On July 10, a federal jury in Columbus, Ohio returned verdicts totaling nearly $11 million against the City of Zanesville, Muskingum County, and the East Muskingum Water Authority, for denying access to public water services on the basis of race to the African-American community of Coal Run in Ohio. Each of the 67 plaintiffs in the case, Jerry Kennedy, et al. v. City of Zanesville, Ohio, et al. Case No. 2:03-cv-01047, S.D. Ohio., testified about the hardships they endured residing in a community that has had no running water for over 50 years despite its proximity to Zanesville, a municipality of over 25,000 persons. As reported in the Time online article Making Water a Matter of Race, lead plaintiff Jerry Kennedy, a life long resident of Coal Run whose home is within yards of the municipal water line, has relied mostly on rain or hauls from the water treatment plant to his home as his water sources for most of his 58 years. Well water is not an option for Coal Run residents as the ground water has been contaminated by the surrounding coal mines. Repeated demands for water service by Kennedy and his African-American neighbors over the years went unanswered. The other plaintiffs in the case, Fair Housing Advocates Association and the Ohio Civil Rights Commission, also received favorable verdicts. Reed Colfax, John Relman, and Jennifer Klar of Washington D.C.-based civil rights firm Relman & Dane, PLLC were lead counsel in the case. Zanesville and Muskingum County plan to appeal.

For additional details on the verdicts and the case, see Relman & Dane’s press release; Racism ruled, jury finds (Columbus Dispatch); and Jury: Black Neighborhood Was Denied Water Service (truthout).

Maps created by Cedar Grove Institute for Sustainable Communities illustrating the the racial disparities in public water access between the predominantly African- American Coal Run community and the surrounding overwhelmingly white parts of the County played an instrumental role in securing the verdicts. Look for a posting on this webpage with links to those maps soon.

We all remember reading Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Development Corporation, 429 U.S. 252 (1976), (”Arlington Heights I“) in law school. It stated three types of evidence that a plaintiff may use to prove racial discrimination violative of the Equal Protection Clause. Advocates, myself included, often believe that Arlington Heights I tempered the Court’s ruling in Washington v. Davis. Many believe that Arlington Heights I offers a viable method to circumvent the subjective intent requirements of the Intent Doctrine.

One year ago, a UC Davis Law student and participant in the race equity seminar, offered during the 2006 Fall semester at UC Davis Law, wrote a paper examining how courts have applied Arlington Heights I in the thirty years since that case was decided. Somewhat surprisingly, she discovered that only one case has applied the Arlington Heights factors and found evidence sufficient to support a finding of intentional discrimination. Perhaps more surprisingly, she discovered that federal courts have, by in large, failed to conduct the fact-intensive inquiries mandated by Arlington Heights I. Interested in reading her paper? Take a look.

A recent phone survey of 2,500 Californians conducted by the non-partisan Public Policy Intitute of California (PPIC) found that less than half (48%) of the state’s Latinos have a home computer as compared to 86% of whites, 84% of Asians and 79% of African-Americans.  The report on the survey, Californians and Information Technology, also provides findings on computer and internet usage by race, income and gender, with low-income persons, not surprisingly, having the lowest usage.  In Latinos lagging far behind in internet use, report says (Sacramento Bee, June 26, 2008), UC Santa Cruz economics professor Rob Fairlie attributes the divide to disproportionately low education rates and lower incomes among Latinos.  The effect of the divide?  In the Bee article, Liz Guillen, legislative and community affairs director for Public Advocates opines, "Latinos and poor communities are already struggling to get access to the opportunities that will move them beyond poverty, that will lead to things like education and homeownership. . .[t]he lack of Internet access is really a lack of access to information, and information is what one needs to move forward in today’s society."

It’s rare that I’m this excited about a data/GIS resource. It’s equally rare that someone creates an online data/GIS resource as bug-free and comprehensive as the National Map. The USGS has outdone themselves with this nifty application.

The application, at first glance, looks like a typical online map viewer with a slightly more-complicated-than-usual interface. Don’t be fooled…this application packs a real punch. We used National Map to download 1-meter DOQ imagery for use in an ongoing advocacy project. After a little tinkering, I selected the five block area I wanted the DOQ imagery for and began the download. Voila…twenty seconds later I had a GeoTIFF file with imagery of the selected area that is ready for use with ArcGIS.

The National Map offer a lot more than DOQs. Interested in topographic layers? LANDSAT7 imagery? Geology layers? Public land records layers? Transportation layers? National Map has you covered!

The REP has you covered for the latest round of legal scholarship on implicit bias and structural racism. Take a look.

