Jefferson's Racist Legacy: Examining the Truth About Thomas Jefferson's Views on Race & Gender

1. Introduction I hope that our class will provide you with the ability to critically understand what is happening in the real world. To facilitate your ability to take what you learn in class and apply it to the real world, I have compiled a series of current newspaper articles. These newspaper articles pertain to topics that we discuss in class and are covered in the textbook. I hope that you can discover the relevancy of our class discussions through your reading of these newspaper articles. I will include questions from the newspaper articles on your exams to reward those who have attempted to broaden and deepen their education.

2. On Race & Gender

3. Jefferson just another racist? Historians recount recorded cruelties By MARY BISHOP Staff Writer CHARLOTTESVILLE-In his own hallowed Rotunda, as the University of Virginia clocks chimed away the hours, Thomas Jefferson's image wobbled Saturday on its pedestal. A solemn panel of people around the country who know him well pretty much judged him thus: Jefferson, though described in children's schoolbooks as the greatest American champion of liberty, was numb to the suffering of his own slaves. Acclaimed as a visionary scientist, Jefferson spread racist myths, such as the notion that black people's blood is darker than other people's and that black Africans may have had sex with orangutans. Despite Jefferson's anti-slavery writings, he was no leader on abolishing it and he freed only five of his 200 slaves even though other slaveholders liberated scores of theirs. He sought Virginia legislation to banish white women who had children with black men. But Jefferson, long said to have fathered children with a slave, did not expel black women who bore the children of white men. Late in his life, Jefferson was asked to handle the estate of a man who, upon his death, wanted Jefferson to educate the man s slaves, then free them. "What does Jefferson do? He refuses to be executor," Virginia Tech historian Paul Finkleman said at a UVa conference that might hake made the sage of Monticello flirt his wig. For three hours, experts on the third president itemized his blindnesses and cruelties regarding race and slavery. Arguments that he merely reflected the nation's racist roots fell limp as scholars snatched from memory many damning entries from Jefferson's letters and journals.

4. Lucia Stanton, research director at Jefferson's main home, Monticello, said that Jefferson tried to diminish slave whippings and that he made efforts to keep slave children with their parents. But, she said a slave ceased to be a child at age 12, and those children were often wrenched from home. The prolific writings of Jefferson show conclusively that "He thinks that blacks are inferior to whites." Finkelman said. Jefferson's words on race reveal "a kind of whiteness fraught with hatred," said Lee Quinby, an American studies scholar at Hobart and William Smith colleges. The day's academic footnotes faded out and the round upper room of the Rotunda fell quiet when Midlothian lawyer Robert H. Cooley III stood at a floor microphone and faced the scholars seated up front. The tall, distinguished-looking man said he is great-grandson of Jefferson and his mulatto slave, Sally Hemings. The professors had tiptoed around the long-simmering debate over Hemings during the morning seminars but Cooley brought it home. "It's not a story," he said firmly. "It's true." Afterward, Cooley said his family cares a lot more about letting people know about Hemings - "She was more than a mere maid" -than about defending her red-haired master. Cooley and other descendants of one of Hemings' sons, Thomas Woodson, have asked Monticello to make sure guides there tell the stories of Hemings and other black people, not just the aristocrats. Stanton said she's going to interview black people whose ancestors were at Monticello. Several speakers criticized Monticello in years past for euphemistically refer ring to slaves as "servants" to avoid embarrassing allusions to slavery. For years, historians have defended Jefferson on the Hemings story by saying there's no written proof of it. Saturday's panelists acknowledged that Jefferson was unlikely to confess in writing to any such unlawful miscegenation. Cooley pointed out that laws forbade slaves from learning to write, so it's unfair to expect written documentation from them from the slave years. They also were prohibited from testifying in court against their owners. Just by looking at the light skin of slaves and their heirs, '"any fool can see . . . the reality of miscegenation at Monticello," said Edward Ayers, a UVa history professor.

5. Historians admitted that their predecessors in the field shied away from Jefferson's unpleasant sides. They used to consider it unthinkable, for instance, that he would keep his children with Hemings in slavery. Civil rights leader Julian Bond, on Saturday's panel, said his own great-great-grandfather did so he has no trouble believing it. People often ask the hundreds of people in Cooley's family-two generals, several professors and a historian among them-what it s like to claim Thomas Jefferson as Great Grandpa. "It didn't mean anything us." Cooley said. "He kept us in slavery. He didn't do anything for us personally, but we appreciated his immortal words," he said, like those hailing "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Cooley said his family has no interest in being celebrities. "It doesn't mean anything to us." Cooley said, "to be a Jefferson kid." Roanoke Times

