Enlarge John Trasvina, Katiuska Munoz Colmont and David Colmont talking at panel.

Posted: September 11th, 2011 Tonya Jameson

Asking for social security cards, implementing separate terms for different renters and requiring applicants to speak fluent English are only a few ways landlords discriminate against renters. On Thursday, nearly 200 people from various organizations throughout the region met at the National Origin Discrimination and Fair Housing For Immigrants workshop to get the latest information about fair housing.

The meeting at the Hilton Center City was one of several that the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) have held in cities throughout the country to educate community organizations about fair housing. In Charlotte, organizations representing Hispanics/Latinos, Africans, Asians and other ethnic minorities came out for a day of speakers and panel discussions. John Trasviña, assistant secretary for fair housing and equal opportunity at HUD, was the keynote speaker.

David Youngblood, HUD Greensboro director, said the department hosted the meeting to target organizations that work with clients from immigrant communities. Often these clients go to organizations such as the Latin America Coalition because they don’t know their rights.

“There’s a deficit of knowledge,” Youngblood said. “We want to raise awareness of their rights.”

The Fair Housing Act prohibits discrimination based on familial status, race, sex, handicap, color, religion and national origin.

During the day’s workshop, members of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Community Relations Committee spoke about the region’s changing demographics. Others talked about English proficiency, the legality of inquiring about immigration status, discrimination based on national origin and immigration legislation. One person asked about discrimination at transitional housing and homeless shelters.

Youngblood said the country’s rapidly changing demographics have exacerbated discrimination issues, and landlords have become more creative in discrimination tactics. For example, potential renters or homebuyers are being discriminated against based on their English proficiency, accents and surname. There have been examples of landlords enforcing certain terms of the lease with some renters but not others.

“The individuals who want to discriminate are more clever,” Youngblood said.

Posted: September 1st, 2011 Greg Lacour

Six-year-old Mariyah Shah just wanted to go to ImaginOn on Saturday afternoon, said her mother, Aaliyah Shah. Neither one knew about the event planned there.

But after they stumbled into “A Children’s World of Play,” the International House program designed to introduce young children to cultures around the world, Aaliyah Shah thought it meshed nicely with a conversation she’d just had with her daughter about racial differences--and the importance of respecting everyone in spite of them.

“It was a conversation about different kinds of people getting together, black, white, how we can get along,” Aaliyah Shah said. Mariyah watched, rapt, as an instructor from The Confucius Institute at Pfeiffer University brushed her name on paper in Chinese calligraphy. “She wants to know about different races. She’s just open for anything.”

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Posted: July 7th, 2011 Tonya Jameson

A murder uptown. School closings and re-assignments. Property re-evaluations. A hyphenated America. According to the approximately 200 people who recently attended "Can We Talk About Living Together In a Divided Community," these are a few of the issues dividing our community.

Charlotte Mecklenburg Community Relations Committee (CRC), Community Building Initiative (CBI) and Mecklenburg Ministries spearheaded the event, which drew a panel and audience on June 30 to Pritchard Memorial Baptist Church.

In many ways the meeting was familiar--more talk and vows to put talk into action. Elected officials promised to listen. Participants promised to get involved. Many in the audience challenged the panelists--Mayor Anthony Foxx, County Commission Chair Jennifer Roberts, along with Councilmen Warren Cooksey and Jim Pendergraph--to try to relate more to their constituents' challenges and to tone down divisive rhetoric.

Cooksey bluntly explained that politicians are politicians.

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Posted: June 17th, 2011 Greg Lacour

With a long history of resistance to racial and cultural change, the South is once again trying to adapt.  

Over the past two decades, the region has seen the fastest rate of Latino population growth, which has transformed cities like Charlotte and touched off a rebirth of intolerance reminiscent of the days of the Civil Rights movement, when African-Americans were thought of as subhuman, criminal, vectors for disease.

This week, officials from seven history museums in the Southeast gathered at Levine Museum of the New South to launch a new project they hope will lead to constructive, civil, fact-based dialogue about the heated topic of immigration.

It’s called the Civil Rights Sites of Conscience Network, and it will operate under the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience (ICSC), a New York City-based organization that works with museums around the world on education and community engagement programs.

Levine Museum, chosen to host the four-day conference to launch the initiative, is one of the seven member museums. The others:

• The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, Birmingham, Ala.


• The International Civil Rights Center and Museum, Greensboro.


• The Louisiana State Museum, New Orleans.


• The National Civil Rights Museum, Memphis.


• The National Center for Civil and Human Rights, Atlanta.


• The Duke Human Rights Center’s Pauli Murray Project, Durham.

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