In the decade before he won the White House, Kennedy said almost nothing about civil rights. In 1957, as a senator he voted against the 1957 civil rights bill. His opposition has been spun two ways; one cynical, one charitable. The cynical spin is he opposed it to appease Southern Democrats because he had an eye on a presidential run in 1960. The charitable spin is that he thought the bill was too weak and ineffectual. Three years later though he ignored the angry shouts from Southern Democrats and lobbied for a forceful civil rights plank in the Democratic Party's 1960 platform.

The Dominican Republic’s Constitution Court ruling on September 23 to strip thousands of individuals born in that Caribbean island nation of citizenship has met with universal condemnation for threatening to create tens of thousands of “stateless” individuals. This contravenes international norms, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which prohibits states from depriving individuals of their nationality.

Center officials wrote in a report, titled "Has Education Paid Off for Black Workers?" that good-paying jobs have eluded black men because of continuing racial discrimination in the job market and other factors. "Over the last many decades, black workers have made significant --- and often overlooked --- investments in education. Nevertheless, black workers have little to show for these investments," the report said. "A lack of human capital does not appear to be causing the difficulties black workers face in the labor market. 

A United States Department of Labor Administrative Law Judge has ordered Bank of America to pay $2.2 million in back wages to more than 1,100 African Americans who were rejected for jobs. The ruling ends a nearly two-decades old legal dispute. Judge Chapman issued her ruling after determining that bank officials applied unfair and inconsistent selection criteria resulting in the rejection of African Americans for jobs as tellers, entry-level clerical and administrative positions.

When Texas' Republican Attorney General Greg Abbott gloated on Twitter just hours after the Supreme Court hobbled the Voting Rights Act that "Eric Holder can no longer deny Voter ID in Texas," he had to know that the Obama administration would respond. Attorney General Holder delivered the counterpunch on Thursday, targeting Texas, the political poster child for voter suppression, in a new strategy to protect minorities under the remaining parts of the landmark law. 

They were all trying to get home -- Oscar Grant in Oakland, Trayvon Martin in Florida, or the woman who was raped in a bus in New Delhi and christened Nirbhaya or the fearless one by the media, or the woman gangraped on her way back from college in Kamdhuni near Kolkata. They didn't want to spark off great protests. They didn't want to become symbols, placards or posters. They didn't want docudramas made about their lives.

On October 10 the U.S. Supreme Court will hear Fisher v. University of Texas, a case that could upend affirmative action policies nationwide. The plaintiff, Abigail Fisher, is suing the state over her rejection for admission into the University of Texas, which considers race in allotting a percentage of available seats after the top 10 percent of high school seniors are admitted. Fisher, who is white, did not place in the top 10 percent. She contends the race-based portion of the institution’s admission policy is a violation of her constitutional rights

The San Francisco-based Chinatown Neighborhood Association (CNA) announced last week that it intends to file a lawsuit to overturn California Assembly Bill 376, a new law banning the possession, sale and distribution of shark fins. CNA President Pius Lee told the Chinese-language newspaper Epoch Times, the association believes the shark fin ban is unconstitutional.