Minorities And Women

A 640-pound man sued yesterday to strike down a city program designed to help minority and women contractors, claiming that it unconstitutionally discriminates against disabled people.Donald E. Keister, 34, said in an interview that his company, Investors Restoration and Maintenance Association Inc., has lost contracts because it is not recognized as a minority business enterprise by the city.Companies that qualify for Baltimore's minority business program get preferred status in bidding for city contracts.

Minority- and female-owned businesses with questions on how to build healthy enterprises can now turn to a free business-resource guide from the Anne Arundel Trade Council.The guide, being released today, discusses resources and programs available for women and minorities at the local, state and federal level.Trade council officials say the Anne Arundel Guide To Business Resources for Minority and Women-Owned Businesses is the first comprehensive guide of its kind available in the county.

The Black Firefighters Association has asked for a one-year extension of an agreement designed to increase the number of minority firefighters in the Annapolis Fire Department.Five years ago, the City Council accepted a court-supervised consent decree to increase the percentage of minorities in the 88-member department from 11 percent to 25 percent by the end of this year. Fifteen percent -- or a total of 13 -- of the department's firefighters are women or members of minority groups. About one-third of Annapolis residents are black.

WAS Cleopatra black?That question, posed recently on the cover of Newsweek,encapsulates the raging debate over multicultural education in America. Mainstream academicians say the movement mangles history. Aggrieved minorities and women claim that history texts are full of glaring omissions, cultural stereotypes and misrepresentations of their histories.These accusations ring true to me as an African American. I grew up in the District of Columbia and am Hugh B.Priceold enough to have attended segregated schools and witnessed the onset of integration.

WASHINGTON -- A group of seven moderate Senate Republicans announced yesterday yet another attempt to fashion a civil rights bill that would be acceptable to the Bush administration. The White House, however, appeared to reject it.Sen. John C. Danforth, the Missouri Republican who has been leading the group's search for a compromise bill ever since President Bush vetoed last year's measure, said the senators were introducing a measure that would apply to minorities and women the exact anti-discrimination language in a law approved last year by Mr. Bush to protect disabled workers' rights.

As a business consultant, Pat Battle enters countless corporate offices around the world and sees the same thing nearly every time."It's guys in ties, white guys in ties," said Ms. Battle, who is based in Baltimore. "I don't know why, but every time, I'm still surprised."Which is precisely why she's not surprised by the results issued last week of the federal government's first major study on the "glass ceiling." This invisible but very real barrier, the Labor Department found, has kept many minorities and women off the highest rungs of the corporate ladder.

WASHINGTON -- Women and members of minority groups are being excluded from the corporate "pipelines" that lead to managerial and executive positions, according to the first major government study of the so-called "glass ceiling.""The time has come to tear down, to dismantle, to remove and to shatter the glass ceiling," said Secretary of Labor Lynn Martin at a news con ference yesterday to introduce the Department of Labor study.The barrier to the upper rungs of the corporate ladder exists at a much lower level than was previously believed, she said, and the careers of minorities reach a plateau earlier than those of women.

The head of the Maryland Minority Contractors Association says the organization will continue to campaign against Kurt L. Schmoke's bid for a second term as mayor of Baltimore.Members of the association picketed outside the B&O Railroad Museum on June 21 while Schmoke was announcing his candidacy. The organization has also passed out thousands of fliers accusing the Schmoke administration of failing to enforce the city's minority set-aside law.The fliers say: "Thanks to Mayor Schmoke, minority and women businesses are in financial trouble!"

Last month, when the Greater Baltimore Committee revealed an economic vision for the region at its annual meeting, it stressed the need for all of Baltimore's citizens to participate in the development of life sciences, improved education and greater entrepreneurism as keys to future prosperity.Last week, when officials met with downtown professionals and executives to discuss the city's recently released 20-year vision strategy for downtown, they, too, stressed the need for the city's black population to participate in Baltimore's continued renaissance.

DON'T BOTHER me, says President Bush, with the facts. House Democrats, alarmed at the slogan-slinging that defiles their proposed Civil Rights Act of 1991 as a "quota" bill, are revising it to forbid hiring quotas for minorities and women. The president hasn't seen the revised language yet, but hey -- he doesn't have to.Bush may not like the proposed legislation for substantive reasons. But for him to persist so unreasonably in the quota canard invites the belief that he is driven, instead, by ugly political reasons.