The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) recently announced it would reinstate race-conscious goals for federally-funded transportation contracts in California.
The Coalition for Economic Equity (CEE) has been a moving force behind efforts to maintain race-conscious goals for all federal projects. CEE aggressively pursued both the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and Caltrans to clear the bureaucratic red-tape that was blocking re-instatement of Caltrans' Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) Goal and Methodology program.
The Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity focuses its research and scholarship on race, ethnicity and social justice. The central goals of the Institute include reframing the way that we talk about, think about and act on race and ethnicity, and deepening understanding of the causes and consequences of and solutions to racial and ethnic hierarchy and disparity so that we can envision and realize a society that is fair and just for all people. We believe that affirmative action programs provide important tools for realizing that society.
Federal transportation policies are not easy to organize around. For over half a century, a growth machine has dominated federal highway policies, cemented (so to speak) by jobs, campaign contributions, and advance knowledge of highway locations. Swimming in a murky alphabet soup of acronyms (ISTEA, SAFETEA-LU, STP, CMAQ, MPO, etc.) federal transportation policies have often been invisible, and unaccountable, to the citizens.
Blacks and women continue to lag in construction jobs despite the increase in transportation funds spent on roads, bridges and mass transit and the national building boom, according to a Saint Louis University study out today.
Hispanics, however, are capturing a greater share of construction employment in most of the 18 metropolitan areas studied, reflecting increased immigration since the 1990s. In Los Angeles, for example, about 41% of the area's workforce is Hispanic, but 67% of construction workers are Hispanic.
Once the jury had left the courtroom, Freddie Martin and others draped arms around one another's shoulders and offered a prayer of thanks.
After a seven-week trial in U.S. District Court in Columbus, jurors found today that Martin and 67 others long were denied public water service because of the color of their skin.
The racial-discrimination damages awarded to current and former residents of the Coal Run area outside Zanesville were hefty: $10.9 million.
Julius L. Chambers and Mark DorosinComment on this story
CHAPEL HILL - This month a jury in Zanesville, Ohio, awarded $10.9 million to residents of a mostly black neighborhood after finding that the local government discriminated against the community by denying access to public water service, even though it provided water to nearby predominantly white neighborhoods. Low-income and minority neighborhoods across the country face similar discriminatory patterns of municipal exclusion.
