- Preface
- New Business Development
- Barrier to Entry
- Manifest Destiny of Minority Suppression
- Civil Liberties
- Violators to the Certification
- Perpetuity Prejudice
- Opportunity Zones, Historically Underutilized Businesses, Enterprise Zones, Empowerment Zones, …
- Safeguard Groups – Minority Trade Associations, Homogenous Labor, Community Closeness, …
- Umbrella underserved Green Acres
Preface
Discrimination is consciously and/or subconsciously practiced by every USA citizen, which is my claim from experience going through the societal rigors of school, religion, work, or recreational activity. The most profound brain biases are witnessed in sanctioned commissions, committees, groups, and/or advocates set out to mitigate and/or remedy perceived, potential, or ongoing discriminatory practices in the land of the FREE(?).
Bias behavior comes about on an infinite number of levels, methods, plans, schemes for reasons ranging from protecting yourself, ability to describe, necessity for applying to a job, all the way to labeling yourself into a category in order to comply or gain favor. Accordingly, Americans are increasingly holding their personal obsession with discriminatory practices, so much that human behavior is today routinely immune from its presence.
The laziness in the work force reflects on how the status quo is so ever constant. Status quo bias is an emotional bias that slants toward a preference for the current state of affairs. The current baseline (or status quo) is taken as a reference point, and any change from that baseline is perceived as a loss. Essentially is all about change and when things are working in your favor change may appear unfavorable. The current state of affairs normally seems objectively superior to the available alternatives, or when future imperfect information is a significant problem, which is where the status quo bias frequently affects human decision-making.
Discrimination has a market dominance and elected officials arrange many of its regulatory laws from a bias position that has led our country into a de facto racist culture. The public and private sectors have and currently work to root out discrimination in hiring, promotions, wage earnings, and outsourcing of goods and services. But, the unbalanced manner of how we live is the easiest indicator that discrimination is the growing elephant in the room. For instance, public parks are better in upscale areas over those in lower income areas in the same city, even though taxes are encumbered equally. Likewise, public schools, public transportation, public housing, etc., are always considerably better in higher income dominated areas. These outcomes are mainly due to bias decision making, particularly when one is emotionally tied to the status quo.
New Business Development
The Small Business Investment Act of 1958 enabled the federal government to improve and stimulate the national economy in general and the small-business segment through the flow of private equity capital and long-term loan funds which small-business concerns need for the sound financing of their business operations and for their growth, expansion, and modernization, and which are not available in adequate supply. This act could not be uniformly applied since black-owned enterprises were denied fair access to capital and were not recruited, encouraged, or utilized for federal supply contracts. So, in 1978 this act was amended by Public Law 95-507, authored by the Baltimore Maryland Congressman Parren J. Michell, in order to include blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and native Americans.
De facto segregation whereas the 1958 act referred to small business, and since no progress was made in black areas it must therefore by bias in its application. The PL 05-507 was earnestly written and enacted on good faith that it would help to remedy or at least mitigate discrimination against black owned enterprises. Even though this public law introduced socially and economically disadvantaged group members, it does not single out blacks, but America’s origins is arguably rooted in black discrimination which is why it is referenced for discussion’s sake as the forbearer of such an amendment. Consequently, de facto discrimination by creating legislation that makes a clear distinction that black businesses are treated inferiorly to that of small American business enterprises. The error in legislative action was how America assumed the need to market a new Public Law in lieu of amending or updating the original 1958 Small Business Act and continue implementing it as the American gospel on expanding smaller business enterprises.
From this new Public Law 95-507 a tremendous amount attention was granted to the public and private major procurement entities. Since large governmental contracting amounts were at stake, there would unescapably come about some type of fraud perpetrated in the contracting process. The most concerning fraud would people seeking to gain an advantage over other businesses purporting their respective operation ownership to be a socially and economically disadvantage business enterprise. Especially if your concern was ineffective in competing as a small business [which by de facto now labeled as white-owned] then thereby reporting your business as black would give a marketable advantage of securing a specially designated contract set apart for disadvantage designated firms.
The next step imposed to this small business development process of fairness is to verify the authenticity of business ownership to ensure the integrity of supplier participation. Unfortunately, the Public Law only provides a definition of a socially and economically disadvantaged business enterprise, and does not offer a means or method in which to authenticate or verify such a designation. the thinking did not go back to making all small business the same the means added a layer of discrimination in reducing discrimination called business certification. Up until the need to verify business ownership, the need to certify a business was left to ensuring that selected businesses demonstrated the capacity to perform and deliver such services needed for the prescribed need. [The International Organization for Standardization (1920s as the International Federation of the National Standardizing Associations (ISA)) is an independent, non-governmental organization, the members of which are the standards organizations of the 165 member countries. It is the world’s largest developer of voluntary international standards and it facilitates world trade by providing common standards among nations.] Certification and verification terminology for business enterprises is normally set in this capacity for more than twenty thousand standards have been set, covering everything from manufactured products and technology to food safety, agriculture, and healthcare.
The current supplier inclusion programs managed by major buying agencies have become so convoluted that the barrier to entry is riddled with bias, particularly against the very socially and economically challenged communities requiring growth. Ownership certification is a standard requirement for businesses registered as minority. In 1978 the federal government recognized four ethnic protected groups as Native American, blacks, Asians, and Latin. In the 21st Century, the California government legislates socially and economically disadvantaged groups members as Native American, blacks, Asians, Latins, Women, Disabled Veterans, lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgenders. Since women make up the majority of the workforce and are growing into executive status it is hard to conceive that this is a socially and economically disadvantaged group, except the 19th Amendment to the US Constitution reminds us that women were discriminated in voting right on the bases of sex. Nonetheless, being a disabled veteran has no bearing on business capacity, whereas all products have quality standards and who is discriminating against only those veterans that were injured while serving in the military. It therefore begs the question; why would discrimination be limited to only disabled veterans and not any veteran? Logically, a dishonorably discharged veteran would be a more likely area for discrimination, or maybe a veteran that served in a controversial war.
