Clippers' owner to pay $2.725 million to settle lawsuit

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Clippers owner Sterling will pay $2.73 million to settle suit

Los Angeles Clippers owner and real estate mogul Donald Sterling has agreed to pay a record $2.73 million to settle allegations by the government that he refused to rent apartments to Hispanics, blacks and to families with children, the Justice Department announced Tuesday.

The Justice Department sued Sterling in August 2006 for allegations of housing discrimination in the Koreatown area of Los Angeles. Other defendants were Sterling's wife, Rochelle , and the Sterling Family Trust.

The defendants allegedly made statements to employees indicating that African-Americans and Hispanics were not desirable tenants.

The faces of change

ROBBINS -- Not all that long ago, John L. Frye could rattle off the names of nearly every family in this two-stoplight mill town: the Browns, the Kennedys, the Marleys and the Moores.

"Now I can't even pronounce half of 'em," says Frye, 81, the former mayor who runs a sleepy department store in the heart of town, where his father opened a country store in 1896.

Some of the most common names in Robbins today: Rodriguez, Avila, Garcia and Lopez.

Homeownership gap remains wide

Blacks, Asians and Hispanics are still much less likely to own their homes than whites in the Triangle and across the state, despite a decade of prosperity and a rash of programs aimed at boosting homeownership among low- and moderate-income people.

Less than 49 percent of black households in the Triangle, 48 percent of Asian and 27 percent of Hispanic owned their homes last year, according to figures released last week by the U.S. Census Bureau. That compares with 72 percent of non-Hispanic white households. The numbers were similar for the state as a whole.

The lower homeownership rates among minorities reflect other disparities in income, wealth and education. Not owning a home in turn makes it harder for minorities to join the social and economic mainstream, because home equity is the primary way Americans accumulate wealth, said Nicolas Retsinas, director of the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University.

Lawsuits: Calif. police fail to protect blacks

Racially motivated attacks by gangs on black teenagers has created a "toxic environment" that forced families out of a California city and has left at least one teenager dead, said attorneys for the families of several teens.

The attorneys said Wednesday that the December 2007 fatal shooting of 14-year-old Vernon Eddins in front of his middle school in Union City and another recent incident at a Hayward mall were not isolated incidents, but part of a pattern of violence and persecution of black teenagers by a local Hispanic gang.

Vernon's death is cited in three pending lawsuits - two in federal courts, and one in state court - accusing the police, schools and school officials of failing to stop the attacks and protect the teenagers.

Attorney involved in Helms-era postcards

An earlier phase of the career of attorney Thomas Farr, who has been tapped by the new majority of the Wake County school board to review the district's legal affairs, included involvement in planning Republican "ballot security" measures in the 1980s and 1990s.

Justice Department officials under President George H.W. Bush said these measures were intended to intimidate thousands of African-American residents and discourage them from voting in a 1990 U.S. Senate election. The North Carolina race was between incumbent and eventual winner Sen. Jesse Helms and former Charlotte Mayor Harvey Gantt, an African-American.

According to a Justice Department complaint in February 1992, Farr, who was not named as a defendant, "had been involved in past ballot security efforts on behalf of Senator [Jesse] Helms and/or the defendant North Carolina Republican Party."