Detroit Slumlord Michael Kelly Continues to Profit

The city of Detroit, my hometown, can be akin to the Wild Wild West when it comes to basic things such as the buying, selling, renting, and maintaining of property. Local ordinances and state laws tend to be biased towards landlords and/or the wealthy. 

Because Detroit is physically a huge place, six times larger than Manhattan, twice as large as Brooklyn, and about one and half times the size of Boston, the relevant regulators lack the time or resources (or often the interest) to catch enough bad actors to enforce compliance. 

As drivers know, the mere knowledge that police whom you see and don't see are occasionally watching you can "convince" you to travel at or around the posted speed limits. But if people knew that police generally weren't watching or could only give $5 tickets when they caught someone doing 95mph, then more and more people would speed.

Many Black Detroit homeowners are caught in a vicious cycle. They weren't earning a lot thanks to job market discrimination. Banks also discriminated against Blacks by trapping them into mortgages with higher interest and fees than their credit scores justified. This left them with less money available to repair their homes or ride out job loss or medical emergencies. Making matters worse the City of Detroit maintained very high property taxes to try to make up for white flight and increasingly black flight. When downturns occurred many Detroiters ended up losing their homes and had to become renters.  Many then became tenants of people like Michael Kelly.

Darlene Spells let out an exaggerated sigh as her son Corey peeled away the black tarp lining the front wall of the living room. Behind the plastic, where one would typically expect some sort of plaster sheeting, thin slats of wood lay stacked like rotting Lincoln Logs.

"Corey, show the bathroom too!" Spells directed from her bed in the room next door. Upstairs, more slats of wood peeked out below the shower head. The real damage, however, was only really understood when standing in the downstairs kitchen, where a yellow stain metastasized across the wood-fiber ceiling. The leak had been going on for years, she said.

Water's Wet, and Black Men Still Face Discrimination

Finished school 
Qualified
On the job
Still denied
It's so hard to win in the skin I'm in
The Skin I'm In
Chairmen of the Board
You may recall a few months back a writer at The Root wrote a pandering fact free poorly argued and reasoned article that claimed that Black men, no excuse me, heterosexual Black men (have to hit ever last intersectionality bonus point) were "the white people of black America." By this the writer apparently meant that Black heterosexual men wielded unearned and unfair privilege over everyone black who didn't fall into those category. According to the writer Black women did all the work while Black men just showed up at the last minute, took all the credit and the biggest piece of chicken. Even for that writer, that piece stood out for its complete lack of cited empirical data to support the author's contention. I wasn't the only person who pointed out that the piece was making a conclusion that not only wasn't supported by the available data but also that was bluntly contradicted by said data. 

Well time moves on and glory be there is yet another study that confirms that Black American men (the authors didn't bother to try to qualify sexuality) are getting it in the neck. Black American men aren't the "white people" of any group. Black American men aren't wielding privilege over anyone, least of all Black women. You should read the article and the study for yourself of course. 

Black boys raised in America, even in the wealthiest families and living in some of the most well-to-do neighborhoods, still earn less in adulthood than white boys with similar backgrounds, according to a sweeping new study that traced the lives of millions of children.

Farmer Tennes, East Lansing and Gay Marriage

We previously have discussed many times that the First Amendment does not protect you from dealing with the consequences of your speech visited upon you by a private entity. If I shared derogatory, confidential, proprietary or private employer information in any of these blog posts, my company would immediately walk me out of the door. I would have no recourse. Many people have used Twitter, Facebook or other social media to share ideas or images that their employer and/or other people found hateful. Often, these people have been fired or have faced calls from the public to lose their job. For many of us I would bet it depends on just whose ox is being gored before we decide if we will join the latest digital mob howling for blood. That's just human nature. I am more sympathetic to some "victims" than I am to others. You probably are as well. There often is a First Amendment issue when the government attempts to punish you or harm your livelihood just because of your speech. That's usually not allowed. Although the Supreme Court has legalized same sex marriage throughout the land, it emphatically did not make anti-gay discrimination illegal to the same extent as racial or gender discrimination. 

