Tagged: pattern and practice discrimination
“We are so accustomed to juxtaposing disparate impact theory against disparate treatment theory around proof of intent, for example, that we find it almost impossible to talk about the law in this area without doing so. But this habit of allowing legal theories to frame our conceptions of how discrimination operates is a mistake. To start from legal theories cabins us from seeing clearly what the law is missing and it constrains us from thinking practically about where the law should go.”
Source: Tristin K. Greene. Discrimination Laundering: The Rise of Organizational Innocence and the Crisis of Equal Opportunity Law. pg. 9. 2016.
“This book tells the story of discrimination laundering: the rise of organizational innocence in the courts’ understanding of employment discrimination and the corresponding narrowing of employer liability in the law. We are used to thinking about laundering in the financial context as a process of taking dirty, illegal money, accumulated through racketeering, illegal drug sales, and gun deals, for example, and superficially cleansing it by running it through legitimate organizations. Discrimination laundering is a similar process, but it is a process of law, a process whereby the law cleanses the workplace of unlawful discrimination – not in reality, but in perception, by sleight of hand. Employment discrimination today is being recast as interpersonal conflict and not properly the subject of Title VII concern. And organizations are being recast as mere bystanders, even victims, of the discrimination that is recognized by law. Once recast, organizations are increasingly protected by the law from responsibility for their own role in inciting bias and discrimination within their walls.”
We all know that racial discrimination is a complex social phenomenon that is bigger than individual “bad actors” using racial epithets or companies that intentionally refuse to hire and/or promote qualified members of protected groups to meaningful positions throughout their workplace.
One must always keep in mind that before, during and after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, many racist white people, especially politicians and judges, opposed the enactment of this law and vowed to do everything in their power to undermine the law’s substantive strength.
This is one of the reasons why the Civil Rights Act of 1964 had to be amended in 1991 to reestablish disparate impact theory, a theory that accounts for UNINTENTIONAL DISCRIMINATION! 26 years later, disparate impact theory is again being ignored and these predominately white judges are doing everything in their corrupt power to ensure that the law is practically meaningless in its ability to eradicate workplace discrimination at the organizational and institutional levels — where it all starts.
This was always part of their racist plan, and it’s clearly working, which is one of the reasons why the unemployment rate for African Americans has historically remained double that of whites.
Source: Tristin K. Greene. Discrimination Laundering: The Rise of Organizational Innocence and and the Crisis of Equal Opportunity Law. pg. 1-2. 2016.
“the malleability of merit”
Source: Hon. Mark W. Bennett, Devon Carbado, Pam Casey, Jerry Kang, et al. “Implicit Bias In The Courtroom.” 56 UCLA L. Review 1124, 1156. 2012.
“In the nearly forty years since Title VII of the Civil Rights Act was enacted to combat discrimination in employment, we have seen a shift in the ways in which discrimination operates in the workplace. As traditional social norms permitting overt racism and segregation give way to a modern norm of egalitarianism, and as well-defined, hierarchical, bureaucratic structures delineating clear paths for advancement within institutions give way to a globalized workplace of flexible governance and movement between institutions, discrimination often operates in the workplace today less as a blanket policy or discrete, identifiable decision to exclude than as a perpetual tug on opportunity and advancement. It often takes form in a fluid process of social interaction, perception, evaluation, and disbursement of opportunity. It creeps into everyday impressions of worth and assignment of merit on the job, lurking constantly behind even the most honest belief in equality, perpetuating the very injustice that we decry.”
Source: Tristin K. Green. Discrimination in Workplace Dynamics: Toward a Structural Account of Disparate Treatment Theory 38 Harvard Civil Rights — Civil Liberties Law Review 91. 2003.
William Morris still REFUSES to hire and/or promote blacks to work as Agents in its URBAN MUSIC DIVISION!!
A couple days ago, Billboard reported:
William Morris Endeavor Entertainment bolsters its urban division substantially with the addition of agents Peter Schwartz and James Rubin, who have joined WME and will be based in the firm’s New York office. The both were formerly with The Agency Group.