Barrier to Entry
Supplier inclusion goes out of way in the identification of ethnic and gender ownership, in stark contrast to including businesses in the supply chain that provide quality products and services. A huge negative outcome from this overbearing process of certification is how blacks are encumbered toward business opportunity. The definition of Encumber by Merriam-Webster is to weigh down, burden, to impede or hamper the function or activity; such as hinder negotiations encumbered by a lack of trust.
A catastrophic outcome in the supplier ownership certification process is how arrogant various agencies operate in not accepting certification between the public and private sectors. Some agencies accept a Caltrans business certification and others do not, where the California Public Utilities Commission only accept those valid verifications from their Clearinghouse agency selected and funded by the regulated utility corporations.
If there is anything that could be conducted effectively it would be to have a universal certification, especially since discrimination is perpetuated universally. Elon Musk of Tesla practices a usable business model employing open source software for attracting greater participation in the area of electrical vehicle operation. Open source is a form of unity, and where it is not implemented for the sake of appearing righter than others, who are working on the same benefits for a more perfect society, perpetuates the very thing humanity is attempting to eradicate — prejudice.
The 14th amendment to the US Constitution prohibits States from depriving any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. Black businesses are routinely encumbered for contracting opportunities via ‘certification of ownership’ and management of a business enterprise, brought about by dominate public and private buying organizations. Any organization that purports a requirement or a need to certify prior to offering opportunity is practicing business fraud in the development free enterprise. Black businesses are singled out from other minority groups as collateral damage, whereas most firms do not suffer economic hardship in proportion to that of black business enterprises.
Let’s look at the measurement employed by major buying groups to report success of business development. Large agencies rely on annually reported spend to share how well, or not, their organization is doing with business development. Spend, which is essentially consumption of newly produced goods and services for immediate or intermediate use, really does not capture the true essence of business development. The spend is limited to gross dollars disbursed to suppliers, but what it does show is the net gain derived from those dollars. The gain is jobs offered to socially and economically disadvantaged individuals, or the general social and economic community improvements derived from the disbursed dollars.
Public and private sector spending dollars have a common tendency to spend more with Latin, Women and Asian-owned firms. That notwithstanding, just look at the overall American landscape and it always seem in every city to have the heavily black populated areas to be lesser than all of the other ethnically designated areas. So, what is the purpose of having business development programs if the outcome does not build better conditions. If we are to work toward a greater society, we should consistently pursue methods and practices of fair inclusion, particularly where society has been built on deceit, exclusion, and hate of society’s citizenry. By only looking at spend the review excludes the betterment of society, as affluent areas grow and socially and economically disadvantage areas decline.
Certification justifies a method to secure those businesses least desirable. Certification of ownership set asides whites male-owned business enterprises, enabling these firms to be self-labeled as prime contractors responsible to subcontract with those businesses designates as disadvantaged. The take away here is that certification is limited to minorities and set apart from white male-owned enterprises. Building America toward a greater society continues and engraved in supplier development with major corporations the concept of manifest destiny rings supreme.
Manifest Destiny of Minority Suppression
Newspaper editor John O’Sullivan is generally credited with coining the term manifest destiny in 1845, a widely held cultural belief that white American settlers were destined to expand across North America. An ideology that was used to justify genocide against Native Americans and the expansion of enslaving black people by white male land owners, all in the concept of building America.
Although the manifest destiny was not completely fulfilled, the concept adhered to enough minds that it still prevails today. The captains of industry have the destiny of white male dominance heavily administered by the National Minority Supplier Development Council (NMSDC), whose members practice minority business certification, and even make the minority firm pay for the certification.
On the NMSDC’s website certification is marketed by the following directive; “As a NMSDC certified MBE, you are in the unique position to promote and market your services to prospective corporate buyers who are looking to build relationships with trusted minority business enterprises (MBEs). If your company wants to connect with private sector buyers, NMSDC’s certification is considered the platinum standard in supplier diversity and can improve your financial performance. We invite you to take a look at the benefits of being certified with us.”
Note how this marketing message uses the word ‘trusted’ in front of minority business enterprises. Let’s just say a firm is not what it claims to be in the way of minority ownership, then it would be hiding the truth that it is actuality a white male owned firm since all of the other classifications are taken as minority. Well, the only thing is that a white man is heading of the firm, which would make the perpetrator a white man, not a minority, thereby trust is loosely used in this marketing promotion. It goes on to promote that the NMSDC certification is the platinum standard in supplier development, thereby excluding the concept of open source and sharing the benefits of societal improvement with all.
The manifest destiny is enlarged by this statement on the NMSDC website; “At NMSDC, we offer a wide range of opportunities that help our certified MBEs gain access to America’s largest and most influential companies around the world by increasing their visibility and overall growth.”
The major American organized NMSDC purports that it offers opportunities to help a certified minority business enterprise gain access and permission to speak with influential American businesses. The large assumption is that minority businesses, unlike white male owned businesses, have no abilities and skills to speak to big business representatives without the assistance from a sanctioned agency.
The need to have an agency watch over you smacks with creating an unnecessary filter and well-oiled machine toward more impediment in the growth of black-owned business enterprises. Curiously, the NMSDC has consistently selected a black [female] for the past thirty years to serve as its’ Executive Director. It appears as though the major corporations that fund this group (average membership fee is $20k annually), prefer putting on a front of inclusion just enough to ensure that its manifest interest in small business development is carried out
Civil Liberties
By definition; Civil liberty, freedom from arbitrary interference in one’s pursuits by individuals or by government. The term is usually used in the plural; Civil liberties are protected explicitly in the constitutions of most democratic countries. (In authoritarian countries, civil liberties are often formally guaranteed in a constitution but ignored in practice.) This practice of certification of ownership intrudes on one’s civil liberties.
