AMA to Apologize for Racist Past

Discrimination case a 'witch hunt': lawyer

(NEWSER) - Arizona's embattled Sheriff Joe Arpaio is hitting back at Justice Department allegations that his office shows "a pervasive culture of discriminatory bias" against Hispanics. "Don't come to use me as a whipping boy for a national, international problem," he told reporters, saying he has "an idea of the politics involved in law enforcement," CNN reports. "I don't want to say it's all politics, but everyone I'm talking about happens to be Democrats," he said. His lawyer called the case a "witch hunt." More»

(NEWSER) - The suburban Philadelphia swim club at the center of a racism controversy will ask the day campers it disinvited to return, the local ABC affiliate reports. "We are very very sorry that this had to happen," the club president tells WPVI-TV. He had sparked the incident by saying the presence of the campers, who are mostly African American and Hispanic, changed the facility's "complexion" and "atmosphere." More»

Complex portrait emerges of Trayvon Martin's killer

(NEWSER) - In a bizarre twist in a killing that has come to stand for deadly racial violence, it turns out that the great grandfather of Trayvon Martin's killer was African-Peruvian. George Zimmerman was generally regarded as trustworthy by his racially mixed Florida neighbors, who asked him to launch a community watch program last year after a string of burglaries (though few knew he was carrying a gun on patrol), according to a Reuters investigation based on extensive interviews with acquaintances, friends and relatives. He was encouraged by a police officer to get a gun after a pit bull menaced his wife in 2009. He did, and underwent firearms training. More»

Benjamin Crump: 'The jury is the American people'

(NEWSER) - The lawyers fighting Trayvon Martin's case are seeking more than justice in a court of law. Attorneys at the black-owned law firm of Parks & Crump took their case to the public right away, contacting media and Al Sharpton , pushing for the release of 911 tapes, and helping to organize rallies. "We need to fight first in the court of public opinion," Benjamin Crump tells the Miami Herald . "The jury is the American people.” More»

Outraged tenant files civil rights complaint

(NEWSER) - An Ohio landlord says the "White Only" sign in front of a pool at a duplex she owns was just an antique, but a former tenant says her views on race also appear to be from 1930s Alabama. "We invited my daughter, who is African-American, to visit and swim in the pool for the Memorial Day weekend,” he wrote in a complaint to Ohio's Civil Rights Commission. “The owner, Jamie Hein, accused my daughter of making the pool ‘cloudy’ because she used chemicals in her hair. Days later, she posted a sign on the gate to the pool which reads, ‘Public Swimming Pool, White Only.'" More»