A FORGOTTEN HISTORY OF HOW OUR GOVERNMENT SEGREGATED AMERICA
RICHARD ROTHSTEIN
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“Rothstein has presented what I consider to be the most forceful argument ever published on how federal, state, and local governments gave rise to and reinforced neighborhood segregation.”–WILLIAM JULIUS WILSON
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In this groundbreaking history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein, a leading authority on housing policy, explodes the myth that America’s cities came to be racially divided through de facto segregation –that is, through, individual prejudices, income differences, or the actions of private institutions like banks and real estate agencies. Rather, The Color of Law incontrovertibly makes clear that it was de jure segregation– the laws and policy decisions passed by local, state, and federal governments– that actually promoted the discriminatory patterns that continue to this day.
Through extraordinary revelations and extensive research that Ta-Nehisi Coates has lauded as “brilliant” (The Atlantic). Rothstein comes to chronicle nothing less than an untold story that begins in the 1920s, showing how this process of de jure segregation began with explicit racial zoning , as millions of African Americans moved in a great migration from the South to the North.
As Jane Jacobs established in her classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities, it was the deeply flawed urban planning of the 1950s that created many of the impoverished neighborhoods we know now. Rothstein expands our understanding of this history, showing how government policies led to the creation of officially segregated pubic housing and the demolition of previously integrated neighborhoods. While urban areas rapidly deteriorated , the great American suburbanization of the post-World War ll years was spurred on by federal subsidies for builders on the condition that no homes be sold to African Americans. Finally, Rothstein shows how police and prosecutors brutally upheld these standards by supporting violet resistance to black families in white neighborhoods.
The Fair Housing Act of 1968 prohibited discrimination but did nothing to reverse residential patterns that had become deeply embedded . Yet recent outbursts of violence in cities like Baltimore, Ferguson, and Milwaukee show us precisely how the legacy of these earlier eras contributes to persistent racial unrest.
“The American landscape will never look the same to readers of this book.” comments Sherrilyn A. Ifill. Indeed. Rothstein’s invaluable examination demonstrates that only by relearning American urban history can we finally pave the way for the nation to remedy its unconstitutional past.
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Praise for
THE COLOR OF LAW
“Original and insightful …. The central premise of [Rothstein’s] argument…is that the Supreme Court has failed for decades to understand the extent to which residential racial segregation in our nation is not the result of private decisions by private individuals, but is the direct product of unconstitutional government action. The implications of his analysis are revolutionary.“
—GEOFFREY R. STONE, author of SEX AND THE CONSTITUTION
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“Through meticulous research and powerful human stories. Rothstein reveals a history of racism hiding in plain sight and compels us to confront the consequences of the intentional, decades-long governmental policies that created a segregated America.”
—SHERRILYN A. IFILL, President of the NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATIONAL FUND
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“Masterful…Rothstein documents the deep historical roots and the continuing practices in law and social custom that maintain a profoundly un-American system holding down the nation’s most disadvantaged citizens.”
—THOMAS B. EDSALL, author of THE AGE OF AUSTERITY
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“This wonderful, important book could not be more timely …With its clarity and breadth, the book is literally a page-turner.”
–FLORENCE ROISMAN, WILLIAM F. HAREY PROFESSOR OF LAW, INDIANA UNIVERSITY
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“One of those rare books that will be discussed and debated for many decades.”
—WILLIAM JULIUS WILSON, Author of THE TRULY DISADVANTAGED
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“At once analytical and passionate. The Color of Law discloses why segregation has persisted, even deepened, in the post-civil rights era, and thoughtfully proposes how remedies might be pursued. A must-read.”
—IRA KATZNELSON. Author of the BANCROFT PRIZE-WINNING FEAR ITSELF
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from the cover
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