In the U.S., civil liberties are guaranteed by the Bill of Rights and the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution of the United States. The Constitution’s 13th Amendment prohibits slavery and involuntary servitude; the 14th bars the application of any law that would abridge the “privileges and immunities” of U.S. citizens or deprive any person of “life, liberty, or property…without due process of law” or deny any person equal protection under the law; and the 15th guarantees the right of all U.S. citizens to vote. The related term civil right is often used to refer to one or more of these liberties or indirectly to the obligation of government to protect certain classes of people from violations of one or more of their civil liberties (e.g., the obligation to protect racial minorities from discrimination on the basis of race).
Going back on the California Public Utilities Commissions (CPUC) rules and guidelines set forth in General Order (GO) 156 (Section 2; 2.1 – 2.5) imposes on civil liberties as the process causes a ‘barrier to entry’ to contract opportunities. In the free entry into business, California Investor-Owned Utility corporations are practicing a pattern of abridging the privileges liberty through enforced supplier ownership discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin.
A myriad of viable black-owned and other ethnically-owned business enterprises are being deprived equal access to purchasing opportunities compared to white male-owned business competitors. Formally, on September 26, 1986, the California Governor George Deukmejian, Jr. approved what became the impetus for developing GO-156, Legislative Assembly Bill-Number 3678, Chapter 1259, an act to add Article 5 (commencing with section 8281) to Chapter 7 of Division 4 of the of the Public Utilities Code, relating to public utilities. Recounting vital extracts from this legislative council’s digest:
Article 5. Women and Minority Business Enterprises
8281. (a) The Legislative hereby finds and declares that the essence of the American economic system of private enterprise is free competition. Only through full and free competition ca free markets, reasonable and just prices, free entry into business, and opportunities for the expression and growth of personal initiative and individual judgment be assured.
…(b (1) The Legislative finds all of the following:
…..(A) The opportunity for full participation in our free enterprise system by women and minority business enterprises is essential if this state is to attain social and economic equality for those businesses and improve the functioning of the state economy.
…..(D) It is in the state’s interest to expeditiously improve the economically disadvantage position of women and minority business enterprises.
…..(F) That procurement also benefits the public utilities and consumers of the state by encouraging the expansion of the number of suppliers for procurements, thereby encouraging competition among the suppliers and promoting economic efficiency in the process.
8284. (a) The commission shall develop and publish regulations setting forth criteria for verifying and determining the eligibility of women and minority enterprises for procurement contracts.
Conversely, since the inception of GO-156 administered by the CPUC has for more than forty years fostered a barrier to entry pursuant to the prescribed certification process. In view of this violation in competition laws, the general public, especially in minority communities, bear the loss of possible business growth enabling sorely needed sustainable jobs. United States’ Public Laws prohibit the practice to limit, segregate, or classify business owners in any way which would deprive or tend to deprive any individual of equal opportunities or otherwise adversely affect their status as a prospective bidder, because of such business owner’s race.
The designated firms in GO-156 are expected to first complete a vigorous third-party audit of their company to ensure that the ownership of the enterprise meets the 51% test of race and if their respective qualifications align appropriately with the ability to operate said enterprise. This entire process is exempt to white male-owned and operated firms who have zero requirements to meet any similar verification of approval prior to their pursuit of purchasing opportunities offered by the CPUC regulated California utility firms. This is an unfair access to equal procurement contracting activity.
Counterproductive to expeditiously improving the economically disadvantage position of black-owned enterprises the certification eligibility has become a divisive instrument, in lieu of being an inclusive approach to fair competition. The spirit and intent of GO-156 is designed to equally encourage, recruitment and utilize the targeted firms in a totally barrier-free market, yet, the existing certification procedure places an undue prerequisite inconsistent with that of white male-owned firms who are characteristically accepted to more freely enter the competitive arena.
The commission has set forth a certification process that takes between 45 days to 90 days of prior applicant verification to be considered if you are a black-owned firm, unlike that of white male-owned firms. Antitrust law views this as an unreasonable horizontal restraint, as white male-owned firms can access utility procurement opportunities with zero days of delay. Pursuant to this complaint, it is requested that the CPUC make improvements to its ruling on business certification procedures. It is necessary to eliminate this discriminatory barrier to entry or black entrepreneur applicants to fairly offer for sale their respective products and services.
The certification process originally served to weed out front companies (false, misleading, or incorrect information), has become a type of shakedown. This specific governmentally sanctioned practice is resegregating groups and is not progressing equal opportunity. Utility procurement representatives are tactically and strategically making black-owned supplier eligibility, an unfair entry strategy divergent to white male-owned firms. Another negative repercussion from this CPUC rule is that it promotes a fallacy that sporadically inflames white male-owned firms into believing that verified firms obtain undue contracting advantages Thus, the CPUC certification process generates an unnecessary divisive trust among business leaders.
Utility business forums resolutely promote the need to complete the CPUC certification process first in order to conduct business. This action places an explicit discriminatory action. The CPUC should consider withdrawing the accepted process for verifying and determining the eligibility of women and minority enterprises on the grounds of level playing field. Moreover, this CPUC public policy endorses discrimination against third parties (suppliers) that violates United States antitrust competition law.
