Mixed Race Studies

Tennis pro sues Red Rock Country Club for alleged racial discrimination

KTNV Las Vegas
2019-10-11

Ross DiMattei, Anchor/Reporter

Claims she was fired over bi-racial daughters

LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — A Las Vegas valley tennis instructor filed a lawsuit in federal court on Thursday accusing the Red Rock Country Club of firing her because of her bi-racial daughters.

Lawyers for Carmel Mary-Hill say they’ve been negotiating a settlement with Red Rock Country Club after the club allegedly discriminated against the tennis pro based on race.

But, after feeling like the country club blew off her claims, Mary-Hill says she had no choice but to file the explosive, 30-page lawsuit.

In it, she accuses Red Rock Country Club of firing her after a member complained about her bi-racial daughters attending an annual tennis tournament.

“I’m OK with them attacking me because I’m in adult and I can handle it, even though it hurts me. But when you attack a 3-year-old and a 5-year-old because they are mixed, that’s not OK with me,” said Mary-Hill…

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Las Vegas has second-highest rate of interracial marriage in US

Las Vegas Review-Journal
2018-12-25

Michael Scott Davidson

Wife and husband Christie Faux, 63, left, and Kurt Faux, 61, sit together on a couch in their home in Henderson, Saturday, Dec. 22, 2018. Caroline Brehman/Las Vegas Review-Journal

She was raised in Silicon Valley, the black daughter of two well-paid IBM employees. He was a white child who lived with his mother and grandmother in Las Vegas — some days not having enough money to eat — before moving back to a rural West Virginia county to finish high school.

Despite such different backgrounds, Erica Kyles and Kevin Pauley felt an immediate connection when a mutual friend introduced them at a Henderson gym in 2007.

“We went on a date, and that was it,” said Erica, 39, referring to the couple’s marriage at a Las Vegas Strip resort in March 2010. “We were really inseparable ever since.”

Erica and Kevin, now living in a southwest Las Vegas Valley suburb, are far from alone in their decision to wed. The Las Vegas metropolitan area has the second-highest rate of interracial marriage among U.S. metro areas, according to Pew Research Center findings published last year.

Almost 1 in 3 newlyweds here have a spouse of a different race or ethnicity, according to the analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data from 2011 through 2015. Only the Honolulu metro area ranked higher.

“Generally, intermarriage rates tend to be higher in places with more racial and ethnic diversity. Both Honolulu and Las Vegas would fall into that category,” Pew senior researcher Gretchen Livingston said. “The pool of potential spouses is just much more diverse.”…

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At UNLV, a north-south divide over rebel mascot — but it’s not what you think

The Los Angeles Times
2015-12-02

Nigel Duara, Contact Reporter

The University of Nevada Las Vegas mascot, Hey Reb! (exclamation mark included), warms up the crowd before a basketball game. (Isaac Brekken / Associated Press)

He is all bushy mustache and jutting chin below a pair of beady black eyes. His wide, gray hat perches at a tilt and his skin is the color of early peaches.

His name is “Hey Reb!” — exclamation mark included — and years ago he was supposed to be the end of a mascot controversy at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. These days he is the beginning of a new one.

UNLV, like many public high schools and universities, is examining its mascot. The shooting deaths of nine congregants at a black church in Charleston, S.C., at the hands of a man who posed online with Confederate flags prompted U.S. Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada to question the appropriateness of Hey Reb!

In response, UNLV President Len Jessup requested that Rainier Spencer, vice provost for Academic Affairs at UNLV and the school’s chief diversity officer, analyze the mascot’s history, a five-month project that led Spencer to some surprising conclusions…

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UNLV President Len Jessup says keep Rebel nickname; research concludes no roots in Confederacy

U.S. News & World Report
2015-11-30

Michelle Rindels, Politics Reporter
The Associated Press

FILE – In this Feb. 1, 2014, file photo, UNLV mascot Hey Reb warms up the crowd before an NCAA college basketball game in Las Vegas. UNLV President Len Jessup says the school needs to keep “Rebels” as its nickname after new research concluded it is not a reference to the Confederacy. (AP Photo/Isaac Brekken, File)

CARSON CITY, Nev. (AP) — UNLV is keeping its “Rebels” nickname and “Hey Reb!” mascot in spite of critics who said they should be changed because the imagery harkens to the Confederacy.

Citing newly released historical research that concluded the moniker was not intended as a reference to the Confederacy, the president of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas issued a statement Monday saying the school must keep the name and mascot. He said “Rebels” expresses UNLV’s entrepreneurial spirit, and he noted overwhelming support for the term.

“It was coined as our young institution was fighting to establish its own identity, and it has come to represent the very independence and spirit that embodies both UNLV and Southern Nevada,” President Len Jessup wrote in a message to the UNLV community. “It is clear that ‘Rebels’ is central to our shared identity and represents the broadest definition of the term.”…

…UNLV Chief Diversity Officer Rainier Spencer finalized a 60-page research paper on the topic earlier this month, concluding the Rebel name emerged from southern Nevada students’ frustrations in the 1950s that the Legislature wasn’t investing as much in the south as it was in the University of Nevada, Reno.

“The Rebels nickname is not a Confederate reference, as it predates the first appearance of Confederate symbols, which was April 20, 1955,” wrote Spencer, who is also a vice provost and founder of UNLV’s Afro-American Studies Program. “Nevada Southern students were already known as Rebels before the application of those symbols; indeed, the symbols were applied because those students already had a non-Confederate Rebels identity, and also because of the north-south geography of the state.”…

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