9/7/2023 0 Comments Color lines inc![]() ![]() The central premise of his argument, which calls for a fundamental reexamination of American constitutional law, 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. “Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law offers an original and insightful explanation of how government policy in the United States intentionally promoted and enforced residential racial segregation. Based on careful analyses of multiple historical documents, Rothstein has presented what I consider to be the most forceful argument ever published on how federal, state and local governments gave rise to and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, author of The Truly Disadvantaged) “Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law is one of those rare books that will be discussed and debated for many decades. What readers of The Color of Law have written: It is sadly the story of America in all of its municipalities, large and small, liberal and reactionary.Īs William Julius Wilson has stated: “ The Color of Law is one of those rare books that will be discussed and debated for many decades.” The Color of Law is not a tale of Red versus Blue states. So the structural conditions established by 20th century federal policy endure to this day.Īt every step of the way, Rothstein demonstrates, the government and our courts upheld racist policies to maintain the separation of whites and blacks-leading to the powder keg that has defined Ferguson, Baltimore, Charleston, and Chicago. While the Fair Housing Act of 1968 provided modest enforcement to prevent future discrimination, it did nothing to reverse or undo a century’s worth of state-sanctioned violations of the Bill of Rights, particularly the Thirteenth Amendment which banned treating former slaves as second-class citizens. The impact has been devastating for generations of African-Americans who were denied the right to live where they wanted to live, and raise and school their children where they could flourish most successfully. Yet, as Rothstein breaks down in case after case, private activity could not have imposed segregation without explicit government policies ( de jure segregation) designed to ensure the separation of African Americans from whites.Ī former columnist for the New York Times and a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute, as well as a Fellow at the Thurgood Marshall Institute of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Rothstein has spent years documenting the evidence that government not merely ignored discriminatory practices in the residential sphere, but promoted them. This is what is commonly known as “ de facto segregation,” practices that were the outcome of private activity, not law or explicit public policy. To scholars and social critics, the racial segregation of our neighborhoods has long been viewed as a manifestation of unscrupulous real estate agents, unethical mortgage lenders, and exclusionary covenants working outside the law. ![]() Richard Rothstein in conversation with Ta-Nehisi Coates.Richard Rothstein discusses The Color of Law on Fresh Air.The Color of Law was designated one of ten finalists on the National Book Awards’ long list for the best nonfiction book of 2017. Rothstein was a panelist on an EPI webinar, July 9, 2020, discussing his book and Reconstruction 2020: Valuing Black Lives and Economic Opportunities for All. In The Color of Law (published by Liveright in May 2017), Richard Rothstein argues with exacting precision and fascinating insight how segregation in America-the incessant kind that continues to dog our major cities and has contributed to so much recent social strife-is the byproduct of explicit government policies at the local, state, and federal levels.
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