The barriers to entry are entrenched and longstanding for black-owned businesses, which promulgated the need and purpose of GO-156 to help diminish and ultimately eliminate discrimination in supplier management practices. Positively, the U.S. Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment enforces judicial protection for economic liberty. This is augmented by restraint of trade under common law doctrine. In any case, the current certification process is enforced in stark contrast to legal rulings restricting the freedom and privileges of doing business in a free enterprise system. Anecdotally, it is appropriate to include in this complaint the degrading fact of how this ownership certification must be renewed every three years. This is an eerie comparable, used during America’s era of emancipation from slavery, where ‘Freedom Papers’ and ‘Certificates of Freedom’ served as a legal affidavit for “Free Negroes,” who were required to carry documented proof for entry, with a three-year renewal requirement.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said;
“an unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself.”
Violators to the Certification
Prosecutions are rare when determining if a company has created a false front management to deceive procurement personnel that they are a bona fide socially and economically disadvantage business enterprise. Whenever a firm decides to misrepresent its ownership, it does so to gain a perceived and justifiable competitive advantage over other minority registered firms. By common default, the central perpetrator is a white male, directing and luring minorities to serve as window dressing. In comprehensive business development major buying entities would implement or offer a process whereby businesses could joint venture into a type of mentor-protégée program that would enable white male-owned firms to share their expertise in lieu of fraudulently capturing contracts without building a better society.
Take a recent case that involved a front company found to present a fraud ownership. The U.S. District Court Judge Michael Barrett, presided over Evans Landscaping (Cincinnati Ohio), owner Doug Evans’ month-long trial in 2018 jury in December 2018 that found Evans guilty of using a shell company to win millions in public demolition work that had been ‘set aside’ for minority and small business contractors. [Set-aside contractors fall into a de facto procurement culture whereas making contracts available solely to a specified group.]
Evans insisted throughout his trial he was innocent, but the jury convicted him of creating a shell company — Ergon Site Construction — in 2008, hoping to win millions in minority demolition jobs from the state and the city of Cincinnati amid a deepening recession.
“It is worth reminding the court that the letters in the name ‘Ergon’ could be rearranged to form the word ‘Negro,’” Mangan wrote in a sentencing memorandum. “One witness testified that Doug Evans thought the use of that term for Ergon was hilarious … The word ‘Negro’ was written in handwriting at the top of an invoice that was found on a table in Doug Evans’ office during the search.”
Just maybe, if the city of Cincinnati had a type of mentor-protégée program this Doug Evans may have seen an option to compete and serve the community at the same time, instead of looking at jail time.
In a formative 1989 U.S. Supreme Court case, Richmond, VA vs Croson existing system for allocating bids to women- and minority-owned businesses was shuttered. The court said the city could not demonstrate that its program met “compelling interests” in controlling discrimination. That’s a reasonable standard. Unfortunately, the legal requirements the courts have laid out, which could help Richmond and other cities meet that standard, can often be burdensome and vague.
This is where a higher and much more complex layer of discrimination in America is applied, and that is through commissioning and conducting disparity studies to examine whether there are differences between:
- The percentage of dollars that minority-, woman-, and veteran-owned businesses received on an agency’s prime contracts and subcontracts during a particular time period (utilization); and
- The percentage of dollars that those businesses would be expected to receive based on their availability to perform on the agency’s prime contracts and subcontracts (availability).
The comparison between the participation of minority-, woman-, and veteran-owned businesses in an agency’s contracting and the availability of those businesses to perform that work is referred to as a disparity analysis. In addition to utilization, availability, and disparity analyses, disparity studies typically examine other quantitative and qualitative information about:
- Legal considerations surrounding the implementation of minority-, woman-, and veteran-owned business programs;
- Conditions in the local marketplace for minority-, woman-, and veteran-owned businesses;
- Contracting practices and business assistance programs that the agency currently has in place; and
- Potential program measures for consideration as part of the agency’s implementation of minority-, woman-, and veteran-owned business programs.
Perpetuity Prejudice
It appears that American segregation philosophy has no end in sight. Universities are purposefully sanctioning the most demonstrative institutionalized racial segregation societal-culture visionaries in the history of America. It is no wonder how the nation is diving further away along Impractical lines of race, politics, ganders, income and the like. What will happen when a group like the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan decides organize a separate celebration upon graduation from a major university? Black ‘modern’ thinkers will more than likely protest the rights of a subversive group to rally their own private ceremony on the grounds that the group discriminates against others.
Ironically, there appears to be a sort of selfish need and expanding desire for Americans to belong to something that provides a somewhat unique status. The rising culture-specific graduation ceremonies go back forty years at Sandford University, and are now common among the elites including Harvard University, Syracuse University, University of Southern California, Columbia University, UC Berkeley and the University of Washington. These culturally segregated ceremonies were originally justified to honor the accomplishment of black students only, along the same lines as the time-honored black history month.
From all indicators of American human behavior bias practices will last to infinity unless authenticate unity becomes the order of the day. Bracketing is a negative subset of how decisions are made in everyday life and with that categorical impacts are affecting the entire world. Whether segmenting the world by age, color, gender, zip code, income, education, language, even the divisively bias activities between android or Apple customers.
Parents of minority students at a Long Island, NY middle school are outraged after a picture of two nooses were posted by teachers and labeled “back to school necklaces.” The school district is reportedly investigating the racist photo that was included in a collage by teachers at Roosevelt Middle School.
The Palmdale, California district released a stern statement addressing parents and community concerns. “The Roosevelt School District is aware of the inappropriate conduct at the Roosevelt Middle School,” the district said in a statement on the district’s website. “The Board of Education was made aware of this incident on Thursday, February 7, 2019, an investigation was immediately initiated, and appropriate action taken. The Board of Education has zero tolerance for the display of racially offensive images.”