The 1964 Civil Rights Act doesn't include gays. And Congress has until now resisted calls to change the law. Some states have made laws against gay discrimination; see the lawsuits over religious bakers refusing to cater gay weddings. But many others have refused to do so.

Religious Accommodation in a Diverse Society: Is It Still Possible?

We've previously discussed religious accommodations in employment and education. It's hard to find agreement on these issues. What is important or sacred to one person may be minor, downright stupid or immoral to someone else. Even people who have otherwise supported broad religious accommodations have also recognized the danger that unlimited religious exemptions poses to many societal mores or laws. Religious freedom can't be a "I don't have to do anything you say" card. I am not religious though I mostly respect those who are. I don't think that we can make a general rule about when religious accommodations should be made. There are just too many different religions and dissimilar ways of experiencing the world. We must examine situations case by case. Most of us will probably agree that we shouldn't force people to violate their strongly held moral or religious beliefs absent an equally pressing moral claim. We can say that we won't allow religious claims to override actual physical harm to another human (but in the case of circumcision of infant boys we do just that while holding to that belief to outlaw FGM). We either don't permit or strongly discourage people of the Hindu faith from burning offerings and throwing them in the local river. The idea of "physical harm" is of course subject to our subjective ideas about damage. While I grudgingly admit that the relevant or applicable state laws might require it, my personal bias is that I am queasy at forcing an objecting photographer, painter or baker to produce goods or services for a gay wedding. I'm skeptical that the alleged harm outweighs the individual's right to expression. But religious accommodation is available to people of all faiths. Religious accommodation is not just something used by "backwards" conservative Christians to "mess with" liberals and gays. Religious accommodation is about more than gays and birth control. Some Orthodox Jews in NYC have worked it out so that some public pools are separated by gender at certain times of the day. I have a problem with this arrangement because everyone is paying taxes for this. Other Orthodox Jewish men have refused to sit next to women on airplanes. I have no sympathy for their claim. If they want to move they should do so but the woman shouldn't move nor should the plane be delayed. An Orthodox Jewish woman obtained a job offer as a 24/7 oncall data manager but only then informed her putative employer, the Dallas County Sheriff's office, that she would need to leave work before sundown on Friday. Always. Additionally she wouldn't be answering the phone or driving during the sabbath. So if there was an emergency during that time period obviously she would be unavailable. The Sheriff's office withdrew the offer and since this is America the woman sued. I don't think she should get anything because she can't fulfill the job's core requirements. Some Muslims, who are required to pray five times a day, sued their employer because they don't think the employer is making enough of an accommodation to their prayer needs. As the country becomes more diverse these problems will occur more frequently.

I think an employer should try to be reasonable (and that's what the law requires as far as I know) but I also can't have half my staff disappearing for 10-20 minutes or more for three times during the workday, especially if I am in a business where productivity is easily measured and has an immediate impact on profit. Other Muslim taxi drivers have tried refusing to pick up blind people with guard dogs or have refused to allow women to sit next to them. So one person's religious freedom or accommodation is often another person's unfair discrimination or special treatment. I heard about the Charee Stanley vs. ExpressJet case while listening to the radio on my commute home. I thought that it was an example of where things have probably gone too far.
A Muslim flight attendant is suing ExpressJet after it suspended her for refusing to serve passengers alcohol. The lawsuit accuses the airline of “revoking a reasonable religious accommodation and wrongfully suspending her from her employment,” the Council on American-Islam Relations Michigan Chapter said in a release Tuesday.
On Aug. 25, 2015, Charee Stanley was placed on unpaid leave after a colleague complained about her refusal to serve customers alcohol — which she did in deference to her religion. 

Stanley was hired by ExpressJet before converting to Islam, and was later asked to make arrangements for the flight attendant on duty to fulfill alcohol requests. Stanley poured all non-alcoholic beverages. “It was obviously seen as a reasonable accommodation and it was working for dozens of flights — so it was not an accommodation that was burdensome nor restricted people from getting alcohol on the flight,” Dawud Walid, Executive Director of the CAIR-MI, told the Daily News in an interview.

