honey, do your eyes actually deceive you...lol

FIRST this is a article from something called SCOOP news? I have no idea of their credibility or where they verify their information.

SECOND of all, as odd as this may sound, my brother is a screenwriter and actor in Los Angeles , a member of SAG and he knows of NO SUCH mandate

THIRD of all, this article is from 1999 and you are honestly asserting that all movies have had a three to one ratio of minorities to caucasians? What movies have you attended with that ratio recently.

Fourth of all, you do realize that Spike Lee is a black director who tries to create controversial 'race driven' plots?

Fifth of all,, actors are actors,, and there have been many instances where those cast were different than those who were originally planned on being cast

Sixth of all,.. do the names 'Tropic Thunder', or 'Mighty Heart' ring a bell. Its called artistic license, it applies to 'racial' casting as well.

Seventh of all, if you go to either Spike Lee or Gary Coleman websites, and look at their director/acting history,, there is no movie titled 'Citizen Kane'.

Either you have looked at a joke website, or a commentary by someone who printed 99 percent speculation and 1 percent fact.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2000/jan/15/20000115-010830-8051r/


Consider the extraordinary announcements made recently by the NAACP, NBC and ABC, two of the four television networks under threat of an NAACP boycott for failing to feature minorities on the air in numbers deemed acceptable to the civil rights organization. At separate news conferences with NAACP president Kweisi Mfume, NBC president Bob Wright, and, later, ABC president Patricia Fili-Krushel, announced unprecedented, top-to-bottom "diversity initiatives" designed to recruit minorities for television industry positions, both in front of, but mainly behind, the camera, starting with ground-level page positions, extending to writing and directing slots, and reaching all the way up to boardroom executive seats.

In other words, under duress the negotiations have been widely described as "rancorous," "tense," and "difficult" a substantial sector of Hollywood (CBS and Fox are expected to follow suit within days) has agreed to create and, of course, pay millions of dollars for what must be one of the most extensive programs of racial preferences ever conceived of beyond the realm of government. With the help of the NAACP, the networks will revise their old "affirmative action" policies (they already had such policies, of course), institute new-and-improved diversity training seminars for all personnel, and set up minority internships, scholarships, and mentoring programs. Not least, they will pursue minority job recruitment with an unprecedented urgency. NBC has actually pledged to add an extra, novice minority writer to the writing staffs of every show that enters a second season ("It might get to be a little like having the boss' son on your staff," one executive ventured anonymously to the New York Times).

Not to be outdone, ABC has promised to tie bonuses and promotion to executives' "diversity" records. All of which will be taking place under the watchful eye of the NAACP, which is opening a Hollywood office, a kind of cultural commissariat, to monitor the networks' progress.

And not just within the networks themselves. Soon, Hollywood honchos will rub shoulders with the resident "minority sourcing executive," a new, NAACP-inspired post created to boost network commerce with minority-owned businesses. NBC, for one, has already promised to double their truck with minority-owned businesses over the next 18 months, budgeting an additional $10 million to do so. In short, at a time when the policies of affirmative action are increasingly discredited and suffering reversals in the courts and at the ballot box, Hollywood has pledged to create a new, permanent and downright Orwellian bureaucracy beyond the bottom line, conceived and dedicated to the entrenchment of affirmative action.

The networks may think they have tied up their diversity problems, but, of course, there are more minorities out there than Mr. Mfume speaks for. "Unbeknownst to us," Esteban Torres of the National Hispanic Media Coalition told The New York Times, "Mr. Mfume went to a press conference with NBC to address the issues and we were not invited. We thought we were working as a coalition." So did Sonny Skyhawk, president of the American Indians in Film and Television, and Norman Y. Mineta, the director of the Asian Pacific American Coalition. They, apparently, have grievances, too, ranging from Mr. Torres' desire to see "vice presidents for diversity" at the networks, to Mr. Skyhawk's hopes for redress for American Indians, who have, he has said, "the unenviable legacy of being the most egregiously maligned race in the history of [film and TV]." Now, it looks like the networks will have to negotiate more than a few separate peaces. Or, as Mr. Torres put it to the Hollywood Reporter on announcing new meetings with network heads in the offing, "We want to see inclusion on this thing."

And in other news....

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100524/ap_on_bi_ge/us_supreme_court_firefighters_lawsuit



WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court ruled Monday that a group of African Americans did not wait too long to sue Chicago over a hiring test they challenged as discriminatory, freeing them to collect a lower court judgment.

It is the second time in as many years that the high court has tackled discrimination in testing within the firefighting ranks. In a landmark case last year, the Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision said New Haven, Conn., violated white firefighters' civil rights, throwing out an exam in which no African-Americans scored high enough to be promoted to lieutenant or captain.

In Monday's opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the court that the applicants' lawsuit over a city of Chicago test used to weed out potential firefighter trainee applicants was not too late.

"Today, the Supreme Court affirmed that job-seekers should not be denied justice based on a technicality," said John Payton, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., who argued the case. "This victory goes well beyond the immediate results in Chicago. It should ensure that no other fire department or employer uses a discriminatory test, and LDF will go the extra mile to make sure that they do not."

Anyone who scored 64 or below was deemed not qualified. But the city set a second cutoff score of 89 points.

Officials told applicants who scored below 89 but above 64 that although they passed the test, they likely would not be hired because of the large number of people who scored 89 or above. The majority of those in the top-scoring group were white; only 11 percent were black.

People are supposed to sue within 300 days after an employment action they seek to challenge as unlawful.

The city says the clock started when it announced the use of the test scores on Jan. 26, 1996. The first lawsuit in the case was filed on March 31, 1997, 430 days after the city announced the results.

But the plaintiffs say a new act of discrimination also happened each time the scores were used in hiring firefighter trainees between May 1996 and October 2001.

A U.S. District judge agreed with the black applicants. After an eight-day trial, the federal judge ordered the city to hire 132 randomly selected African American applicants who scored above 64. The court also ordered the city to count up the backpay and divide it among the rest of the applicants.

The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago overturned that decision.

In Monday's high court ruling, Scalia said: "It may be true that the City's January 1996 decision to adopt the cutoff score (and to create a list of the applicants above it) gave rise to a freestanding disparate impact claim. ... But it does not follow that no new violation occurred — and no new claims could arise — when the City implemented that decision down the road. If petitioners could prove that the City 'used' the 'practice' that 'causes a disparate impact,' they could prevail."

City officials and business groups argue that the court's decision allowing the black firefighter lawsuit and judgment will cause a host of legal problems for them, including opening them to lawsuits claiming unintended discrimination "for practices they have used regularly for years."

"It is not our task to assess the consequences of each approach and adopt the one that produces the least mischief," Scalia wrote. "Our charge is to give effect to the law Congress enacted ... Congress allowed claims to be brought against an employer who uses a practice that causes disparate impact, whatever the employer's motive and whether or not he has employed the same practice in the past. If that effect was unintended, it is a problem for Congress, not one that federal courts can fix."

The city's firefighter applicant test is now pass/fail, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley said.

"For decades we have tried to diversify the Chicago Fire Department," Daley said. "But at every turn, like most cities, we have been met with legal challenges from both sides. Still, this administration remains committed to ensuring that the department more reflects the racial make-up of the city."

again, with news (and slanted at that) from almost a DECADE ago,, but have you actually been WATCHING what has happened,,,,nada