Racial Discrimination

Rockwood School District and its former diversity and equity director settled an employee discrimination lawsuit last month. Brittany Hogan alleged in the February lawsuit that the district ignored her complaints of racist abuse from parents.

The St. Louis Reparations Commission is preparing to create a race-based harm report for Mayor Tishaura Jones to review next year. Robin Rue Simmons created the Evanston, Illinois, reparations plan and got Evanston’s Black residents the country’s first reparations payout. Simmons talks about her strategy and what St. Louis can do to make its reparations process successful.

The Deaconess Foundation this fall will launch the Institute for Black Liberation to help develop Black leaders in the St. Louis region who can help their communities heal from internalized racism. Participants will learn tactics to help combat stereotypes and to celebrate Blackness in ways that help communities.

Black students at Eureka High School are upset that the Rockwood School Board eliminated its diversity and inclusion programs and want the school board to replace their programs or implement new ones. The students say that racist incidents at their school are weighing on them and that they need more diversity programs, which are safe spaces for them.

A recent study from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis found that racial discrimination is linked to depression among college-educated Black Americans.

Will Jordan, executive director of the Metropolitan St. Louis Equal Housing and Opportunity Council, and Nate Johnson, the president of the organization’s board of directors, discuss the role Realtors play in increasing Black homeownership in St. Louis.

The St. Louis Realtors Association will host an expo to provide Black families with the information needed to purchase a home. Attorneys, Realtors and bankers will discuss estate planning, credit repair and budgeting.

St. Louis Realtors issued a public apology for the effects of discrimination and segregation in the regional housing market.

Missouri would join handful of states that have recently enacted laws to remove racially restrictive covenants from property records.

On the last day before the legislature takes a week off, the House also passed legislation including banning discrimination in schools against traditionally Black hairstyles and creating nurseries in women’s prisons.