Micah Xavier Johnson, a 25-year-old who served US military duty in the Afghanistan war after serving in the Army Reserve for six years
On July 7, 2016, Micah Xavier Johnson ambushed a group of police officers in Dallas, Texas, shooting dead five officers and injuring nine others. Two civilians were also wounded. Johnson was an Army Reserve Afghan War veteran and was angry over police shootings of black men. He stated that he wanted to kill white people, especially white police officers. The shooting happened at the end of a protest against the police killings of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, which had occurred in the preceding days. Following the shooting, Johnson fled inside a building on the campus of El Centro College. Police followed him there, and a standoff ensued. In the early hours of July 8, police killed Johnson with a bomb attached to a remote control bomb disposal robot. It was the first time U.S. law enforcement had used a robot to kill a suspect.
LOS ANGELES (KABC – March 16, 2021) — “A retired Los Angeles police detective was captured on video hurling racial slurs at a young Black man, prompting the district attorney’s office to announce it would review 370 cases he handled. The man, who is white, can be heard saying multiple racist insults at the Black man during an argument after a minor traffic collision. “Go back in your little cage until the monkey controller gets here,” the man yells. Later in the video, the man calls the Black man the N-word. Activist Shaun King on Tuesday posted video of the encounter on his Instagram page, and it has garnered more than 750,000 views. According to King, the encounter happened in Santa Clarita.
ATLANTA March 17, 2021— Eight people, most of them women of Asian descent, were killed Tuesday night in three shootings at Atlanta-area spas before police arrested a 21-year-old man suspected of being the lone gunman. Police said the suspect, Robert Aaron Long, 21, of Woodstock, Georgia, told authorities that his actions were not racially motivated and that he frequented some of the spas where the shootings took place.
Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Capt. Jay Baker said Long viewed the spas as “a temptation that he wanted to eliminate.” Atlanta Police Chief Rodney Bryant said it was too soon in the investigation to say whether the shootings were a hate crime. “We are just not there as of yet,” Bryant said during a Wednesday morning news conference. The killings came amid a recent wave of attacks against Asian Americans that coincided with the spread of the coronavirus across the United States.
The Charleston church shooting (also known as the Charleston church massacre) was a mass shooting on June 17, 2015, in Charleston, South Carolina, in which nine African Americans were killed during a Bible study at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. Among those people who were killed was the senior pastor, state senator Clementa C. Pinckney; three victims survived. This church is one of the oldest black churches in the United States, and it has long been a center for organizing events which are related to civil rights.
The morning after the attack, police arrested Dylann Roof in Shelby, North Carolina; the 21-year-old white supremacist had attended the Bible study before he committed the shooting. He was found to have targeted members of this church because of its history and stature. Roof was found competent to stand trial in federal court.
Sports announcer, Matt Rowan, is caught on a hot mic racially insulting members of the Norman High girls’ basketball team after taking displeasure in some of its members kneeling for the anthem. The incident occurs during the national anthem in the pregame of a girl’s high school state playoff match between Norman High School and Midwest City High School. An announcer for a live stream of an Oklahoma girls’ high school basketball game cursed and called one team by a racial epithet as the players knelt during the national anthem, then suggested his diabetes was to blame for the episode in a statement expressing his regret.
The incident occurred on Thursday before the Norman High School-Midwest City quarter-final game in Sapulpa as the Star-Spangled Banner began to play. The broadcasters told their listeners on the NFHS Network stream they would return after a break and then one, apparently not realizing the audio was still live, used an expletive and the epithet as the Norman players knelt.
“They’re kneeling? Fuck them,” one of the men said. “I hope Norman gets their ass kicked … I hope they lose. C’mon Midwest City. They’re gonna kneel like that? Hell no.” He went on to call the players the N-word.
Lawmakers respond to video showing Sacramento teacher making racist slant-eye gestures. A High School teacher is now under investigation by the school district for using a racist gesture to describe people of East Asian descent. A Grant High School teacher’s behavior on a recent Zoom lesson with her class is being met with outrage among many members of the community. Spanish teacher and class of 2022 student advisor Nicole Burkett was recorded making a “slant eyes” face — an offensive and racist stereotype and gesture to describe people of East Asian descent. The video shows the Northern California teacher doing the racist gesture by pulling her eyes up and down during a Zoom lesson, explaining to students that this is how to identify someone’s ethnicity. “If your eyes go up, you’re Chinese,” Burkett said, pulling her eyes out and upwards. “If they go down, they’re Japanese. If they’re just straight, you don’t know.”
Freedom papers and certificates of freedom were documents declaring the free status of Blacks. These papers were important because “free people of color” lived with the constant fear of being kidnapped and sold into slavery. Freedom Papers proved the free status of a person and served as a legal affidavit. Manumissions and emancipations were legal documents that made official the act of setting a Black person free from slavery by a living or deceased slaveholder. Free Black people still faced danger. Many appeared in court to ask for a Certificate of Freedom papers that were essential for freedmen who wanted to travel, particularly those working on the rivers.
Filing with the deeds office protected African Americans from the loss, theft, or destruction of original documents, as in all-too-frequent situations where slave catchers confiscated or destroyed freedom papers to force free men and women into lives of bondage. Some free men had to have an affidavit that testified to their free status.
As increasing numbers of people flooded westward during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, new states including Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa expressly prohibited black emigration, while Ohio passed “black laws” to curtail the rash of fugitive slaves entering its borders in search of freedom. The Ohio laws, first passed in 1804, required all blacks and mulattoes residing in the state to register themselves and their children with the county clerk’s office and to provide proof of their free status. Registered slaves were required to pay the office for a certificate confirming freedom. Employers were forbidden by law to hire any non-certificate-holding black or mulatto.
Virginia law required that free African Americans register every three years to obtain a certificate of freedom proving they were not fugitive slaves. Without proper documentation, they risked being arrested and sold back into bondage. Registration records consisted of name, age, a detailed physical description, and a report of how the individual became free (whether by birth or manumission).
Like a lot of overwhelmed parents trying to juggle a job and children studying at home during the pandemic, Katura Stokes turned to a teacher for advice on how to help her 12-year-old son, who was struggling to connect with the online learning platform at his Palmdale middle school.
