What's the Matter with Ohio?

For decades, residents of the Coal Run neighborhood of east-central Ohio had to haul water from wells or collect rainwater to drink, cook, and bathe. Their story might be quaint, except that the decades stretched from the 1950s to the 21st Century and, as a federal jury concluded last week, they were denied water services because they were black.

“As a child I thought it was normal,” said one of the plaintiffs, Cynthia Hale Hairston, “but I realized as an adult it was wrong.” Ohio’s Attorney General, Nancy H. Rogers, agreed, saying the decision “speaks firmly about the importance of treating citizens with equal respect, regardless of race.”

The verdict came just weeks after the Cincinnati, Ohio-based Kroger grocery store chain agreed to a $16 million settlement of a suit by black employees who say Kroger blocked the promotions of black employees and paid them less than white workers.

The two Ohio developments reflect the complex reality of race in America today: while we’ve made great progress as a nation, racial bias continues to deny opportunity to large numbers of Americans. The stakes are high, from jobs to housing to school quality and criminal justice, to the very basics like clean drinking water. And, unfortunately, Ohio is hardly unique when it comes to patterns of racial exclusion and unequal opportunity.

The persistent evidence of racial bias in corporate and governmental systems is especially jarring at a time when an African-American candidate has a real shot at the U.S. presidency. But it also suggests some of the challenges facing the next president, whoever he is.

The next president will need to rejuvenate the Justice Department’s languishing civil rights enforcement systems, through leadership and non-partisan staffing, as well as increased resources. His administration should restart testing programs to detect broad patterns of discrimination in employment, housing, lending, and health care. It should analyze the workforce data submitted to the Labor Department and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission by large companies to identify and investigate outlier companies with suspiciously low lumbers of employees from groups who have a presence in the local qualified labor force. It should restart the effort, begun under President Clinton, to ensure that environmental clean-up is administered fairly based on needs and conditions. It should aggressively screen new voting policies and law enforcement practices that may discriminate against racial or ethnic groups. And it should use an Opportunity Impact Statement to determine whether proposed uses of federal funds would expand equal opportunity or hamper it.

A first step, even now during campaign season, is to talk about the modern face of discrimination, which many Americans incorrectly view as an issue of the past. Given the events of the last several weeks, the politically important state of Ohio is one crucial place in which to have that conversation.