How to quell the "race card"?

Our HOA and owners is very diverse. We have many different nationalities and life styles represented in our community which is easily reflected on only in our membership but alos our board.

Our board is mixed, Asian, African American, Gay, etc. To say we are representing our community is a given.

We have one owner who has been cited for couple of minor issues. They are extremely minor... both times he has made it known amongst the board and the HOA that he feels he is being "profiled" due to his race.

Now, saying that, he is still bringing up these notices which are months old and have since been addressed and our HOA has moved on.
He took a couple of minutes at last months meeting again to dispute his dog didn't do this or that despite being witnessed by me.. he wanted to argue in open session. It was squashed but there is obviously some issues for this owner and it seems to be a repetitive theme.

Our board is once again diverse. we live in an area where over 50 of our community is latino, followed by 30 African American, and Asian.. and a very large gay population. We certainly are not profiling our citings on race, but this theme of this owner is getting kinda old.

ANY advice is incredibly appreciated. Our own property manager is at wits end with this ongoing saga.

Nicole,

You can't stop someone from claiming racism is in play. This type of discrimination can be more of perception then actuality.

If the issue is perception, I doubt anything you do will stop it without discussing the issue with them. Perhaps simply asking that the individual provide the Association with examples of where the Association failed to enforce a similar violation. This places some burden on the individual to prove the issue.

Perhaps you can invite them to serve on the Board or enforcement committee to ensure that what they perceive doesn't happen to others. This places them on the spot of stepping up or down to resolve issues.

Perhaps the Association can start publicizing the violations that the Association is working to resolve. I'm not saying to list names, I'm saying to list violations. This can show the membership that things are being addressed. However, it can also give an appearance of an overzealous enforcement policy (it's a double sided sword). For example: a simple article about enforcement

The Association dealt with the following enforcement issues this month:

Lawns - x number of reminders were sent to residents about their lawn
Sheds - x number of requests were received to build a shed - x approved, y disapproved.

All an Association can really do is ensure that the policies are enforced fairly and equally across the membership. This way the Association will have a solid defense if ever challenged and the rest of the membership can make their own decision.

I agree with JohnC46.

Just simply re-state what the issue was.

Hopefully, you have a time limit for how long someone can talk.

I do commend your for your patience and willingness to hear opinions. We left our HOA because they kept trying to prevent us from attending meetings are were fined for doing so.

You cannot afford to ignore the race card because race can be an issue that will get you investigated by Fair Housing.

Reminds me of the day in the Navy, was approached by a group of minorities that asked why where they going on more working party's then the rest of the department personnel. I knew what they were getting at, so I took them to the Vertical plot board and broke the department down by ranks only.

All E5's and Above are Supervisors and worked their way out of working party's one of the benefits to making rank. that left all E4's and below, Now broke that down to those who were away for temporary duty and on Watch and what was left was the most lower ranks personnel and then I broke that down to race and then they saw they're working as much s everyone else's turns was on working party's and that re-carded that race card tosses.