Black People Politics : RACISM GROWING


Fewer Black Professionals Are Getting Crucial First-Time Promotions, Report Finds

Fewer Black Professionals Are Getting Crucial First-Time Promotions, Report Finds

Efforts to promote young Black men and women to management positions slowed in 2022


New data from McKinsey & Co. found that American companies, which had pledged to increase efforts to promote Black professionals, have lowered their efforts. Adene Sanchez/Getty Images

New data from McKinsey & Co. found that American companies, which had pledged to increase efforts to promote Black professionals, have lowered their efforts. Adene Sanchez/Getty Images© Adene Sanchez/Getty Images
The May 2020 murder of George Floyd sparked a national conversation over racial equality and opportunity, and corporate America pushed to diversify professional talent in the aftermath. But a new report finds American companies are reverting to old habits.
Many major U.S. companies — including Amazon, Meta and Microsoft — pledged to firmly grow the number of Black managers and senior leaders they employ. And while many such corporations have made gains toward advancing Black talent at the highest levels of management, new data from McKinsey & Co. shows that first-time promotions are returning to 2019 levels.

Often, these first promotions from an entry-level role into a management job can set an individual up for future progression up the corporate ladder. Consequently, missing out on these early opportunities can severely hinder a person's career, especially in competitive corporate landscapes.
McKinsey studied promotion rates from more than 270 companies that collectively employ more than 10 million people. The consulting firm found that for every 100 men of all races elevated to their first management role in 2022, just 54 Black women were promoted; or about half the rate as all men. But just a year prior, 96 Black women were promoted for every 100 men, nearly achieving a one-for-one ratio, according to the Journal.
McKinsey also said 66 Black men received their first promotion for every 100 men of any race who were pushed into their first management role in 2022, according to the Journal. In 2021, 72 Black men were promoted for every 100 men.

Comparatively, promotion rates for white men and women have remained relatively high and consistent between 2019 and 2022, the Journal reported.
“There is a really dramatic kind of pushback and retreat that I’ve seen in lots of places as it relates to the focus on Black men and Black women in the workforce," James D. White, the former Jamba CEO and current chairman of Honest Co., told the Journal. He added that the data reflects what he's been told by Black professionals.
The data suggests a slowing commitment to diversity goals that companies once enacted; about 25% of companies have stopped making diversity a priority, according to the Journal.
Additionally, companies have been focused on recruiting more new employees instead of training and promoting their existing workforce, Paradigm CEO Joelle Emerson told the Journal. Paradigm, a provider of consulting services and analytic tools, has worked with organizations including the National Football League and American Express on their diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

“Organizations are filling a leaky bucket,” she told the Journal. “They’re bringing more people in, but those folks are not staying as long and certainly don’t tend to get promoted as quickly.”
Emerson added that just a third of the 148 companies Paradigm works with actually track promotion rates by race and ethnicity, which can make tracking progress difficult. Many human resource officers are cautious to record and track promotions by race due to the Supreme Court's decision to ban affirmative action in college admissions, due to potential legal risks, she said.





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N.J. man sentenced to 8 years in prison after video showed him harassing Black neighbors with racial slurs


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N.J. man sentenced to 8 years in prison after video showed him harassing Black neighbors with racial slurs
N.J. man sentenced to 8 years in prison after video showed him harassing Black neighbors with racial slurs© Provided by NBC News
A white New Jersey man who was captured in a viral video in 2021 harassing his Black neighbors and hurling racial slurs was sentenced Friday to eight years in prison.

Edward C. Mathews, 47, was ordered to serve at least four years before he is eligible for parole, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
In October, he pleaded guilty to four counts of bias intimidation and possession of a controlled dangerous substance with intent to distribute. The charges stem from a 2021 incident in which footage showed him repeatedly calling his neighbors the N-word and another offensive slur outside a home in Mount Laurel.
"Our office is committed to combatting bias crimes and sending a clear message that such actions will not be tolerated in our community," Burlington County Prosecutor LaChia L. Bradshaw said in a statement Friday. "Nobody should have to endure what these victims experienced."