6. DNA Test Confirms Thomas Jefferson Fathered a Child With His Slave11.09 a.m. ET (1609 GMT) November 2, 1998AP Jefferson was the third president of the United States By Sara Olkon FN_ARTICLE CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — The descendants of one of Thomas Jefferson's slaves inherited an oral history that placed him at the top of their family tree. Now that scientists have confirmed genetic links to the nation's third president, the descendants say the debate is over. A study to be published Thursday in the journal Nature suggests that Jefferson fathered at least one child of Sally Hemings, a slave some 28 years his junior who worked on his Virginia estate. "It shows more of us are related than many of us believe," said Shay Banks-Young, a Columbus, Ohio, descendant of Hemings. "Just accept it — Jefferson fathered black children." Dr. Eugene Foster, a retired professor of pathology who organized the research, performed DNA tests on blood samples collected from Hemings' descendants and those of Jefferson. Foster found that the Y chromosome of a descendant of Hemings' youngest son, Eston, made a perfect match to Jefferson's. However, the analysis did not find a similar match between Jefferson and Hemings' first son, Thomas Woodson. Dr. Foster spoke in Charlottesville on Sunday The Y chromosome passes mostly unchanged from father to son, making it easier to track through generations than DNA from other chromosomes. Foster said the study isn't conclusive, but it's close. "I can't say it seals it," he said the case for Jefferson's paternity. "But it is very, very, very likely." Julie Westerinen, a descendant of Eston, said she never doubted her heritage.

7. "You can talk about it as much as you want, but scientific validity proves it," she said in a telephone interview from her home in New York City. "It is really great news." Woodson descendent John Q.T. King of Austin, Texas, said he was disappointed but remained convinced that Jefferson was Woodson's father. "As far as I'm concerned, we have extreme faith in the ... oral tradition," he said. "Thomas Woodson told his children that he was the son of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings." Jefferson, who became president in 1801, was accused a year later of being the father of several children born by Hemings, a slave at his Monticello estate. Scholars have been divided about the validity of the claim. Before the genetic study, the case for Jefferson's paternity rested on evidence of physical resemblances between Jefferson and several of Hemings' children, and the statement of one son, Madison, that his mother named Jefferson as the father of all her children. She had at least five. Daniel Jordan, president of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Committee, said the new findings will be evaluated by historians at Monticello. "We will follow the truth where it leads," he said Sunday. Fox News: http://www.foxnews.com/search/cgi-bin/search.cgi?query=%2bDNA+%22Thomas+Jefferson%22&days=0&wires=0&startwire=0

8. About Abraham Lincoln Abraham Lincoln, in an open letter to the New York Tribune, explaining his "official" position on slavery and winning the Civil War: "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it. If I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it: and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.... I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free." Roanoke Times, February 9, 1999

9. Amendment 2 tells a tale of two Alabamas (November, 2000) Commentary By ELAINE WITT BIRMINGHAM POST-HERALD Rick Allison thought he knew Walker County pretty well. On Tuesday, he won his second term as the north Alabama county's probate judge. And for years before that, he patrolled the county roads as a deputy sheriff. But Allison admits he was "shocked" Tuesday night when he found out his neighbors had widely rejected a constitutional amendment removing a ban on interracial marriages. The amendment passed statewide with 60 percent of the vote, and even if it had failed, the marriage ban has been unenforceable for years. In four years at the Walker County Courthouse, Allison, who is white, said he's married a number of mixed couples. He said he's never suspected Walker County harbored widespread sentiment against such unions. "I tell them they'll probably be faced with things a lot of marriages won't be faced with, but I've never seen any problems. That's why I was really shocked by that vote," Allison said Wednesday. A lot of people, and not just in Alabama, noticed that while 781,924 Alabamians voted to lift the ban, 526,154 voted against the change. Politicians such as state Rep. Alvin Holmes, D-Montgomery, and Attorney General Bill Pryor supported the amendment because they thought it was bad for our image, and bad for our morale, for Alabama to remain the only state to retain such a law. It is, indeed, a good thing that the voters approved Amendment 2. But how should we interpret the fact that we passed it by such a narrow margin? Generally, in our own ways. Allison noted that a significant minority of Alabamians — ranging from 30 percent to 47 percent — rejected every statewide amendment on the ballot. He heard some people say they planned to vote against them all. "I'm hoping that was part of the reason," he said. Natalie Davis, a pollster and political scientist at Birmingham-Southern College, said the county-by-county returns reveal that Alabama is, in fact, "two states."

