Reverse Discrimination

THIRTY-FIVE years after Congress passed the Fair Housing Act, do racial preferences and discrimination continue to exist in home mortgage finance? Are American homebuyers still charged higher rates or fees on their loans solely because of their skin color or racial heritage? The unfortunate answer appears to be yes. But that discrimination doesn't always take the form you might assume. Case in point: Consider the recent federal court settlement of a class action suit involving a prominent savings bank that is an active player in the mortgage market nationwide.

A Canadian developer whose bid to build a slots casino in Baltimore has been dismissed by the city filed a federal lawsuit against a state gambling commission Tuesday, contending that the newest bidding process discriminates against companies owned by white men. Michael Moldenhauer's Baltimore City Entertainment Group says that the Maryland Video Lottery Facility Location Commission's request for proposals notes that one factor in its selection process...

Charles C. "Mickey" Hooper Jr. reports to work at 7:30 a.m. each weekday at the Towson headquarters of the Baltimore County Department of Social Services. There, in his basement office, he opens his mail, returns telephone calls and reads about staff training and development. Sometimes, he goes to the University of Baltimore library to do additional reading.For this, he makes slightly less than $50,000 a year, the salary of a classified state employee who has reached Grade 19 on the 21-grade pay scale.

A federal jury has ruled that Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. discriminated against a white former maintenance manager at its old Landover coffee-roasting plant because of his race and awarded him $24,200 in expenses, with the recommendation that he be paid another $61,000 in back pay. In his reverse discrimination suit, John Sullivan said he was hired in 1999, only to be demoted and replaced by a black subordinate. He claimed an African American supervisor fired him in November 2002 because he is white.

I responded to a newspaper ad for a warehouse job. The woman who took my call asked me right off the bat if I spoke Spanish. I said, "No," and she said, "Don't even bother to apply." Since when does a warehouse job require you to speak another language? This doesn't seem fair. Is this reverse discrimination? Whether discrimination played a part in the brush-off depends on what prompted it, according to Lewis L. Maltby, president of the National Workrights Institute in Princeton, N.J. For example, if you need to be fluent in Spanish to speak to the company's clients, then that skill "would be a legitimate requirement," Maltby said.

Washington -- Since it has become disturbingly obvious that some Americans want to fight another Civil War over ''affirmative action,'' I must have a few more words about the subject.My mail about ''reverse discrimination'' tells me that I must make one more attempt, however futile, to tell white America what is ugly paranoia, and what is fact about the recent efforts of political leaders and corporation leaders to do justice.It seems that I get a zillion letters a month from whites saying generally: ''Through 'reverse discrimination,' our government, colleges and businesses have given so many goodies to blacks and Hispanics, that a white man, or family, doesn't have a chance anymore.

Washington. -- On the evening of November 20, the Bush administration was in the midst of its latest flip flop flap. White House counsel C. Boyden Gray had issued a directive terminating the use of ''quotas, preferences, set-asides or other similar devices, on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin.'' By the next morning, the directive itself had been terminated.While the lights burned late at the White House, the president himself was at a Bush-Quayle fund-raiser. The Washington Post's reporter interviewed one of the guests, a businessman named Joshua Smith, who claimed to have sold $90,000 worth of tickets to fellow African-Americans.

Accusations of racial discrimination within the Anne Arundel County school system aren't new. In recent years, almost every one of the white males who has led the system has had to confront similar charges and promise to make changes.What is new is that the accusations now are being leveled against the county's first black female superintendent.Several black residents, including former educators, have criticized Superintendent Carol S. Parham for threatening the jobs of black administrators and not doing enough to hire minorities.

There was a time -- and it lasted a long time -- when cases of racial discrimination were uniformly one-sided: They involved discrimination by whites against blacks. U.S. Circuit Judge Abner Mikva once described them as cases of ''overt and blatant bigotry.''In recent years an opposite trend has begun to develop. Many of the cases now reaching the higher courts involve reverse discrimination -- that is, discrimination not against blacks, but against whites. And here and there, the whites are winning.