One resident in the area filed a harassment complaint on July 2, 2021, against Mathews with the Mount Laurel Police Department, the Burlington County Prosecutor's Office said in a news release. That same day, police received a report about a man who needed to be removed from the area.
When officers arrived, they found Mathews "using racial slurs while engaged in a verbal altercation with four residents," prosecutors said. During a search of Mathews' home, police found numerous psilocin mushrooms, which are known for their hallucinogenic effect, according to prosecutors.
Bradshaw said Mathews had a pattern of terrorizing his Black neighbors, including a time when he allegedly left a threatening note on one of their vehicles. He was also accused of stalking, smearing feces on his neighbors' windows and damaging their cars, NBC Philadelphia reported.
He apologized for his behavior during his sentencing.
"Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future," he told the judge, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer. "I want to commit to rebuild the community."
He said he accepted responsibility and said he was sorry for "my insensitive and disrespectful words in the past."
Mathews, who has been in custody since his arrest, will get credit for the time he's already served and will be eligible for parole in about 16 months, according to the Inquirer.





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Boston mayor apologizes to Black men wrongly linked to notorious 1989 murder

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Boston Mayor Michelle Wu arrives at the Earthshot Prize Awards in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. December 2, 2022. REUTERS/Katherine Taylor/ File Photo

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu arrives at the Earthshot Prize Awards in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. December 2, 2022. REUTERS/Katherine Taylor/ File Photo© Thomson Reuters
(Reuters) - Boston Mayor Michelle Wu on Wednesday issued a formal apology on behalf of the city to two Black men wrongly accused of the 1989 murder of a pregnant white woman, a high-profile case that deepened rifts between the police force and the Black community.
Declaring the apology "just the beginning of a much longer journey of accountability and action," Wu presented physical copies of the apology at a press conference to Alan Swanson, one of the two men, and relatives of the other man, Willie Bennett, who was not present.

"To every Black resident, I am sorry not only for the abuse our city enacted, but for the beliefs and the bias that brought them to bear in the first place," said Wu, who became the first woman and person of color elected mayor in Boston in 2021.
Several U.S. cities in recent years have confronted past wrongs their criminal justice systems inflicted on residents of color. New York City in 2014 settled a $41 million lawsuit with the Central Park Five, a group of Black and Latino teenagers wrongly convicted of raping a white woman jogger in 1989.
Wu's apology comes after the release of an HBO series, "Murder in Boston," that dissects the killing and its aftermath, which exacerbated the city's long-standing racial tensions.
Swanson and Bennett were not formally charged with the murder of the pregnant woman, Carol Stuart, but they were arrested and publicly branded suspects after the actual culprit, Stuart's husband, told police that she had been murdered by a Black man who he said had abducted the couple, according to local news reports.



When the husband's story later began to unravel, he stopped his car on a local bridge and jumped off, killing himself. His brother confessed to helping hide the gun used in the staged murder.

Boston Police Commissioner Michael Cox echoed Wu's apology and said that while his department had evolved in many ways since 1989, "we have a ways to go."

Bennett's nephew Joey said at the press conference that the accusations had traumatized multiple generations of his family, as well as Swanson and Bennett themselves.

"He hasn't been right since that case," Joey Bennett said at the conference, gesturing at Swanson, who stood silently behind him. "I hope we can move forward positively from this moment."





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Rite Aid banned from use of facial recognition in stores after false accusations

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Drugstore chain Rite Aid has accepted a ban of its use of facial recognition software for five years due to false accusations stemming from the technology that disproportionately affected people of color, the Federal Trade Commission said.
The retailer failed to impose reasonable precautions in its deployment of facial recognition, resulting in thousands of false-positive matches with customers accused of shoplifting and other inappropriate behavior, a legal complaint from the FTC said.