But in August, after Stanley's new partner complained, the airline lifted the accommodation. Stanley was placed on unpaid leave “and on track for eventual termination for her requesting an accommodation of being allowed to not personally serve alcohol rather than abandoning her religious belief and practice,” according to the lawsuit.
LINK

It's important to note that the EEOC dismissed Stanley's complaint without deciding if the airline broke the law. Now I don't drink so I would not be impacted by Stanley's refusal to serve alcohol. But just as with the Christian bakers or photographers being forced to provide services to gay weddings, when you serve the public sometimes you end up doing things that don't line up 100% with your religious or moral beliefs. If we're going to play hardball with that baker then we have to do the same with Stanley. If not serving alcohol is of supreme importance to Stanley then the proper next step for her is to find a job that better fits her religion. As a country we can't allow one religion to constantly win workplace accommodations while another religion constantly loses. That's not fair. It adds to bad blood. It seems as if some people suing for religious accommodation are crossing the line between seeking to live according to their religion and making other people live according to their religion. Occasionally serving alcohol is part of the job of being a stewardess flight attendant. It's minor but if you can't do it then you should find something else. You couldn't be a vet or pet groomer and refuse to touch dogs because your religion finds them unclean. Things are starting to get ridiculous in my non-legal opinion when Somali Muslim delivery drivers can refuse to deliver loads which contain alcohol and actually win a $240,000 judgment against their employer. To me it all depends on whether your religious accommodation request involves a critical part of your job. If profoundly devout people or more likely people of certain faiths or sects obtain a reputation for trying to make their workplace bend to their will, there's a non zero chance that some employers will do what they can to not hire certain people, illegal though that is. And that's lose-lose for everyone.

What's your take on these stories?

Has the demand for religious accommodation gone too far?

Federal Racial Discrimination Lawsuit Against Al Sharpton and Comcast

The Reverend Al Sharpton, whatever his other gifts may be, is not a particularly adept television host. His cadence grates. To this Midwesterner he usually sounds as if he's about to punch someone in the mouth. Sharpton mispronounces words and misses cues to open or close segments. He yells all the time. Sharpton's only two emotions are surprise or outrage. He seems to be in a perennial search for the teleprompter. We posted about all this before but Sharpton's shortcomings are obvious to anyone that watches his show for longer than five minutes. For these reasons and many others, Sharpton's ratings on MSNBC have mostly been bad. I can't blame him too much for this. If someone offered to pay me many multiples of my current salary to do something for which I was poorly qualified I might well take the money and cry all the way to the bank. Sharpton has to this point survived the latest reshuffling of talent at MSNBC which saw Joy Reid and Ronan Farrow lose their even less popular shows. This ability to survive purges and even the ability to get hired in the first place had some people shaking their heads and muttering about conspiracy theories. Others laughed at the sheer audacity and tenacity of Sharpton. It takes a lot to survive as a public figure in this world and Sharpton has it. Although his television show is an ongoing dumpster fire I appreciate that Sharpton brings attention to some situations that would otherwise go unnoticed. However someone just recently revealed his belief that Sharpton's hiring and survival at MSNBC was more about corporate payoffs and hiring a spook to sit by the door than it was about Sharpton's hosting talents. So this man filed a $20 billion dollar federal lawsuit.

