Jon Hyman at Kohrman Jackson & Krantz has put out some good information about how to respond (and not to respond) to an employee's claim of racial harassment:

In Bailey v. USF Holland, the 6th Circuit affirmed the lower court's award of $350,000 in compensatory damages to each of the two defendants, finding:

Defendant cites examples of its corrective action, noting for example that it "consistently had a reasonable harassment policy," conducted employee meetings to respond to plaintiffs' complaints, and disciplined the employee responsible for the graffiti. The district court correctly rejected these actions as insufficient. A harassment policy itself means nothing without enforcement, and the persistent harassment plaintiffs received over an extended period of time caused the district court to conclude that the policy was not consistently enforced. Defendant conducted employee meetings, but plaintiffs' coworkers stated that they did not consider their use of "boy" to be offensive and insisted that they would continue to use it. Defendant discharged Connor once it discovered that he created the graffiti, but he was reinstated soon thereafter. USF Holland was unable to stop the graffiti until it installed security cameras – an act it did not take until after plaintiffs initiated this lawsuit.

For much more detail on this interesting case, read the full post at the Ohio Employer's Law Blog.