10. “On one hand, we are a state that is rural, fundamentalist, less educated, and we cling to very traditional notions of God, country and family," said Davis, who is white. "Then there's another state which is urban and suburban, somewhat more educated, somewhat more affluent and somewhat more progressive in ideas about family. And when you look at those results, some of that kind of leaps out at you." Indeed, the amendment passed easily in urban counties such as Jefferson, Montgomery, Mobile and Madison, as well as in largely suburban Shelby County. The places where it was defeated tend to be rural. And most — like Cullman, St. Clair and Walker counties — are overwhelmingly white. But it also failed narrowly in some counties with significant black populations, including west Alabama's Pickens County, which is 43.5 percent black. For D'Linell Finley, a black University of Alabama political scientist who grew up in the Mississippi Delta, the returns called to mind racial and sexual fears that are seldom heard about these days. "I've always felt (those feelings) have gone under the ground rather than really going away," Finley said. "And it only takes a few challenges to the traditional ways of doing things to bring out the old prejudices." The notion of interracial marriage may call up the same mythologies and rage that contributed to a wave of lynchings of black men and boys in the early part of this century, Finley said. "There had always been this fear that black men wanted white women, so you had to take some drastic action to keep them apart," Finley said. Finley did agree with Davis that the result, for Alabama, is a kind of split personality. "It is somewhat alarming that you have such a high percentage of people who think a person should not have the right to marry whomever he or she chooses to marry," he said. "And we are a very modern, New South state that can attract Mercedes-Benz." Go figure.Elaine Witt's column runs Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday in the Birmingham Post-Herald.

11. Tuesday December 12 2:04 PM ETNumber of Black Officials Edges Up WASHINGTON (AP) - The number of blacks elected to federal, state, and local offices nationwide edged up slightly in 1999, according to a study by a research organization that focuses on the concerns of black Americans and other minorities. The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies on Tuesday released its 1999 count of black elected officials. The report showed a gain of 68 positions to a total 8,936 nationwide between January 1998 and January 1999. The modest increase did not elevate the percentage of black elected officials among all elected officials. That figure remains at 1.7 percent. The center has been tracking the number since 1970, when blacks held 1,469 elected positions nationwide. As in 1998, the largest increase - 153 offices - occurred among municipal posts. Black women accounted for the entire net increase because there were 73 more women elected and five fewer men. Black women now represent 33.5 percent of all black elected officials, according to the report. Membership in the Congressional Black Caucus (news - web sites) remains at 39. The report said the states with the most black elected officials were Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Illinois and Georgia. The center is a nonprofit institution that conducts research on public policy issues of special concern to black Americans and other minorities. On the Net: The Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies: http://www.jointcenter.org

12. Thursday April 8 12:10 AM ET Yahoo News: http://dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/ts/story.html?s=v/nm/19990408/ts/clinton_pay_2.html Clinton Seeks To Narrow Sex-Based Wage Gap WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Clinton, who for most of his political career has earned less money than his wife, backed legislation Wednesday aimed at narrowing the gap between men's and women's earnings. ``This is not just a woman's issue,'' Clinton said at a White House meeting with women who had fought wage discrimination. ``The women who are discriminated against often are in families raising children with husbands who are also hurt if their wives work hard and don't have the benefits of equal pay,'' he said. ``A lot of the women who are single mothers who are out there working, they have boy children as well as girl children.'' The meeting at the White House was held in conjunction with national Equal Pay Day, which is Thursday. Clinton used the event to highlight a continuing wage gap in which American women, on average, earn 75 cents for every dollar a man earns. The president endorsed a new provision in an equal pay bill backed by Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle that would require the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to improve the data it receives on employee pay. Clinton said the provision would ask the EEOC to issue a new rule within 18 months to gather, ``in the most effective and efficient way possible, pay data from companies based on race, sex and national origin of employees.'' The information would be used to enforce federal wage discrimination laws more effectively. Daschle's bill, the Paycheck Fairness Act, aims at redressing a gap between men's and women's income. Last June, a White House study found that women earned on average 75 cents for every dollar men earned, with differences remaining even among workers with similar experience and skills. The gap has narrowed from 58 cents in 1963, when President John Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act. First lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, also participating in the event, recalled that until her husband became president she earned more money as a lawyer than he did as a politician. ``The wage gap went the other direction in our family. But since I've been a full-time volunteer now for the past six and a half years, the gap is narrowing even in the Clinton family,'' she said. Clinton responded that he and Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, whose corporate executive wife, Ruth, had worked for the Clinton administration, were in a similar situation. ``We decided that maybe we should become part of a small but vocal radical caucus, saying we shouldn't stop at equal pay, we like it when our wives make more money than we do,'' said Clinton.

13. Tech lacks diversity FROM STAFF REPORTS An NCAA committee has found fault with the Virginia Tech athletic department's minority hiring practices. The school renounced Thursday that the NCAA Committee on Athletics Certification has only conditionally certified the Tech athletic department. The hitch is that Tech must submit a plan for "addressing minority opportunities [for student-athletes end staff] in its athletics programs, according to a Tech press release. All Division I schools must be certified by the NCAA. Tech must submit by June 15 a plan to "enhance diversity within its athletic programs." The plan will include written policies for diversity; goals dealing with minority-graduation rates; and minority hiring goals. Roanoke Time, November 20, 1998