You may, if you are a certain age, remember Byron Allen as a comedian and co-host of the show Real People. That was a very long time ago indeed but unlike some Hollywood "wasn't that the guy from so-n-so? " fading talent, the Detroit born Allen successfully made the switch into management and ownership. He owns Entertainment Studios, a television distribution and production company which among other things created Comedy.tv and Cars.tv. Allen and an organization named the National Association of African American Owned Media are suing Comcast, Sharpton's National Action Network, the NAACP, The Urban League, Time Warner and Al Sharpton as an individual, among other entities. The crux of the lawsuit is that Comcast/Time Warner has refused to do business with Entertainment Studios (and other black companies) because it is 100% Black owned. Apparently Sharpton comes in for attack because according to the complaint he and other civil rights organizations entered into voluntary diversity agreements with Comcast/Time Warner which were designed to give the appearance that Comcast/Time Warner was fair minded, when in fact they were not. In short Reverend Al was allegedly selling indulgences for Comcast/Time Warner's allegedly racist business practices. According to this accusation, Comcast, having been criticized in the past for exclusionary actions, decided it was cheaper to buy off Reverend Al Sharpton and associated fellow travelers than to actually change the practices in dispute.

Of the approximately $10 billion in content fees that Comcast pays to license channels and advertise each year, less than $3 million is paid to 100% African American–owned media. Even the token payments Comcast makes to 100% African American–owned media companies are a charade. Comcast pays minimal amounts to license and distribute the Africa Channel, which is owned and operated by a former Comcast/NBC-Universal executive/insider and one of the architects of the MOUs Comcast uses to perpetuate its racial discrimination in contracting.

In connection with its 2010 bid to acquire NBC-Universal, Comcast was criticized for its refusal to do business with 100% African American–owned media. In response, Comcast entered into what it termed “voluntary diversity agreements,” i.e., memoranda of understanding (“MOUs”), with non-media civil rights groups, including the other Defendants herein: NAACP; National Urban League; Al Sharpton; and Al Sharpton’s National Action Network. 

Defendants NAACP, National Urban League, Al Sharpton and National Action Network entered into the MOUs in order to facilitate Comcast’s racist practices and policies in contracting—or, more accurately, refusing to contract—with 100% African American–owned media companies. The MOUs are a sham, undertaken to whitewash Comcast’s discriminatory business practices.

To obtain support for the NBC-Universal acquisition and for its continued racist policies and practices, Comcast made large cash “donations” to the non-media groups that signed the MOUs. For example, Comcast has paid Reverend Al Sharpton and Sharpton’s National Action Network over $3.8 million in “donations” and as salary for the on-screen television hosting position on MSNBC that Comcast awarded Sharpton in exchange for his signature on the MOUs, another blatant example of conflict of interest. 

Read the (lengthy) full complaint here

I have no idea if the allegations which Allen and others are making in this complaint are accurate. This may be something utterly frivolous which will be tossed from the court system. I do know however that it's often important not just to look at the people in front of a camera or the individual people at the lower levels of the organization to see if Black people are getting a fair shake. It's just as important to look at the higher ups, at the decision makers. It's important to see who's making the contracting decisions and if black companies are getting a piece of the pie. Are business decisions about hiring, grooming, and contracting made so that everyone has a fair chance to compete? There are some corporations which are happy to hire a few black executives here or there over the years but which consistently avoid business to business relations with black companies. Although Allen has a few zingers listed in the complaint (a white executive saying that they didn't want to create another Bob Johnson) for the most part the allegations (if true) are examples of how  bloodless racism can work in the corporate world. Few people are going to run around screaming racial slurs or putting up signs. Well, few people compared to forty years ago do those sorts of things. It's just that business decisions that are made which always seem to leave the same people holding the dirty end of the stick. Again, this could all be nonsense. Allen's own company has come under serious attack for hostility to unions and low pay to performers and creators. Allen's said that in a previous interview that he sees his company as "the Wal-mart of television". FWIW, Allen has also stated that nobody ever gave him anything. 

