Posts Tagged ‘discrimination’
Dirty Lender Charged Latinos More for Loans
1:06 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · business|California|Controversia|crime|Money|race · Comments Off
11 May 2009
With all of the corruption and dirtiness and in finance-related industries of late, it should perhaps come as no surprise that beyond just “legally” taking advantage of unsavvy consumers by lending them money they could never pay back, at least one of these institutions made it a policy to charge Latinos more for borrowed money. A federal investigation has been opened on California lender Golden Empire Mortgage, Inc., of Bakersfield, which allegedly cannot explain the drastic differences in prices between white customers and Latinos. ConsumerAffairs.com reports:
According to the FTC’s complaint, Golden Empire violated the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) in pricing mortgage loans. They allegedly gave loan officers and branch managers wide discretion to charge, in addition to the risk-based price, “overages” through higher interest rates and higher up-front charges. The defendants allegedly paid loan officers a percentage of the overages as a commission and failed to monitor whether Hispanic consumers were paying higher overages than non-Hispanic white borrowers.
The complaint alleged that the company’s policy and practice of allowing loan officers to charge discretionary overages resulted in Hispanics being charged higher prices because of their national origin – price disparities that are “substantial, statistically significant, and cannot be explained by factors related to underwriting risk or credit characteristics of the applicants.”
I don’t know why I am surprised by this. It seems that when it comes to the finance sector, the news just gets more and appalling as the days go by. Is it any wonder why we are in the situation we are in now, with so many dirty banks in control of our money and our homes?
Via / ConsumerAffairs
Long Hair, Religion and Rules Clash at Texas School
10:28 am By Maegan La Mala · children|Controversia|society|Texas · Comments Off
16 Jul 2008
5- year old Adriel Arocha shouldn’t be at the center of a firestorm right now. He should be in school learning alongside his classmates in his hometown on the outskirts of Houston, Texas. But a controversy around his physical appearance is holding him back:
Michelle Betenbaugh says her 5-year-old son, Adriel Arocha, wears his hair long because of religious beliefs tied to his Native American heritage.But the leaders of the Needville school district have strict rules about long hair on boys and don’t see any reason to make an exception in his case.
The dispute illustrates a problem American schools have faced for decades: how to balance individual student rights against rules designed to maintain order and discipline in the classroom.
The case also shows that some rural Texas school districts often have stricter grooming codes that reflect the traditional or old-fashioned values of small-town America when compared to those in big-city school districts such as Houston’s.
Colombian School Principal : No Pal to Two Lesbian Students
8:00 am By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Colombia|GLBT|youth · Comments Off
28 Apr 2008The following video and story via / Blabbeando horrified me. It shows Colombian high schoolers returning to school after a court decided that the two teenage girls were wrongly expelled for being lesbians. When the girls went back to register, they were greeted with other students screaming, “We don’t want them.” One student in the video clip said that she supported the principal’s original decision because now everyone thinks that the school is full of lesbians. The principal maintains that they were expelled for disciplinary reasons not because they were lesbians and that her autonomy was violated.
Who is really getting their rights violated here? See the video after the jump.
Judge says “no” to housing discrimination in Texas
5:38 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Immigration|Justice|Texas · Comments Off
23 May 2007
We’ve written a couple of times about Farmers Branch, Texas, and the quest of some there to make discrimination against undocumented immigrants city policy. In addition to attempts to make English the “official” language of the city, legislation was proposed which would impede landlords from renting to the undocumented. Voters in the town supported discriminatory law, pushing it to approval with 68 percent voting in favor, but at the urging of MALDEF and attorneys for landloards, a federal judge said “no”:
U.S. District Judge Sam A. Lindsay wrote in granting a temporary restraining order that only the federal government can determine whether a person is in the United States legally.
Immigrant denied marriage license in PA
1:29 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Controversia|Immigration|Justice · 8 Comments
19 Apr 2007
West Hazleton, Pennsylvania has denied a marriage license to an undocumented immigrant who was looking to wed his partner, an American national this week. The ACLU has filed a federal suit on behalf of the couple, stating in a press release:
“This marriage is legal under the law of Pennsylvania and the federal immigration laws,” said Mary Catherine Roper, a staff attorney for the ACLU of Pennsylvania. “The Register of Wills is supposed to issue marriage licenses according to Pennsylvania’s marriage law, not to challenge that law or federal immigration law. Ms. Stankovic has no authority to interfere in people’s lives this way.”