Stokes and her son were relieved to hear from his science teacher that he was up to date on all his assignments. But just when they thought the Zoom session had ended, they said they listened in disbelief as sixth-grade teacher Kimberly Newman unleashed a rant, saying the child had lied and made excuses because “this is what Black people do.” Newman didn’t know Stokes was still on the call.
Stokes’ cellphone video recording of the profane and racist tirade in January is now at the center of a legal claim that charges the Palmdale School District with defamation, negligence, civil rights violations and infliction of emotional distress.
The flabbergasted parent complained to the principal of Desert Willow Fine Arts, Science and Technology Magnet Academy, leading to Newman’s quick resignation two days after the Jan. 20 incident. According to the claim, the mother and son say they have been permanently scarred and worry they may never be treated fairly by Palmdale schools.
The Palmdale mother has called on the district to investigate whether the discrimination extended beyond the science teacher, said her lawyer, Neil Gehlawat. The family also wants the school district — whose enrollment is 75% Latino, 15% Black and 10% white and other races — to improve racial sensitivity training.
“They need to look into whether other students under this teacher were getting a fair shake,” Gehlawat said. “Other Black parents must wonder ‘Are they saying the same things about my kid behind our backs?’”
News of the incident became public in January during a school district news conference that covered several topics, including the superintendent‘s COVID-19 diagnosis. Spokesman David Garcia said at the time that a teacher, whom the district did not identify, had demonstrated “gross professional misconduct” that included profanity and racist comments.
School officials said they promptly put the teacher on administrative leave and ordered an investigation. But when Newman came to headquarters two days later for an interview, she said she preferred to resign, Garcia said.
As businesses digitally transform, they find that conventional identity and access management can’t keep up. Experts discuss how zero trust security will combat threats.
A request for comment was not immediately returned by the Palmdale teachers union. Newman could not be reached.
Palmdale school leaders said the district apologized and offered counseling to both Stokes and her son. Palmdale school board President Ralph Velador said district leaders “will not tolerate this behavior.”
Following the filing of the legal claim, Garcia reiterated Sunday that Palmdale schools have “no room for racial comments or discrimination.” He said school officials feel they are “on the same side” as Stokes, abhorring racial injustice. To the family’s demand for improved racial awareness training, the spokesman said Palmdale educators already receive regular “continuing education” on the subject.
Stokes moved two years ago from Los Angeles to Palmdale, where she is raising the 12-year-old and a 9-year-old daughter, while also caring for her mother, her lawyer said.
The January Zoom call initially seemed to go off without a hitch, until its unexpected aftermath, the attorney said. On the recording, Newman sounds exasperated because she said Stokes complained but failed to respond to several previous phone calls.
“These parents, that’s what kind of pieces of s— they are,” said the teacher, in a recording that Stokes made on her mobile phone. “She’s Black. They’re a Black family.”
The recording continues: “Your son has learned to lie to everybody and make excuses … because you taught him to make excuses that nothing is his fault. This is what Black people do … White people do it too, but Black people do it way more.”
Stokes, who can be heard gasping at the comments, immediately called the middle school’s principal. She held the phone up so the administrator could hear Newman’s diatribe, which continued for about half an hour, according to the Stokes family lawyers. The principal called the teacher to alert her that the Stokes family could hear her.
School officials put Newman on paid administrative leave and called her into a meeting two days later. But the teacher made it clear she would rather resign and left the district office, Garcia said.
Gehlawat’s office released five short excerpts, totaling about 5 ½ minutes, of Stokes’ original 30-minute recording. The family’s lawyers said he withheld the rest of the video because it might reveal confidential details about the sixth-grader and the identity of others not involved in the case.
The recording includes the sounds of the teacher discussing the email she is sending to other teachers of the 12-year-old. Gehlawat said the email raises questions about how the teachers responded and whether others at the school shared Newman’s views.
The recording reveals a teacher who seems to feel she has taught at least one parent a lesson. Newman assures her housemate that the Zoom call affirmed that Stokes had been unresponsive. Boasting of her perceived triumph, the teacher says: “I just burned her. I f— burned her.”
The Palmdale School District has 45 days to file a formal response to Stokes’ claim. The family has six months after that to file a lawsuit.
The incident is not the first in which Palmdale teachers have been accused of racial insensitivity. In 2019, a principal took a picture of four elementary school teachers smiling as they displayed a small noose. An investigation concluded that the teachers did not understand that nooses, a frequent tool of lynchings in America in the 20th century, are viewed as a symbol of racial animus.
All four teachers were placed on paid leave and eventually left the district, while the principal also was “processed out” of her position, spokesman Garcia said.
Black men in the Antelope Valley have repeatedly complained about being subjected to unjustified stops by sheriff’s deputies. County officials in 2015 reached a legal settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice over allegations that deputies systematically harassed Black people and Latinos in Palmdale and neighboring Lancaster.
Educators???
Upon graduation from high school in 1970, I connected with a number of colleagues who majored in education in order to become a school teacher as their chosen profession. My insight is limited, but I can attest that known of those young people I know that became school teachers ever display outward repugnance of another race.
The racial mix in the Los Angeles Unified School District in the sixties and seventies well rounded with all races both in students and faculty. Consequently, the only racial challenges that I can recall came about when the football teams played some of the San Fernando Valley schools that really showed issued with playing predominantly black schools.
If there were educators that had a problem with racial backgrounds when I attended K-12, it never surfaced. Personalities appeared to be the leader in those days, where people dealt with each other solely on the character versus skin color. I do remember a lot of white families fled the inner cities for the out skirts, but some white flight was generated for better housing. Nonetheless, educators communicated and most did not abandon being an educator over color versus location.
