The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein. Richard is a Distinguished Fellow of the Economic Poliy Institute, Senior Fellow (emeritus) at the Thurgood Marshall Institute of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and Senior Fellow at the Haas Institute at Berkeley.
This book is simply a must read in order to understand our historical application of de jure segregation. This is certainly almost never discussed, certainly not in public as a history of American segregation since the 1900s. Above all, this book will (and should) shock you to understand, perhaps for the first time a well hidden history of America.
The Color of Law documents de jure segregation actually promoted several discriminatory patterns that continue to this day. As a result, readers can fully understand, how legacy Federal, State, and Local laws empowered segregation. This is never an easy subject to study.
In fact, through extremely well documented research, Richard addresses that de facto segregation is myth. We should fully understand this in the context of de jure segregation:
myth | miTH | noun
A traditional story that focus on an early history of a people or explaining social phenomenon.
A widely held but false belief.
De jure segregation actually created government-segregated public housing, schools and neighborhoods. At the same time, this resulted in the demolition of previously integrated neighborhoods.
Richard clearly draws a line to racist politicians and civil servants who controlled how cities were expanding in the 1920s. Pulling the levers, they clearly wanted urban areas to slowly die. At the same time, post-World War II America began creating immense changes to population shifts including the suburbanization of large cities.
De jure versus de facto segregation
Federal subsidies distributed to home builders held specific conditions: no homes could be sold to African Americans. We can still see this legacy policy today along neighborhoods branded as covenants. These are nothing more than local ‘committees’ that leveraged local governments to enforce generational segregation.
In addition, Richard documents how state and local police and prosecutors used violence to ensure no black families moved into white neighborhoods. The most well known example is Levittown Pennsylvania. In addition, the established white city planners leverages local police to instill fear into those white communities:
In a 1962 Saturday Evening Post article, an agent (using the pseudonym “Norris Vitchek”) claimed to have arranged house burglaries in white communities to scare neighbors into believing that their communities were becoming unsafe.
p. 172
De jure versus de facto segregation
The most interesting discovery for every reader is the rare (and misunderstood) legal term de jure. Specifically the application to segregation, this addresses very old and widespread laws (and policies) at the federal, state and local levels of government since the early 1920s. De jure segregation resulted in the government promotion of discriminatory patterns that exist to this day.
However, de facto segregation differs. This involves individual prejudices and income differences including the controlling actions of real estate companies and banks.
Admittedly, this is also found within The Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944. Known as the G.I. Bill, this law delivered benefits for some returning World War II veterans. Richard painstakingly reveals how African American veterans, who served heroically across Europe were denied these benefits. The Color of Law reveals how this law among so many others at the time, were exploiting those very veterans who fought to save our country.
De jure segregation is stitched widely into society
Several cities sued banks because of the enormous devastation that the foreclosure crisis imposed on African Americans. A case that the City of Memphis brought against Wells Fargo Bank was supported by affidavits of bank employees stating that they referred to subprime loans as “ghetto loans.”
Bank superiors instructed their marketing staff to target solicitation to heavily African American zip codes, because residents there were being exploited. A sales group sought out elderly African Americans, believing they were particularly susceptible to pressure to take out high-cost loans.
p. 198
I am thinking of Hello World: Being Human in the Age of Algorithms by Hannah Fry. Although you would not first think algorithms could address America’s racist history. However, Hannah tells the story of Robert Morris. A powerful New York urban planner (and known racist) he designed the bridges around Jones Beach. As a result, underpass height is just nine feet tall. Therefore, these underpasses blocked buses bringing blacks and hispanics attempting to visit the beach. This segregation is embedded across many elements of American society:
Federal interstate highways buttressed segregation in cities across the country. In 1956, the Florida State Road Department routed I-95 to do what Miami’s unconstitutional zoning ordinance had intended but failed to accomplish two decades earlier: clear African Americans from an area adjacent to downtown….When the highway was eventually completed in the mid-1960s, it had reduced a community of 40,000 African Americans to 8,000.
p. 224
A must read book to understand our history
Richard’s work is certainly on par with The Pentagon Papers, and Too Big to Fail, major works of research that bring to light what has been strategically hidden.
In conclusion, if you have not been paying attention to this American history, you are not alone. The Color of Law strikes an amazingly difficult gut punch to anyone. And it should be. Clearly, if our country can contrive horrific segregation laws, then it can also hide this history in plain sight.
It would certainly be foolish to even think that by removing those signs that all associated racist beliefs and views evaporated at the snap of your finger.
Have you overlooked this history? Maybe it was not intentional on your part. You certainly cannot read this book and walk away knowing that segregation lingers across our country. This addresses a very painful history indeed.
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