Walgreens, the national pharmacy chain that is spread across the valley, has been sued by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for discriminating against African-Americans, reports the New York Times.The commission looked into the drug store chain’s hiring and promotion practices when a group of blacks said they had consistently been kept in poor neighborhoods and underperforming stores.

The paper quotes an agency lawyer in Illinois thus: "Blacks were being paid less." It doesn’t get any blunter than that in the equal opportunity business.

This is the kind of accusation that could really kill a big chain store, especially one that has stayed in neighborhoods where many others have not. (We’ve seen plenty of trouble with the West Side grocery store, as the Business Press reported.) One of the plaintiffs even applauds the company on that score but says he discovered the pattern after he was shifted from one poor store to another in the chain even though he didn’t live in the neighborhoods.

And this accusation has a ring of truth. It’s not traditional racism but it is a not-so-soft bigotry that acquiesces in the idea that suburban stores in white neighborhoods will do better if the clerks and pharmacists look like those they’re serving. Of course, the executives may also think that blacks look in place in inner city neighborhoods.