The abovementioned “Ms. Stankovic” (love the name) is the county’s Register of Wills who denied the couple the license.
Tall and pale = more money on the job
5:20 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Immigration|Labor|race · 1 Comment
31 Jan 2007
If you are an immigrant who’s tall or light-skinned, you’re likely to make more money than your shorter, darker-skinned counterpart, according to research by a professor at Vanderbilt University:
Joni Hersch, a law and economics professor at Vanderbilt University, looked at a government survey of 2,084 legal immigrants to the United States from around the world and found that those with the lightest skin earned an average of 8 percent to 15 percent more than similar immigrants with much darker skin.“On average, being one shade lighter has about the same effect as having an additional year of education,” Hersch said.
MLK’s message still alive, but are we listening?
1:16 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Activism|history|Immigration|Justice|race · Comments Off
15 Jan 2007
Yesterday, hundreds of people got together in south Mississippi to remember the life of Dr. Martin Luther King and his message of equality. An event organizer was quoted as saying:
“Even though we’re doing better now than we were in the sixties, there are still some things we need to be concerned about and trying to push in terms of getting equal rights for everybody. The Latinos are moving in now, and they need someone to bat for them,” says James Crowell, the Celebration Chairman.
It’s refreshing to hear that when speaking about King’s vision, people are willing to apply it to present-day discrimination, particularly as it relates to the plight of Latino immigrants in this country.
Indeed, King’s widow, Coretta, saw her husband’s vision as going beyond the lines of race to apply themselves to all victims of discrimination:
“I still hear people say that I should not be talking about the rights of lesbian and gay people…. But I hasten to remind them that Martin Luther King Jr. said, ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.’ I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream to make room at the table of brotherhood and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people.”
More towns jump on discrimination bandwagon
1:01 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · Controversia|Immigration|language|Texas · 6 Comments
13 Nov 2006
Lately, we’ve been telling you about towns across the country who are writing discrimination against undocumented immigrants into their local laws. Farmer’s Branch, Texas (a suburb of Dallas) just jumped on that bandwagon by proposing an ordinance to ban “illegal” immigrants from the town by making English the official language, among other measures:
A councilman has given city attorneys drafts of an ordinance that would make English the city’s official language and proposals to fine companies and landlords who do business with illegal immigrants.
ACLU sues city for discriminatory housing policies
1:46 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · California|Controversia|Immigration · Comments Off
6 Nov 2006
Following in the footsteps of other towns across the country, Escondido, California has decided to write discrimination into its laws by forbidding landlords to rent to undocumented immigrants. But our friends at the ACLU and a coalition of immigrants rights groups are striking back:
Saying the law is “riddled with constitutional flaws” and is discriminatory and “reprehensible,” a coalition of civil rights groups has filed a federal lawsuit seeking to void an Escondido ordinance that forbids landlords from renting to illegal immigrants.The suit was filed yesterday on behalf of two Escondido landlords and two illegal immigrants who live in the city and whose children are U.S. citizens who attend local schools.
According to the San Diego Union Tribune, the decision to move forward with the lawsuit was announced last week via press conference, while the Minutemen held an “unrelated” press conference at the Escondido city hall, “interrupted by a minor scuffle”.
Be pretty, be fit, have light skin…or else
12:21 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · GLBT|Labor|mexico|race|society|Women · 5 Comments
24 Oct 2006
As striking as it may be to anyone who hasn’t lived in Latin America, discrimination based on skin color, race, height, weight, gender and sexual orientation is the order of the day when it comes to looking for a job in some countries. In most Latin American countries (and in Spain) a photograph is required when submitting a resume for a job.
In Mexico, not only are employers looking at photos to make the typical judgement of “she’s probably going to have kids soon, no use to us” — which is bad enough — but they are also using carefully crafted job postings to make sure they weed out “undesirables”. The best part? “Diversity-friendly” American companies in Mexico are doing it too:
When Michigan-based automotive supplier Lear Corp. needed a secretary for its office in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato, it placed a classified ad seeking a “female … aged 20 to 28 … preferably single … with excellent presentation.”And to ensure that it got the right candidate, Lear asked applicants to include a recent photo with their resumes.
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