University College (UMUC), a primarily online university, is using its online technology to reach traditionally underserved student populations. Of its 90,000 students, 32 percent are Black, and these students have a 30 percent graduation rate. "Online education can be a very powerful tool to reach different populations," Bruce R. Magid, dean of the business school at Brandeis University, told Inside Higher Ed. UMUC says most of its students have some previous college education but not a bachelor's degree. The school has also rolled out new scholarship programs for unemployed people and was raising money to create a fund to provide laptops for them, reports Inside Higher Ed. Late last year, most of the Ivy League universities introduced new scholarship programs for middle-income families. Do you earn up to $180,000 a year? Now Harvard is affordable for your kid.
Hate-Filled Radio Talk Costs Michael Savage Major Ads
Michael Savage's hateful message is costing him big. On Friday, five advertisers--ITT Technical Institute, Chattem (owners of Gold Bond, Icy Hot, and Selsun Blue), Union Bank of California, Intuit (parent company of TurboTax and QuickBooks), and GEICO Insurance--announced they were pulling their advertisements off the show, reports Alternet.org. US Cellular, Sprint Nextel (No. 28 on The DiversityInc Top 50 Companies for Diversity list®), SearsAutoZone, JCPenney, OfficeMax, Wal-Mart (No. 41), AT&T (No. 3) and others have also stopped advertising on Savage's show, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). Will Savage follow in Don Imus' path?
Single Moms Get Less Pay, Fewer Degrees
Single mothers earn fewer college degrees and make less money than their married counterparts, according to research from Rutgers University's Center for Women and Work, which found that 84 percent of single mothers don't have college degrees and only 22 percent earn more than $30,000. "Not having skills and education to move into better-paying jobs is a really big problem," Mary Gatta, director of work-force policy and research at the center, told The Wall Street Journal. "Many of these women are working at hourly jobs, especially in the service economy, which depends on customers." While single dads may face some of the same issues, she says single women are more likely to be primary caregivers, reports the Journal. Get real tips for finding top jobs and managing work/life balance in the March 2007 issue of DiversityInc magazine.
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