Ivan E. Bodensteiner, THE IMPLICATIONS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH RELATED TO UNCONSCIOUS DISCRIMINATION AND IMPLICIT BIAS IN PROVING INTENTIONAL DISCRIMINATION, 73 Mo. L. Rev. 83 (2008).

• Summary: Professor Bodensteiner examines the elements necessary to establish intent under statutory and constitutional disparate treatment claims in light of implicit bias science. In addition to offering a compelling critique of intent requirements Professor Bodensteiner argue that “existing proof schemes should be modified or adjusted, with more emphasis on the direct method and the mixed-motive defense.”
• Note: The Missouri Law Review post their current edition on the internet. As of the date of this posting, however, Professor Bodensteiner’s article has not yet been posted.

Note, “TRADING ACTION FOR ACCESS”: THE MYTH OF MERITOCRACY AND THE FAILURE TO REMEDY STRUCTURAL DISCRIMINATION, 121 Harv. L. Rev. 2156 (2008)

• Summary: This note argues that there are “two contrasting explanations of inequality in the workplace, the reasons individuals might attribute inequality to one of the two explanations, and the detrimental consequences of such attributions. The first explanation of workplace inequality suggests that the workplace is meritocratic and therefore individuals, through the choices they make, are responsible for any resulting inequality. The second takes the position that discrimination in the form of institutional, structural, and organizational constraints on the achievement of women and minorities still exists, and that numerical disparities in the workplace can largely be attributed to such discrimination. This Note argues that the first explanation–the myth of meritocracy–has its origin in the “just world phenomenon,” the cognitive desire to view our society, the organizations of which we are a part, and ourselves as just and legitimate. Even individuals who are members of groups that have been traditionally disadvantaged–individuals who might perceive subtle discrimination more readily–may perpetuate the myth of meritocracy, especially if they are upwardly mobile. This myth co-opts possible system challengers, who instead legitimize the existing social structures. It also gets translated into law by judges who assume that individual failings–and not structural discrimination–are responsible for the numerical disparity between races and sexes. The resulting stringent legal standards make it difficult to prove the existence of structural discrimination.”

Notwithstanding its many problems, PolicyLink VP Judith Bell explains in Lessons from the Farm Bill that there are important provisions in the bill that form the "building blocks" for achieving healthy food access equity.  In addition to increases for funding for Food Stamps, the bill establishes a Healthy Urban Food Enterprise Center to increase access to healthy locally grown food to underserved communities, including communities of color.  The bill also provides support for farmer’s markets and access to them by poor people and support for socially disadvantaged farmers and farmworkers who are disproportionately people of color.  Please click on the title of Ms. Bell’s piece above for more details about the parts of the Farm Bill that promote food equity and about the advocacy groups and legislators who helped ensure that these provisions were included.   Also, look for the links to programs that provide grant money and other resources that might be helpful to food advocacy groups that you are working with.

The High Court in South Africa has ruled that Chinese South Africans are to be reclassified as black people.

Two articles on race-conscious advocacy authored by Legal Services of Northern California (LSNC) advocates appear in the current issue (May-June 2008) of Clearinghouse Review Journal of Poverty Law and Policy. Local Land-Use Advocacy: Inclusionary Zoning to Achieve Economic and Racial Integration by Valerie Feldman underscores the importance of linking place and opportunity in advocating for racial justice in land use and zoning. It includes a helpful list of ideal inclusionary zoning ordinance components. In Instituting a Race-Conscious Practice in Legal Aid: One Program’s Efforts, LSNC offers its Race Equity Project as a potential road map for instituting race-conscious advocacy from intake to impact advocacy on an organization-wide basis. To view these articles in their entirety, you must subscribe to Clearinghouse Review, the essential reference and research journal for legal services and social justice advocates.

Mildred Loving, an African-American woman whose marriage to a white man led to the landmark Supreme Court ruling overturning state miscegenation laws, died on May 2 at her home in Central Point, Va. She was 68.

As a product of an interracial couple it’s sometimes hard for me to believe that there was a time when interracial marriage was illegal and punishable with jail time. Thank you Mildred for your courage and bravery.

San Francisco County Sheriff Michael Hennessey recently reported that over 60 percent of all prisoners in the city’s jail are Black despite the Black population in San Francisco only being 6.7 percent. Nearly half of the inmates are in jail for drug offenses.

The increasing incarceration of Blacks is a direct result of the War on Drugs. As a result of the War on Drugs, Black communities are suffering from mass incarceration. Not only are large numbers of Blacks being locked-up, Blacks are incarcerated at staggering numbers that far exceed any purposeful law enforcement interest and which are destroying Black communities.

The idea that Blacks commit more drug related offenses, and that this is the reason for the disparities, is false. Most drug arrests are for possession. Possession is a crime that every drug user commits and, in the United States, most drug users are white.