14. Racial health gap persists · ATLANTA - Decades after the civil rights movement forced America to confront racial inequities, disturbing disparities remain on one of the most basic human levels: Blacks get sick easier, stay sick longer and die sooner than whites. From day one, a black baby's life expectancy is six and a half years shorter than a white baby's. Blacks are more likely to be born too little and less likely to survive their first year. Other racial minorities also face disparities - Vietnamese women have five times as much cervical cancer, and American Indians have twice as much diabetes as whites. But among African Americans, the gap cuts across nearly every major disease. "We have been-and remain -two nations: one majority, one minority-separated by the quality of our health," said Secretary Donna Shalala, whose Department of Health and Human Services has launched a $400 million program to attack the problem. Roanoke Times, November 27, 1998

15. Rate of loans to minorities slows Blacks get mortgages but at high price, survey says Recent increases in loan denials are because more people are applying for mortgages, including many who are not creditworthy, a spokesman said. ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON-Fairness in home mortgage lending to blacks and Hispanics has improved in recent years, but a survey indicates that much of the new lending to blacks appears to come from loans with higher interest rates. Officials of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, in releasing the study Tuesday, said they were concerned that after a few years of progress starting in 1994, the gap between minorities and whites being denied home mortgages widened again in 1996-97. "We see some disturbing things happening along racial lines," John Taylor, the group's president and chief executive officer, told reporters. The study was based on data submitted to' the federal government by banks, thrifts and mortgage companies. It is consistent with a government survey issued last summer showing that financial institutions are turning down blacks, Hispanics and American Indians for home mortgage loans more often than whites, no matter what their income. Despite government programs aimed at helping minorities become homeowners, growth in mortgage lending to those groups slowed markedly last year, according to the government's annual survey. The banking industry maintains that lenders continue to seek qualified borrowers in minority communities. "Lenders have made a very consistent push in serving minorities," said Judith Knight, director of the American Bankers Association's Center for Community Development. The recent increases in loan denial rates are likely due to a wider range of people applying for mortgages, including many who are not creditworthy, she suggested. Roanoke Times, November 25, 1998

16. Black farmers discuss discrimination settlement WASHINGTON - Attorneys for black farmers suing the Agriculture Department for discrimination are meeting with plaintiffs around the country to gauge support for a settlement deal of at least $125 million. About 300 farmers attended a meeting Friday in Durham, N.C., participants told The Associated Press. Attorneys also met with plaintiffs this week in Selma, Ala., and Pine Bluff, Ark. Attorneys are assessing support for a settlement that would give each of the 1,000 plaintiffs about $50,000 as well as resolve any outstanding debt with the government. The average plaintiff's debt is estimated at $75,000 l to $100,000. The lawsuit-claiming discrimination through denial of farm loans, crop subsidies and other benefits - was filed last year, shortly after the Agriculture Department admitted its own process of resolving discrimination complaints had been in disarray. Roanoke Times, November 21, 1998

17. 'He or she who pays the bills calls the tune,' says NAACP official Racial gap in political contributions could limit access to representatives Whites outgave blacks at a 33-to-1 ratio, a study showed. Analysts said the disparity could hurt blacks when it comes time to write new laws. ASSOCIATED PRESS RICHMOND-Political contributions from Virginia's white neighborhoods greatly outpace those from the state's black neighborhoods, an imbalance that could limit black residents' access to their governmental representatives, according to a report published Sunday. The Richmond Times-Dispatch's analysis of campaign contributions in the state's 1997 elections showed an overwhelming amount of the money came from ZIP codes populated mostly by white people- more than can be accounted by demographic and economic differences in the populations. The analysis did not count the money contributed by businesses. ZIP codes where three-fourths of the residents are white gave $17.4 million compared with a total of $517,414 in ZIP codes where three-fourths of the residents are black, the analysis showed. That's a 33-to-1 ratio. When among a wider group of ZIP codes, the differences are dramatic. In ZIP codes where more than half of the residents are minorities, contributors gave just over $1 million. In ZIP codes where more than half of the residents are white, contributors gave nearly $21 million. "That is phenomenal," said John Moeser, professor of urban studies at Virginia Commonwealth University. "ln terms of financing campaigns, this is still a process that's heavily biased to the white community." That matters because blacks "have less access, pure and simple," Moeser said. "If you have a population that simply cannot generate that kind of buying power, it means there are some real racial differences in terms of effective representation in the political process." Analysts said the disparity could hurt blacks when it comes time to write new laws.