These educators that are revealing their feeling on a person’s color have issues that fully question their ability to be consider an educator. An educator is as close to a devout saint since the level of trust is at the same level. An educator is seen as someone immersed in a passion to share knowledge and nothing else. Educators administer test based on the subject matter with the assumption the information was conveyed evenly to all who participated. But today, to learn that people working in the education sector have repulsion based upon a person’s skin color is disgraceful to the profession. Similarly, if a doctor refused full medical care due to a person’s skin color would be inexcusable to the practice. Can you imagine a firefighter limited their skills at the scene of a tragedy because there may be the possibility of saving a life with the wrong skin color?
The aforementioned hypothetical evaluates are primitive, but they serve to represent precisely just how rude the following real-life actions that were accidently disclosed effect current day-to-day service.
Georgetown Professor Fired for Statements About Black Students
In March 2021, Georgetown Law School terminated an adjunct professor, Sandra Sellers, after a video was posted on social media showing her making disparaging comments about Black students in a recorded conversation with another professor. The comments came at the end of a session of a class she taught jointly with the other professor and which was recorded for future viewing by students.
The educator’s personal words convey comments about Black students’ academic performance. “I hate to say this,” Sandra Sellers says in the video recording of her conversation with another Georgetown law professor, David Batson. “I end up having this angst every semester that a lot of my lower ones are Blacks. Happens almost every semester. And it’s like, oh, come on. You get some really good ones. But there are also usually some that are just plain at the bottom. It drives me crazy.”
Bill Treanor, dean of the law school, said in a statement that Sandra Sellers had been terminated and that David Batson had been placed on administrative leave pending an investigation by the university’s Office of Diversity, Equity and Affirmative Action.
“I am appalled that two members of our faculty engaged in a conversation that included reprehensible statements concerning the evaluation of Black students,” Treanor said in a written statement. He added that Baston “will have no further involvement with the course in which the incident arose” until after completion of the investigation. He also said the law school is “taking significant steps to ensure that all students in this class are fairly graded without the input of Professor Sellers or Professor Batson.”
This is where I must insert my thought on attempting to correct wrong where clear bias activity is in place. If I were caught in an uncomfortable conversation with a professor, I would have to at least question the words being expressed as prejudice. Afterall, being fair is what educating is all about. So, how can a school ever ensure fairness when the pool of education is tainted and you have no idea how far racism goes. These are just two teachers freely exchanging racist views with no concern with repercussions.
The Black Law Students Association had previously called for Sellers’s immediate termination after the video was made public on Wednesday, writing in a letter that Georgetown “must take swift and definitive action in the face of blatant and shameless racism.”
The Black Law Students Association also called for a public apology from Batson for “his failure to adequately condemn Sellers’ statements,” for a review of the “current subjective grading system,” including an audit of Sellers’ past grading and student evaluations, and for a commitment to hire more Black professors, “who will be better situated to fairly assess Black students in a non-biased manner.”
I hope in reading this rebuttal from the Black Law Students Association does not go overlooked that a racial-based association is needed within a school of education is needed and sanctioned. How is it that the normal course of activities does not include voices of fairness? Somehow, the school takes this as an incident, yet it has an ongoing racial-bias association dealing with explicit and implicit bias. Educators forced to learn from other educators’ anti-bias training is laughable.
Of Georgetown Law’s 2,021 J.D. students in fall 2020, 185 identified as Black or African American, according to university data.
<center><iframe width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/R33C7FrsJYc” title=”YouTube video player” frameborder=”0″ allow=”accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture” allowfullscreen></iframe></center>
Racial Equity Framework
Racial bias training makes the effort to change the heart of people. Mitigating racial issues are completely dissimilar to learning how to figure out a math problem, instead the magic of change rests in the same emotional region of the soul that registers love. Any training or educational seminar addressing how racial inequality shapes current-day business practices in the U.S. workplace is futile
Practical skills to achieve change and drive equity with improving racial equity outcomes within an organization, and influence culture shifts makes the assumption that there is master race. American training presumes that the core racial equity concept accepts the white race is the standard level of achievement. Anything that explore the root causes of racial inequalities and the rise of anti-racist movements is a waste of time. No matter how back you go it will never touch the soul that lives today.
Unless education techniques center solely on the core business, it will always get lost in the minutia of race, which is never ending. The inequalities that shape current business practices are those that veer from how to move product and reduce costs. In a school moving away from raising the mind of individual is counterproductive to the core business of learning.
There has to be passion in teaching and the heart of sharing knowledge has to feel the human race as a heart beating as one. Any attempt to acknowledge and recognize the impact of racial hierarchies on organizations’ practices and policies will in due course repeat the organization’s promulgation of racial equity and inclusion.
Slave-Free Business Certification Act of 2020
To require certain businesses to disclose the use of forced labor in their direct supply chain, and for other purposes.
On July 20, 2020, Senator Josh Hawely (R-MO) introduced the Slave-Free Business Certification Act of 2020 (Act), which would require certain large companies to investigate and report on forced labor within their supply chains.
The proposed Act has three major components: mandatory investigation and auditing, mandatory annual reporting to the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) that includes a CEO certification, and significant penalties for non-compliance. The DOL would be required to promulgate implementing regulations within 180 days of enactment.
Under the Act, a covered business entity would be required to “conduct an audit of its supply chain … to investigate the presence or use of forced labor” by the entity or its suppliers, including by direct suppliers, secondary suppliers, and on-site service providers.
The Act requires the investigation and auditing process to include:
- Worker interviews,
- Management interviews,
- Document review,
- Closing meetings with management, and
- An audit report.