About Schwartz and Rubin [I wonder if both are “Jewish”]:
Schwartz joins WME from The Agency Group, where he served as vice president and head of urban music, overseeing the department’s daily operations and booking nearly 25,000 shows and hundreds of tours domestically and internationally. He joined TAG in 1993 and was an integral part of the growth of the company. After graduating from Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Communication in 1990, Schwartz spent two years at the William Morris Agency as an Agent Trainee.
Joining WME from The Agency Group in London, Rubin headed up the International Division for Urban Touring and specialized in international markets. He joined The Agency Group in 2008 and grew his roster all the way from club tours to arena level artists. Rubin began his career in the industry as a hip hop/urban promoter in 2001, booking U.S. and U.K. artists across Australia, New Zealand, and Asia under his own Melting Pot Productions. He will continue to focus on the international marketplace for WME.
How many black music Agents exist in the United States at the major talent agencies? Why should managers and talent, especially black managers and talent, be required by law to give agencies 10 percent commission if the agencies won’t hire and/or promote blacks to Agent, Coordinator and Agent Trainee positions? Are we not capable of being able to locate and sign talent? That’s essentially what they are saying…
Source: Ray Waddell. “WME Lures Two from The Agency Group, Including Clients Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, A$AP Ferg.” Billboard. May 11, 2015. http://www.billboard.com/articles/business/6561248/william-morris-peter-schwartz-james-rubin-macklemore-ryan-lewis-run-the-jewels.
“‘The industry can’t keep saying that we’re trying,’ [Alex] Nogales [of the National Hispanic Media Coalition] says. ‘It’s all about the results. And the results have been very clear for years and years.'”
Source: Dennis Romero. “How Hollywood Keeps Minorities Out.” LA Weekly. February 25, 2015. http://www.laweekly.com/news/how-hollywood-keeps-minorities-out-5402815.
“The secret nature of arbitration is one of the reasons it is so appealing to corporations. Open court proceedings can expose corporate misconduct on the public record, keep their wrongdoing secret, and avoid emboldening other customers and workers to bring legal action. Further, secrecy exacerbates the problem of repeat player bias: without a public record, it is extremely difficult to prove that a specific firm is systemically biased in favor of corporations.”
Source: Alliance for Justice. “Arbitration Activism: How the Corporate Court Helps Business Evade Our Civil Justice System.” pg. 5. 2013.
“College graduates have survived both the recession and the ho-hum recovery far better than those without a degree, but blacks who finished four years of college are suffering from unemployment rates that are painfully high compared with their white counterparts. Among recent graduates aged 22 to 27, the jobless rates for blacks last year was 12.4 percent versus 4.9 percent for whites, said John Schmitt, a senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research.”
This is not news!!! Every so many years, the NYT writes an article like this while refusing to acknowledge the root of the problem! Thus, same shit, different decade…
Source: Patricia Cohen. “For Recent Black College Graduates, A Tougher Road to Employment.” New York Times. December 24, 2014. http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/12/25/business/for-recent-black-college-graduates-a-tougher-road-to-employment.html?_r=0.
TODAY marks a year from the day Arbitrator David L. Gregory of the American Arbitration Association issued his Partial Final Award, which concluded that “William Morris Endeavor Entertainment LLP discriminated against [me] in violation of pertinent federal, state, and local law prohibiting discrimination in employment on the basis of race” and indicated during phase two of our bifurcated proceeding, that I was entitled to the full gamut of monetary damages (e.g. back pay, front pay, compensatory & punitive damages, “reasonable fees and costs, as a pro se non-attorney prevailing party on statutory claims in a case of considerable procedural and substantive complexity,” etc.)
Although the American Arbitration Association knew they did not have jurisdiction to disqualify Arbitrator Gregory after he issued his final decision concerning on the issue of liability, they disqualified him anyway and never provided a reason. Thus, my victory was short-lived due to the fact that AAA conspired to deprive me of my constitutional right to due process and Republican appointed federal judge P. Kevin Castel of the Southern District of New York turned a blind eye to the overall fraud that was being perpetrated in my case at the hands of highly unethical Loeb & Loeb LLP attorneys Michael P. Zweig and Christian Carbone on William Morris’ behalf.
Me Against Iniquity: Understanding the Complexities of Global White Supremacy (Racism) Through The Eyes of an Unapologetically BLACK Intellectual 