18. "He or she who pays the bills calls the tune," said Salim Khalfani, director of the Virginia State Conference NAACP. Sheer numbers explain part of the difference: Black Virginians, like blacks nationwide, tend to live in poorer urban areas and have lower per capita incomes. "When [African-Americans] look at their disposable income, then you're not going to see exorbitant spending," Khalfani said. But part of the problem is cultural, said Del. Jerrauld Jones, D-Norfolk and chairman of the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus. Many African-Americans lack a historical participation in the political process and thus don't think to contribute to a particular candidate, Jones said. Larry Sabato, a University of Virginia political analyst, has studied the race factor in political contributions, looking at individuals who give tens of thousands of dollars each in federal elections. He said a greater percentage of wealthy white Virginians inherited their money and are more inclined to part with it. "The wealthy class among Afro-Americans . . . [have] had to earn it the hard way. I think that will change over time," Sabato said. One black legislator had another take: He said blacks may give less because their less affluent neighborhoods just aren't asked to contribute. The Roanoke Times, Monday, Dec. 14, 1998

19. Pizza Hut Settles Hate Crime Suit By MARTHA IRVINEAP Business Writer CHICAGO (AP) -- Pizza Hut of America Inc. has settled a lawsuit with racial overtones less than six months after a precedent-setting court ruling that said corporations can be held liable if their employees commit hate crimes. The lawsuit was filed by members of a black family who said they were harassed and threatened by white employees at a Pizza Hut near St. Louis. ``You can hate someone privately and it's your own business,'' Mary Ann Burton said Tuesday, the same day Pizza Hut was to pay an undisclosed sum to her family. ``When you hate someone publicly, it becomes everyone's business.'' Pizza Hut officials admitted to no wrongdoing. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of 16 Burton family members who had gathered for a dinner during the Fourth of July weekend in 1995 in Godfrey, Ill., a predominately white town about 20 miles north of St. Louis. The family members said they phoned in an order for six pizzas about an hour before closing time and were told they could eat at the restaurant. After being met with racial slurs, they said they were not provided plates or utensils and were told that no drinks could be ordered because the beverage machine had been turned off -- though white customers had received drinks minutes before the request. Employees also ran the sweeper near their table, blasted the jukebox and turned the lights on and off, the lawsuit said. Family members said they felt particularly threatened when employees allegedly followed them into the parking lot with one of them slapping a mop handle into his hand. In a statement, Pizza Hut said it trains its employees to treat customers and employees fairly and does not tolerate harassment. ``We concluded there was absolutely no racial or discriminatory behavior involved, but our employees should have provided better customer service,'' the statement said, calling the matter an ``isolated incident.'' In July, U.S. District Judge William Hart refused to dismiss the case. Hart said the Pizza Hut employees' actions appeared to be racially motivated, and rejected Pizza Hut's contention that the state's hate crimes law applies only to individuals. One legal expert said the case could have widespread effects. ``This potentially has a lot of applications because a lot of people do their hating at work,'' said Saul Levmore, a law professor at the University of Chicago. Wednesday December 30, 2:05 am Eastern Time Yahoo news:http://biz.yahoo.com/apf/981230/pizza_hut__1.html

20. Study Says America's Poor Have Unfair Cancer Burden WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Blacks, Hispanics and other minority groups -- including white people who are poor -- bear the highest burden of cancer in the United States, said a report issued on Wednesday. The National Institutes of Health (NIH), the government- funded medical research agency, should do more to understand why, said the report by the National Research Council's Institute of Medicine. ``With the population becoming increasingly diverse, it is critical that we learn why some ethnic minorities and the medically underserved are more prone to cancer and less likely to survive it,'' the report said. ``This information will benefit all Americans and help the medical community craft prevention strategies that work.'' The report compiles data from many studies on who gets cancer, which kills one in four Americans. For instance, black men are more prone to prostate cancer, Asian-Americans are more likely to develop stomach and liver cancer and rates of cervical cancer are high among women of Hispanic and Vietnamese descent. Native Americans are less likely to survive cancer than anyone else in the country. The report says some people in these groups may go to doctors later, so their cancer is diagnosed at a later, and less treatable, stage. But these groups also are more likely to develop cancer in the first place. ``African-American males, for example, develop cancer 15 percent more frequently than white males,'' the report reads. Race is not always a factor. ``In Appalachian Kentucky, for example, a region characterized by high rates of poverty, the incidence of lung cancer among white males was 127 per 100,000 in 1992, a rate higher than for any ethnic minority group in the United States during the same period,'' it said. The NIH has an ``impressive array'' of research projects, the committee found, but no one to coordinate them. It also found that while the right number of minorities are included in treatment trials, too few are included in studies looking at ways to prevent cancer. The committee said the National Cancer Institute, one of the National Institutes of Health, spends only one percent of its budget on studies of ethic groups and other people who have less access to health care than normal. It recommends that the NCI and NIH do more research into groups with a special risk of cancer and sponsor more research in variations in cancer rates. Many experts say diet, exercise and other lifestyle choices play a big role in the development of cancer. But, the report says, not enough research has been done to tell if these factors can account for the differing rates of cancer across the population. Yahoo News: http://dailynews.yahoo.com/headlines/ts/story.html?s=v/nm/19990120/ts/cancer_1.html