LINKS TO CONTACT CONGRESS AND THE SENATE
- U.S. Senate: https://www.senate.gov/senators/senators-contact.htm
- U.S. House: https://www.house.gov/representatives
- Your State’s Governor: https://www.usa.gov/state-governor
- Your State’s House and Senate: https://www.congress.gov/state-legislature-websites
In the throes of building a more productive and effective network, sometimes the fundamental reason for doing so can become cloudy in the selected course of action. Clearly, quality inclusion is the goal of achieving American leadership in minority supplier development. Conversely, your corporation is increasingly becoming a bottleneck in developing equal procurement opportunities in the State of California.
Requesting that Asian, Black, Hispanic and Native American businesses complete a race-based certification falsely promotes a valued supplier improvement program. The long-term value proposition of inclusive corporate supply chain management system is mistaken in its approach toward equal opportunity.
Race-based certification applies and enforces a double standard and a different set of principles for white versus minority enterprises to access the same procurement opportunities is intrinsically dishonest. Race-based certification procedures push more requirements for minority enterprises to conduct business over those in place for white-owned business competitors.
There are sometimes fees incurred and in-kind expenses associated with the race-based certification, comparable to how in the 20th Century racist southerners charged a fee, just to blacks, in order for them to proceed in the voting of governmental elections. Likewise, the race-based certification’s process fosters a barrier to entry pursuant to contracting opportunities. Public Laws prohibit the practice to limit, segregate, or classify business owners in any way which would deprive or tend to deprive any individual of equal opportunities or otherwise adversely affect their status as a prospective bidder, because of such business owner’s race.
The manner in which the major corporations have banned together in embracing race-based certification to access opportunities goes against the rudimentary grain of equal opportunity. A major objective of supplier development is to equally encourage, recruit and utilize the targeted firms in a totally barrier-free market, yet, the existing race-based certification procedure places an undue prerequisite inconsistent with that of white male-owned firms who are characteristically accepted to more freely enter the competitive arena.
The clarity of supplier development is to enforce, not detract from, judicial protection for economic liberty. Should a California legal body accept a case over race-based supplier certification it might find that the corporation practicing such activity is in violation of California Proposition 209 by capriciously charging fees against minorities in their pursuit to free trade. This is the California Civil Rights Initiative that prohibits governmental institutions from considering race, sex, or ethnicity, specifically in the areas of public contracting.
The most effective course of action for our economy to stay competitive is to seek TOP BEST PRACTICIES of greater inclusion.
Dear Congressman XXXX or Senator XXXX:
The USA has become world renown as a chaotic race-based nation; anti-race hate, race culture appreciation, and race-based solutions to remedy past discriminatory practices are routinely indulged by the private and public sectors throughout the country. Selfishly, governmental supplier improvement race-based programs regulate business ownership through certification processes that treacherously exposes further race-based discrimination. The results of certified race-based business ownership firms make it easier for anyone prone to discriminate against a business owned by a particular ethnic group member easier to do so without difficulty from race-based data basis.
When pursuing government product/service contracting opportunities my company is consistently asked to register as a certified minority-owned firm, and such directives come before the offering of contracting engagement opportunities. Race-based business ownership certification is a hindrance of time and money and this act coincides to the US antitrust law prohibiting the causation of a barrier to entry for business activity. Race-based business ownership certification is a cost of producing activity that must be borne by my firm seeking to enter an industry, and such expense is not borne by white male firms already in the industry, or even those being evaluated to participate in the industry.
Race-based business ownership certification is a primary barrier to entry as it is routinely required as an economic cost on its own. Occasionally, an ancillary barrier to entry expense arises when the verifying agency selectively tests the operating and controlling interest of the firm. Nonetheless, race-based certification is related to an antitrust barrier to entry as it is a cost that delays entry and thereby reduces social welfare relative to immediate but equally costly entry. The mere fact that it can delay entry into a market, while not necessarily resulting in any cost-advantage to incumbents already in the market.
Leveling the Business Certification Playing Field
There is a method to create a level playing field on requesting business ownership and it addresses how we do business in a free enterprise system. Taxes are mail through the United States Postal Services and thereby any activity conducted falls under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act is a United States federal law that provides for extended criminal penalties and a civil cause of action for acts performed as part of a criminal violation.
By amending the W-9 form with straightforward language all companies would be able to opt-in labeling their company within the race-based identification, and by signing it would be subjected to attesting to the truth of the certification. Suggested language is offered by te following:
If applicable, please indicate if your business is a minority-owned business. Meaning the concern is a business enterprise that is at least 51% owned, controlled, and operated by a minority individual or group(s). In the case that the company is a publicly owned business, at least 51% of the stock of which is owned by one or more minority groups, and whose management and daily business operations are controlled by one or more of the following individuals.
- African Americans are persons having origins in any black racial groups of Africa.
- Hispanic Americans are persons of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, South or Central American, Caribbean, and other Spanish culture or origin.
- Native Americans are persons having origin in any of the original peoples of North America or the Hawaiian Island, in particular American Indians, Eskimos, Aleuts, and Native Hawaiians.
- Asian Pacific Americans are persons having origins in Asia or the Indian subcontinent, including, but not limited to, persons from Japan, China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Korea, Samoa, Guam, the US Trust Territories of the Pacific, Northern Marianas, Laos, Cambodia, Taiwan, India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.
- Other groups whose members are found to be disadvantaged by the Small Business Administration pursuant to Section 8 (d) of the Small Business Act as amended (15 U.S.C. 637 (d), or the Secretary of Commerce pursuant to Section 5 of Executive order 11625, include; ¨ Disabled Veteran-owned ¨ Veteran Owned ¨ White Woman-owned ¨ LGBT-owned
- White: A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa.
The undersigned understands and agrees that any person or corporation, through its directors, officers, or agents, which falsely represents the business as a women or minority business enterprise in the procurement or attempt to procure contracts, is subject to a monetary fine, and/or judicial review. Click her for sample
