10 diversity items for June 29: Unemployment up in most U.S. cities; Pew report shows diversity of U.S. Hispanics and more.
For the first time in history the Pentagon celebrated Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Pride Month on Tuesday, the Los Angeles Times reported. The ceremony, which was broadcast on a internal TV network to U.S. military bases around the world, was a straight-laced affair, according to the Times. It included pre-taped videos from President Obama and Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta.
The American Civil Liberties Union will help the Ku Klux Klan in its bid to join a highway cleanup program, according to Fox News. When the International Keystone Knights of the KKK applied to join the program along part of Highway 515 in the north Georgia mountains, the state denied their application--which lead to a legal showdown. The ACLU is developing a strategy for representing the group in what it believes is a First Amendment case.
When advocates for the Asian-American community decried a report by the Pew Research Center full of seemingly good news about Asians as "shallow" and "disparaging," both sides failed to acknowledge that the other may have had a point, Eric Liu wrote in Time on Tuesday.
In May, unemployment rates rose in more than 75 percent of U.S. cities, the Associated Press reported on Wednesday. Among the cities with this highest unemployment rates were Yuma, Ariz. (28.9 percent); El Centro, Calif. (26.8 percent); and Yuba City, Calif. (17.9 percent). Bismark and Fargo, both in North Dakota, had the lowest unemployment rates--2.5 percent and 3 percent respectively--followed by Lincoln, Neb., with 3.4 percent unemployment.
Eighty percent of Mexicans support their president's decision to use the Army to fight powerful drug cartels, a new poll from the Pew Hispanic Center shows. That support has dropped slightly over the past year. In 2011, 83 percent supported the use of military force. Forty-seven percent of those polled said they believed the Army was making progress in the fight.
Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Salvadorans, Dominicans, Guatemalans, Colombians, Hondurans, Ecuadorians and Peruvians make up 92 percent of the United States' Hispanic population, according to a Pew Hispanic Center analysis of Census data released on Wednesday. The majority, 65 percent, of all 50.7 million Hispanics living in the country are of Mexican-origin. The next largest group are Puerto Ricans, who make up just 9 percent of the total Hispanic population.
The attorney for a Latino man who claimed a Seattle police officer threatened to beat the "Mexican piss" out of him during a 2010 robbery investigation said a civil rights lawsuit regarding the incident, which was caught on tape, has been settled for $150,000, the Seattle Times reported on Wednesday.
Tucson Police Chief: Can the Department Handle S.B. 1070 Workload?
As the "show me your papers, please" provision in Arizona's immigration law goes into effect in the wake of the Monday Supreme Court decision, the police chief in Tucson, Ariz., wonders how his staff--which is down to 160 officers because of the economy--will handle the up to 50,000 additional phone calls a year to federal officials to verify the immigration status of people they stop, CNN reported on Wednesday.
The U.S. government has quietly been training and arming the Ugandan military as it drives militants out of Somalia, a stronghold for Islamic militants, Wired reported on Wednesday. But American officials have indicated that the government might cut off that military aid because of LGBT issues. Uganda's gays, lesbians and transgendered citizens have long faced persecution, the magazine reported.
Another lawsuit challenging Florida's contentious move to remove potentially ineligible voters from the state voting rolls was filed last week by The Advancement Project in partnership with other litigants, New America Media reported on Thursday.