21. Study Treats Skin-Tone StereotypesWed Apr 24, 6:53 PM ETBy GREG SUKIENNIK, Associated Press Writer BOSTON (AP) - A new study suggests whites and blacks hold similar perceptions of black people based on their skin tone. Light-skinned blacks were more likely to be described as intelligent, attractive or wealthy, while dark-skinned blacks were more apt to be described as poor, criminal or tough and aggressive, according to the study led by Tufts University psychology professor Keith Maddox. The study, funded by the National Science Foundation (news - web sites), asked 150 college students — both blacks and whites — about cultural stereotypes involving the skin tone of blacks. Maddox decided to measure stereotypes rather than focus on participants' individual prejudices and said researchers got more honest answers that way. "What happens is that a lot of attention gets focused on racism — and rightly so — between black and white people," Brown said. "When we start talking about the dynamics and issues of race we don't think about the nuances that might be evident such as skin tone bias." In the first part of the study, participants were shown pictures of light- and dark-skinned blacks, along with neutral statements. The subjects were then asked to match the faces and the statements. Researchers wanted to see if the subjects categorized the pictures and statements by skin tone. In the second part, the students were asked to report their knowledge of cultural stereotypes — good, bad and indifferent — of light- and dark-skinned blacks. Among black males, 55 percent listed "poor" as a characteristic of dark-skinned blacks; 27.5 percent listed it for light-skinned blacks. Among white males, 45.2 percent used "poor" for dark-skinned blacks, compared with 28.6 percent for light-skinned blacks. The differences in that category were even more dramatic for women. Among black women, 67.5 percent listed "poor" for dark-skinned blacks, as opposed to 20 percent for light-skinned blacks. For white women, 50 percent associated "poor" with dark-skinned blacks and 14.3 percent for light-skinned blacks. The study breaks new ground because it addresses skin tone bias among whites, said Kendrick Brown, a psychology professor at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn., who is researching the same topic. "(Maddox) showed that there are stereotypical images used by both black and white Americans based on skin tone," Brown said. "He showed (skin-tone) bias in this country is not exclusive to the black community, and that, I think, is very important."

22. Thursday, April 08, 1999 Despite recruiting, fewer blacks enrollStudy shows Va. Tech as ivory tower more than ever The report also said women are making gains at the state's largest university, but very slowly. By IAN ZACKTHE ROANOKE TIMES BLACKSBURG -- Black undergraduate enrollment at Virginia Tech has been shrinking, according to an internal report that one university official called "really troubling." The report, "Women and Minorities at Virginia Tech," was commissioned by Tech President Paul Torgersen last spring as part of a response to a series of racially tinged incidents at the state's largest university. It shows that Tech's undergraduate black enrollment, already very low among Virginia's public colleges, dipped from 5.1 percent in 1993 to 4.2 percent in 1997, with declines each year. Blacks make up about 20 percent of the state's population. "I find that very disturbing," said Patricia B. Hyer, Tech's associate provost for academic administration and the report's primary author. "It's very problematic for us." The report also shows that women are making slow progress in joining Tech's faculty ranks, while the percentage of minority professors has remained small compared with the university's peers nationally. Tech officials have some guesses but no proof of what has caused the decline in black undergraduates at the university, whose student body numbers about 25,600. They said black students might feel more welcome at urban campuses and might have unfavorable notions about the racial climate in Western Virginia. Officials also said some of the key disciplines for which Tech is known -- engineering and agriculture, for instance -- historically have attracted fewer black students. Tech's black enrollment, including graduate students, is about 4.5 percent, the lowest among Virginia's six doctoral colleges and universities. The University of Virginia, which ranks third, has a black enrollment of 8.6 percent. Tech officials said the rates dropped despite recruiting efforts in the early 1990s. In 1991, for instance, Tech offered admission to 1,800 of the 3,000 black students who applied, but only 236 blacks enrolled, a number considered a painfully low "yield" in admissions circles. Yield rates for black applicants continue to fall well below those of white applicants to Tech. "Everybody is scratching their heads," Tech spokesman Larry Hincker said. "You recruit. You offer admissions. How do you get African-Americans to come to Virginia Tech?"