$TC The Maryland State Police yesterday agreed to promote and pay back wages to a group of white, male officers passed over in favor of minorities who had scored lower on promotional exams.The settlement, which resolves two federal reverse discrimination suits, requires the agency to pay $243,000 in back pay to 99 officers, promote 17 of them, and pay another $55,000 in attorney fees.But because the promotions and back pay are part of a settlement, rather than a judge's ruling, the impact is unclear.

CHICAGO -- Time travel, long a staple of science fiction, has so far amounted to nothing more than a fantasy. But anyone interested in paying a visit to the past may soon get the chance. On Nov. 7, voters in Michigan will decide on a ballot initiative banning racial preferences in the public sector, and if it passes, opponents say, it will put the state back into the Dark Ages. Proposal 2 represents a reaction to the University of Michigan's use of racial double standards in selecting its students.

A former Anne Arundel County school administrator has filed a reverse-discrimination lawsuit against the school board, seeking $600,000 in damages because he was not offered a position filled by an African-American man. Timothy R. Dangel worked as the school system's coordinator of testing for four years and coordinator of research for 14 years, according to the lawsuit. The school system named him the acting director of program planning when the former director left in 2003. Dangel applied for permanent appointment to the job soon after.

I responded to a newspaper ad for a warehouse job. The woman who took my call asked me right off the bat if I spoke Spanish. I said, "No," and she said, "Don't even bother to apply." Since when does a warehouse job require you to speak another language? This doesn't seem fair. Is this reverse discrimination? Whether discrimination played a part in the brush-off depends on what prompted it, according to Lewis L. Maltby, president of the National Workrights Institute in Princeton, N.J. For example, if you need to be fluent in Spanish to speak to the company's clients, then that skill "would be a legitimate requirement," Maltby said.

THIRTY-FIVE years after Congress passed the Fair Housing Act, do racial preferences and discrimination continue to exist in home mortgage finance? Are American homebuyers still charged higher rates or fees on their loans solely because of their skin color or racial heritage? The unfortunate answer appears to be yes. But that discrimination doesn't always take the form you might assume. Case in point: Consider the recent federal court settlement of a class action suit involving a prominent savings bank that is an active player in the mortgage market nationwide.

THESE ARE the most frequently asked questions about affirmative action as it relates to college admission. The answers may be surprising. What's affirmative action? Supporters of affirmative action view it as a process intended to increase the representation of minorities in college and to end institutional discrimination. The opposition to affirmative action defines it as a process of minority preference, which violates the ideals of meritocracy and constitutional notions of "equal protection."

The admissions practices of the University of Maryland medical school were dissected in federal court yesterday in the first public airing of a suit charging the school with reverse discrimination. Robert Farmer, 40, filed the suit more than two years ago, alleging that he was turned down without even being interviewed for the class that entered in 1996, although less qualified minority applicants were admitted. But the medical school's attorney told U.S. District Judge Benson E. Legg that Farmer would not have been admitted regardless of race because of a less than laudatory letter of recommendation.

An article in yesterday's editions of The Sun incorrectly reported the year in which the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was founded, 1909.The Sun regrets the error.NAACP Chairwoman Myrlie B. Evers-Williams urged African-American business contractors yesterday to help repay the organization for making their success possible and also criticized moves in the country to scale back affirmative action."Where would each and every one of you be? Where would you and I be if not for this organization that pricked the conscience of America?"

The former head football coach of Meade High School has filed a reverse-discrimination lawsuit against the Anne Arundel County Board of Education, claiming that he lost the position because he is white. In a lawsuit filed this week in Anne Arundel County Circuit Court, Mark E. Frye of Severna Park said that despite two championship seasons for the Mustangs and a Board of Education committee recommendation, when he sought the job for the fall season last year, he was turned down in favor of a less-accomplished black coach.