Acting on false-positive alerts, employees followed consumers around its stores, searched them, accused them of wrongdoing in front of friends and family, and called the police to remove them, the complaint said.
The company also chose not to inform customers of its use of facial recognition and discouraged employees from doing so, the FTC said.
"Rite Aid's reckless use of facial surveillance systems left its customers facing humiliation and other harms, and its order violations put consumers' sensitive information at risk," Samuel Levine, director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in a statement.
"Today's groundbreaking order makes clear that the Commission will be vigilant in protecting the public from unfair biometric surveillance and unfair data security practices," Levine added.
In a statement, the company said it was "pleased to reach an agreement" with the FTC. However, Rite Aid added: "We fundamentally disagree with the facial recognition allegations in the agency's complaint."
"Rite Aid's mission has always been and will continue to be to safely and conveniently serve the communities in which we operate," the company said.

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In this undated stock photo, a secutiry camera is seen in a store.

In this undated stock photo, a secutiry camera is seen in a store.© STOCK PHOTO/Getty Images
In all, Rite Aid collected tens of thousands of images of individuals, many of which were low-quality, the complaint said, noting that the activity took place between 2012 to 2020.

Mistakes made by the company's technology included false matches with an image collected thousands of miles away, as well as an incorrect positive result flagged at dozens of stores nationwide, the complaint added.
Rite Aid violated the terms of a 2010 agreement reached with the FTC after a finding that the company had failed to protect sensitive financial and medical information, the agency said.
The FTC issued a warning earlier this year that the company would be closely monitoring issues around the collection of data tied to individuals' physical characteristics, the agency said.
In addition to complying with the five-year ban, Rite Aid said it will impose safeguards for future use of its surveillance systems.
Those safety measures include deleting photos previously collected by its facial recognition software, informing customers when their physical characteristics are entered into a store database and providing notice to customers about use of the technology at a given location.




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Family of Black girls wrongfully detained by police at gunpoint awarded $1.9M in settlement

Story by Alayna Alvarez • 2d
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Family of Black girls wrongfully detained by police at gunpoint awarded $1.9M in settlement

Family of Black girls wrongfully detained by police at gunpoint awarded $1.9M in settlement© Provided by Axios
The Denver suburb of Aurora reached a $1.9 million settlement on Tuesday with a Black family of five after police wrongfully detained them at gunpoint in a parking lot of a nail salon in August 2020.
Why it matters: The settlement marks the latest payout the City of Aurora has been forced to make over officers' excessive use of force.
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  • In 2021, Aurora agreed to pay a $15 million settlement to the family of Elijah McClain, a 23-year-old Black man who died in 2019 after officers put him in a chokehold and paramedics injected him with ketamine.
Catch up quick: Four of the family members detained — girls ages 6, 12, 14 and 17 — were held face down on the ground and put in handcuffs, crying and screaming, as officers towered over them.
  • Brittney Gilliam, the mother of the 6-year-old, was arrested after officers mistakenly thought she was driving a stolen S.U.V.
  • Roughly a dozen bystanders watched the ordeal unfold, leading to a video of the incident that was widely shared and triggered protests over racial injustice.
Of note: One of the officers who drew their gun and handcuffed members of the family was initially suspended, per AP.
What they're saying: "Our hope is that police officers all over the country learn that law enforcement needs to use common sense, especially when dealing with children," Gilliam's attorney, David Lane, told Axios Denver in a statement.
  • "We believe that inexcusable racial profiling was involved in this case as well," he said.
  • "When the race of the occupants of a vehicle causes guns to be drawn, a line has been crossed which will result in huge consequences for the police."
The other side: Aurora Police Department "remains committed to strengthening the relationship with the community through accountability and continuously improving how it serves the public," city spokesperson Matthew Brown told Axios Denver in a statement.
The big picture: The Aurora Police Department, whose chief resigned last month, has settled more than a dozen police brutality cases since 2003.
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  • It remains under a state consent decree requiring sweeping changes, including improving its use-of-force policies and hiring more officers from diverse backgrounds.
  • Its officers are also slated to stand trial for use of force during the 2020 demonstrations in Denver after George Floyd's murder.





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