23. Jamaa Bickley-King, a 22-year-old black senior from Richmond, called the black enrollment situation "pretty bad. We're going down." He said the university made a greater effort at recruiting black students in the 1980s. But he acknowledged black students also might tend to favor schools closer to cities. "The majority of [black] people are coming from urban environments," said Bickley-King, chairman of the Black Organizations Council at Tech. "They come here and get rural shock." The Tech report comes as affirmative action in college admissions is under attack nationally. Many Virginia schools, including Tech, use race as one of the factors in admissions. In January, however, a study by the Washington-based Center for Equal Opportunity said some Virginia schools unfairly favored blacks over white applicants with equal academic credentials. Several weeks later, the UVa Board of Visitors asked a committee to examine whether that university was violating the law with its affirmative action policy. Benjamin Dixon, Tech's vice president for multicultural affairs, said the decline in black students at Tech should be a concern for practical reasons, regardless of the political climate. Employers, he said, increasingly are interested in more than just the skills of new recruits. "One of the realities is folks are going to be looking for entry-level people who have competencies and experience working in diverse environments," said Dixon, whose position Torgersen created as part of his response to racial incidents at Tech in the fall of 1997. Not everyone at Tech shares that view. Henry Bauer, a professor in Tech's Center for Interdisciplinary Studies and a former dean of the university's College of Arts and Sciences, said the university "has been pulling out all stops to attract black students." "Those who don't come just don't want to," said Bauer, a member of the Virginia Association of Scholars, which opposes affirmative action. "If they choose not to, maybe they have good reasons for it, quite separate from anything about Tech. Maybe they do prefer Princeton, for example, or ... UVa. If the latter is the case, we should raise our academic standards to attract them." The report also looked at the hiring of both faculty and staff at Tech. It found that women are slowly entering the professorial ranks. From 1993 to 1997, the percentage of women among tenured or tenure-tracked professors at Tech rose from 15.7 percent to 18.4 percent. But the latest comparison of Tech to a group of 25 peer institutions nationwide (from 1995) placed the university 23rd in percentage of women tenured or tenure-tracked faculty. With a faculty that is 8.5 percent minority, Tech ranked 24th out of 25 in its peer group chosen by the State Council of Higher Education. Tech had the smallest percentage (2.3 percent) of black tenure tracked professors among the six Virginia doctoral institutions and the second lowest percentage of minority professors at 8.5 percent, the report said. In the five years the report covered, the percentage of Asian faculty increased from 4.7 percent to 5.8 percent, while the percentage of black faculty did not increase.

24. "I think we have a long way to go in diversifying the faculty," said Hyer, the associate provost. Among hourly employees, the report found 95 percent were white, which roughly equals the racial composition in surrounding Montgomery County. The small number of minority employees at Tech were more likely to be pushing a broom than punching a computer keyboard. The report found 35 percent of minority hourly employees worked in service and maintenance jobs. Among all job categories, including executive and managerial, clerical and technical, the percentage of minorities increased significantly in the five-year period only in the service/maintenance category. Not all of the findings in the report were negative, officials said. The retention rate for black students improved over a seven-year period in the 1990s. And the percentage of women administrators also went up, from 26 percent to 37 percent. The report did not contain any suggestions for how to address its findings. Tech officials are awaiting the results of a campus climate survey in the coming weeks. They plan by the end of the year to create a long-range plan for improving diversity on the Blacksburg campus, they said. "A lot of what needs to be done is not about granting privilege," Hyer said. But she added, "I don't believe we can continue to underserve Virginia's population in this way. We are a land-grant university. If we're ignoring a large proportion of that population, we're not doing our job." Roanoke Times:http://www.roanoke.com/roatimes/news/story55010.html

25. Wednesday November 15 10:05 AM ETU.S. Women Still Earn Less, More Likely to Be Poor WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Women still earn less than men for doing the same work around the United States, although the wage gap ranges from 27 cents on the dollar in Wyoming to 14 cents in the nation's capital, a report showed Wednesday. On average, women now earn 74 cents for each dollar men make, up from 60 cents two decades ago. The nonprofit Institute for Women's Policy Research issued a report on the status of women across the United States, concluding that most states got ``Cs'' on the report card which it has put out every second year since 1996. ``American women are on a slow and uneven road to equality,'' said Dr. Heidi Hartmann, who heads the nonpartisan research group, which also measured women's status in terms of poverty, health care, political representation and educational level. Nowhere in the United States do women get equal pay with men, according to the report. The wage gap varies greatly across the country, it said. Women make 84 cents for every dollar men earn in Hawaii, and 80 cents in Maryland. At the other end of the scale, women in Louisiana and Utah get 65 cents, an increase of just five cents from the national average 20 years ago. The report noted that the narrowing of the wage gap in recent years reflected a rise in women's earnings as well as a decline in men's real earnings. In only nine states did the wage gap between women and men narrow because the growth in women's earnings outpaced the growth in men's real earnings. The highest annual earnings for working women -- over $30,000 -- were reported in the District, Connecticut, Alaska and Maryland, while women's earnings were lowest in West Virginia and North Dakota -- coming in under $20,000. State-To-State Differences Hartmann said the gaping differences from state to state underscored the importance of public policy. ``Sometimes you can walk across a state line to go from good to bad. New Jersey ranks among the top four states in protecting reproductive rights; drive across the bridge and you're in Pennsylvania, one of the 11 worst states. And women's median income plunges when you step across the state line from Maryland to West Virginia,'' she said. The report noted that women remained ``vastly underrepresented in the political system in every state.''