Giving a tour of Entertainment Studios’ newly leased 75,000-square-foot production space in Culver City, Allen says he built his empire from scratch, in part because, as a black man, he had to. “Over the 20 years, I’ve seen my white counterparts have access to enormous amounts of capital, and in 20 years nobody’s ever offered me a nickel,” he says. “It made me stronger, it made me work with different disciplines.”
LINK

To conclude, again this could be a pure shakedown initiated by Allen using Sharpton's name for publicity. Sharpton certainly thinks so. He said that the lawsuit was frivolous at best. He also claims that his organization did not receive $4 million in donations from Comcast but instead less than $1 million. Well. Detractors and even supporters of various advocacy organizations concerned with issues of race, gender, sexuality, animal rights etc. have stated that when an advocacy group accepts "donations" from the same organizations it is supposed to be monitoring, it can sometimes find itself politically neutered. Did this happen to Sharpton? Hmm. Is Allen just being a whiner? 

What are your thoughts?

Doctor refuses to treat baby of lesbian parents

We posted before on how some business owners have come under pressure to serve same sex clients in what they see as expressive and more personal services such as renting a wedding suite to a same sex couple, creating photographs or video for a same sex wedding or providing a cake celebrating the same. To the extent that some extremely religious or extremely bigoted people have balked at customers requesting such services they have usually lost their case in court IF their state happens to have laws forbidding such discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. However not every state has such laws. Michigan for example does not. A local lesbian couple found that out the hard way when a pediatrician refused to see their child and referred the family to another doctor in her practice. Now medical coverage is just a wee bit more important than buying a cake or photographs from someone but the principle remains the same. I'm not sure there is a logically consistent method by which the state government could say we will allow market discrimination in that sector but not this one. Or is there? Is this an all or nothing sort of situation?

Last September when the expectant mothers first met Dr. Vesna Roi at Eastlake Pediatrics in Roseville. She was recommended by their midwife.

"We were really happy with her," Krista said. "The kind of care she offered, we liked her personality, she seemed pretty friendly. She seemed pretty straight up with us."
The Contrerasas were told to make an appointment with Roi once Bay arrived. The baby was born at home and when she was six days old - they went in.

But instead of seeing Dr. Roi, another doctor greeted them.
"The first thing Dr. Karam said was 'I'll be your doctor, I'll be seeing you today because Dr. Roi decided this morning that she prayed on it and she won't be able to care for Bay," Jami said. "Dr. Karam told us she didn't even come to the office that morning because she didn't want to see us."
The new mothers were shocked, hurt and angry. Bay's parents proceeded with the appointment with the other doctor then found another pediatric group for their baby.

The child did get medical attention. The practice and recalcitrant doctor are receiving a lot of bad publicity. That's probably not good for business. At the same time there are some businesses which are more expressive and personal where I am slightly more sympathetic to the idea that if someone really doesn't want to do something, for whatever reason, it might not be the best idea to force the market interaction. The pure libertarian will say that the market will work it all out and to stop worrying and coddling people. Well the history of Jim Crow shows that's just not the case. The market can just as easily codify discrimination as overturn it. Libertarians are wrong about the efficiency of the market. On the other hand I'm not 100% supportive of forcing a small privately owned devoutly Catholic greeting card company to handle all the invitations for a same sex wedding. But this is a child's health we're discussing. Is there a middle ground? Should Michigan pass a law to make the doctor's behavior illegal? Would you want to patronize a business where the owner made it clear that he or she didn't much like you? Because I wouldn't. If the law allows someone to decline to treat a child isn't that a bad law? Watch the two women talk about their experiences.




  Fox 2 News Headlines

Free Speech, Free Association, Photography and Gay Rights

Black people had to battle for more than one hundred years after the end of slavery for among other things, to have the right to sit down in a restaurant owned by whites and order a meal. This segregation was most zealously enforced in the South but was not uncommon in the North as well. Via a series of court decisions, new laws, and public activism, legalized business segregation was defeated though not before its supporters put up massive, oft violent, racist resistance. Now any black person can legally go spend his or her hard earned money with people who despise them but are eager to take their green. This last has never made sense to me. Why would you want to give money to people who don't like you? What are you proving by attempting to purchase goods or services from someone who has made it crystal clear that they don't want your business? The black struggle for civil rights provided the template in part for several other more expansive visions of rights for various other groups. It's important to limit the ability of the state or even of private actors to discriminate. We can't have a fair and open society without such limitations. 