26. Three additional women senators and two new female governors were elected this month, but still, only 12 percent of the U.S. Senate, 5 of 50 governors, and about 22 percent of state legislators are women. In three states -- California, Kansas and Maine -- women have been elected to both Senate seats, but six states have never sent even one woman to Congress: Alaska, Delaware, Iowa, Mississippi, New Hampshire and Vermont, the report noted. ``Women are making progress toward political equality, but at the current rate of change it will take over a century to complete their journey,'' said Dr. Amy Caiazza, the report's editor. Women's health also varied greatly from state to state, the report found, noting that lung cancer affected women three times as much in Nevada as in its neighboring state of Utah, which has the lowest U.S. lung cancer death rate. Women also still had high rates of poverty -- 50 percent higher than men's -- and the hardest hit women were single mothers, Hartmann said. ``More than four out of 10 single-mother families are struggling to survive below the poverty line. These women have largely been left out of the economic boom,'' she said. Poverty among women varies greatly among the states, with poverty rates highest in New Mexico, the District of Columbia, Mississippi, Louisiana, West Virginia, Arkansas and New York. Poverty was lowest in Wisconsin, Maryland, Utah, Alaska, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Indiana, Delaware and Minnesota.

27. Wednesday May 3 4:18 AM ETBlack Secret Service Agents to File Class Action Suit WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Black Secret Service agents who helped protect the president and vice president said they will file a class action lawsuit in federal court on Wednesday charging the agency with over 25 years of job discrimination. The suit -- charging a pervasive atmosphere of racial harassment and retaliation against those who dared challenge the status quo -- will seek compensation for the agents; an injunction barring the Secret Service from continuing illegal discriminatory practices; and an order requiring it to reform its employment policies and practices. Seven of the 10 named agents bringing the suit will discuss their charges at a press conference in Washington on Wednesday morning, immediately after their suit is filed with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The suit accuses the agency of ``maintaining a severe and pervasive atmosphere of racial harassment and intimidation toward African Americans within the Secret Service,'' lawyers representing the agents said in a statement. Filing of the lawsuit follows a complaint filed by the agents in February with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, where an administrative judge agreed the complaint constituted a class action, paving the way for the suit to be filed in federal court. ``The African American special agents refrained from filing suit until this time because the Secret Service continually offered assurances that their grievances would be addressed,'' said John Relman, co-lead counsel for the agents. ``When they were not, the agents reluctantly came to the conclusion that this lawsuit was the only way the Secret Service would reform its employment practices.'' The suit alleges that the Secret Service discriminated against black agents in hiring, promotions, performance evaluations, transfers, assignments and other career-enhancing opportunities, testing, and awards and bonuses. In addition, the complaint charges that the Secret Service retaliated against black agents for reporting discrimination. Shaffer cited documentation showing that black agents ``had repeatedly raised the issue of systematic discrimination within the Secret Service, with several directors of the Secret Service and their staff since at least March 26, 1974.'' A similar lawsuit was settled by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms for $5.9 million in 1996. In their EEOC complaint, the agents said while the promotion system had numerical rankings, it was subjective and had been implemented through a ``good old boy network'' in which white special agents with relatives or friends in the Secret Service advanced quickly through the ranks. Another of the agents, Yvette Summerour, said earlier this year that there has never been a black woman manager in the Secret Service since it was established in 1865. Summerour has helped protect President Clinton, his wife Hillary and daughter Chelsea. The U.S. government in March paid $508 million to settle a gender discrimination lawsuit filed by 1,100 women 23 years ago, the largest job discrimination award in the history of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

28. Monday April 30 1:43 PM ETJudge Approves FBI Racial Discrimination Deal WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A federal judge on Monday approved a settlement between the FBI and African-American agents who accused the agency of racial discrimination in a suit that was initially filed in 1991. U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan said the settlement, which would establish new promotion, job evaluation and discipline procedures within the Federal Bureau of Investigation, will proceed over the objection of one plaintiff. ``It seems to me that the one remaining claim ... does not overcome the validity of the settlement,'' Hogan said from the bench. The settlement was approved by more than 500 past and present black FBI agents who have worked for the agency since March 1991. Under the agreement, the FBI would be required to establish a new selection process for promotions by 2004. Until the new criteria are approved, a neutral mediator appointed by the agents and the FBI will review claims. In their suit, black FBI agents had argued that promotions to supervisory roles were handed out based on personal relationships and not on a fair, objective process. Andrea Gacki, trial attorney for the government, told the judge that the government pursued a settlement ``to avoid the expense of litigation and drain of resources that would have resulted had we gone to litigation.'' An attorney for the plaintiffs, David Shaffer, said the neutral third party review was the first time a major law enforcement agency has allowed an independent decision maker to be involved in its policy. Agents who prevail in the claims process could be given lost wages and up to $300,000 in compensatory damages. The suit was originally filed in 1991. The FBI agreed in 1993 to reform its personnel practices within 5 years, but missed the 1998 deadline. The suit was later reinstated by the plaintiffs in 1999. Shaffer also represents more than 250 black Secret Service agents who say officials had permitted a system laced with racism and discrimination.