However, there are other rights that are just as important. Or are they? You have a right not to be discriminated against in purchasing a home. But there is no law that prevents your new neighbors from seeing you move in and putting their home up for sale the very next day. You have a right to date or marry whoever you want. But that doesn't mean that a person who doesn't like your kind can be forced to date or marry you. You have a right to seek employment as an actor/actress. But if a film producer is making a historical drama about Dessalines and you happen to look like Brad Pitt, that doesn't mean the producer is wrong for rejecting you. Of course Hollywood probably would make a movie with Pitt playing Dessalines but I think you get my point.


These questions came to mind upon reading the NYT story about a New Mexico photographer who declined to document the commitment ceremony of a lesbian couple. Unsurprisingly the lesbian couple sued and has so far won in court. The photographer has appealed to the Supreme Court.

WASHINGTON — A New Mexico law forbids businesses open to the public to discriminate against gay people. Elaine Huguenin, a photographer, says she has no problem with that — so long as it does not force her to say something she does not believe.

In asking the Supreme Court to hear her challenge to the law, Ms. Huguenin said that she would “gladly serve gays and lesbians — by, for example, providing them with portrait photography,” but that she did not want to tell the stories of same-sex weddings. To make her celebrate something her religion tells her is wrong, she said, would hijack her right to free speech.

So she turned down a request from a lesbian couple, Vanessa Willock and Misti Collinsworth, to document their commitment ceremony. The women, who hired another photographer, filed a discrimination complaint against Ms. Huguenin’s studio, Elane Photography. So far, the studio has lost in the courts.

“This was a straightforward case of discrimination in the public marketplace,” Mr. Wolff said. “No court has ever held that the First Amendment gives businesses a license to sell goods and services to the general public but then reject customers based on race or religion or sexual orientation, in violation of state law.”

The New Mexico Supreme Court agreed, saying Ms. Huguenin’s “services can be regulated, even though those services include artistic and creative work.” Laws banning discrimination, the court said, apply to “creative or expressive professions.”

Jordan W. Lorence, a lawyer at the Alliance Defending Freedom, which represents Elane Photography, said Ms. Huguenin should be able to decline assignments at odds with her beliefs in a way that, say, motels and hardware stores may not. “There are some professions that are inherently expressive — an ad agency, website designer or even a tattoo artist,” he said.

“A tattoo artist should not be forced to put a swastika on an Aryan Nation guy,” Mr. Lorence said. “The government could not force someone to put a bumper sticker on their car that says, ‘I support same-sex marriage’ or ‘I support interracial marriage.’ ”

Link to full article

Petition to the Supreme Court

As the state laws are currently written it would appear that Huguenin would not have much recourse. Once you open for business you must do business with anyone and everyone.

Generally speaking you can only refuse service to someone for reasons that aren't discriminatory. You can refuse to rent a home to a gay couple because their credit is jacked up or because their references didn't check out but not simply because you think being gay is sinful. I am sure that The Janitor or Old Guru can quote chapter and verse on the legal arguments on both sides. It's what they do. 

But my interest is not just in the law as it is but in the broader questions I hinted at in my first paragraph as well as the points raised by Jordan Lorence. If you were going to get married or in this case committed wouldn't you want the person documenting that day to be at worst neutral about the event? Would you really want the person charged with giving you photography and video that you could cherish for years to be someone who thought the whole enterprise was completely morally bankrupt? Is wedding videography art or is it a business? Is there any equivalence between a person who doesn't support gay marriage/civil ceremonies being forced to document such an event and say a Jewish tattoo artist being forced to give someone a Neo-Nazi white supremacist sleeve tattoo? Could a black photographer be required to document the next Aryan Nations rally? Does the fact that the couple asked Huegenin and her husband to help them celebrate their event cut any ice with you? Should Huegenin just have lied and claimed she was booked already? Does Huguenin have any recourse here? More importantly, should she? If she wins her case is it just a slippery slope back to "separate but equal"?

Thoughts?