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The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
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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
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Jun 18, 2017
Martha Anne Toll
added it
Could everybody please read this ? It's an essential history of America's state sponsored history of race discrimination in housing.
Here's my take on NPR's 2017 Book Concierge. https://apps.npr.org/best-books-2017/... ...more
Here's my take on NPR's 2017 Book Concierge. https://apps.npr.org/best-books-2017/... ...more
Some years ago, I lived for a time in Oak Park, Illinois. Oak Park has for decades been filled with rich white liberals, who live just across the street from a City of Chicago neighborhood, Austin, that is filled with poor black people. Yet, for some reason the citizens of Oak Park simply can’t fathom, people from Austin almost never move to Oak Park. Who can say why? Well, Richard Rothstein can. His book, “The Color of Law,” shows all the ways in which the racist government of Oak Park, and inn
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A succinct history of de jure segregation in America, The Color of Law argues that anti-Black governmental policies, not de facto segregation, led to the nation’s racially divided cities and suburbs. In terse prose, Richard Rothstein details the underhanded ways in which Republican and Democratic politicians alike imposed and enforced racial segregation across the U.S. throughout the twentieth century, from explicit racial zoning to state-sponsored violence and blockbusting. Rothstein lucidly co
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This is a deeply disturbing book. I think that if the US was any other country but the world’s sole superpower, there would be a call for international sanctions to be imposed upon it due to its treatment – historical and current – of its African American population. I’ve read a lot about this topic over the years, but it hadn’t occurred to me that housing in the US could best be described as a form of Apartheid. The law that most of this book documents is that which has applied to where African
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Richard Rothstein's deeply researched book about segregation in America is a timely and important read if one truly wants to sound the depths of anger and despair that are at the heart of the BLM movement and the general feeling of disenfranchisement in the African-American community. The evidence he cites is at every level of government - federal, state, local - and constant since Reconstruction on into the 80s and beyond. I found it imminently readable and informative and I highly recommend th
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This is an important book, but after a while, it felt very repetitive. This is worthy of note in itself, because the author effectively got his point across by frustrating me. He illustrated examples of segregation through housing and systems of law again and again and again, throughout American history. If this was tedious for me to read, it must be unfathomably tedious and disheartening to experience, to say the least. Books like this show in depressing detail how insidious racism is in societ
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Fuck the FHA (and the New Deal at large), fuck HUD, fuck the VA, fuck federal, state and local housing policies, fuck banks, fuck real estate brokers, fuck developers, fuck churches, fuck universities, fuck hospitals, fuck homeowners' associations and FUCK the police.
Fuck white people.
This book will make you angry. ...more
Fuck white people.
This book will make you angry. ...more
This is a well-researched book that outlines all the ways in which the government has used the long arms of the state to discriminate against blacks. I wish this book had been published when I was writing my book (named The Color of Money coincidentally) because I could have used some of this research. Some of this history was written in Crabgrass Frontier, but this is a book that needed to be written.
This is an excellent book with just a few difficulties. Some of it is within Rothstein's interpretations (mainly of the amendments) but most of the negative side of the book lies within the fact that it is an extremely difficult law term and concepts of their use "type" of read. And I am not a lawyer, although I do study lawyers' and judges' decisions in minutia word copy when they occur in real time. That's exactly why no Supreme Court judge should be evaluated for that position on one issue of
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my review: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_an...
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A very cogent explanation of US policies that have shaped and allowed housing segregations. This is a very cut and dry and sometimes repetitive argument, well presented and full of information. I feel like I both learned a ton and missed a ton, but am better informed for having read this book.
Incredibly eye-opening. I didn't know 50% of the stuff in here and I'm shocked schools don't teach more about this content.
Although it reads more like a textbook, because it's all factual, I didn't mind it. That said, if you're not in the mood for a strictly nonfiction book, I'd hold off on this one - but I would definitely still add it to your TBR list. ...more
Although it reads more like a textbook, because it's all factual, I didn't mind it. That said, if you're not in the mood for a strictly nonfiction book, I'd hold off on this one - but I would definitely still add it to your TBR list. ...more
This was a very powerful book that documents at both the big-picture and individual level how housing segregation policies were imposed across the United States. Other books I’ve read in the past couple of years have taken on pieces of this (and Ta Nahesi Coates’ Atlantic piece on reparations covers the issue at some length as well) but this is the best single book on the topic I’ve read thus far. The core argument, laid out in systematic detail, is that segregation was carried out by government
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This book is so incredibly frustrating. To be clear, I do not at all dispute the factual account that Rothstein provides, nor do I in anyway disagree that he has clearly documented a state-perpetrated injustice by the US government at federal, state, and local levels towards African-Americans. Although he conducted no original research, the synthesis Rothstein provides here is commendable.
Yet at the same time, I find his thesis unnecessarily narrow in both scope and vision. His focus on debunki ...more
Yet at the same time, I find his thesis unnecessarily narrow in both scope and vision. His focus on debunki ...more
This succinct history puts the lie to the idea that people congregate with others of their race mostly out of preference and custom, and that the material side effects thereof (wealth, educational opportunities, etc.) are blameless incidents for which we bear no collective responsibility. In a scant 200ish pages, Rothstein bludgeons you with anecdote after anecdote of federal, state, and local officials or policies that disrupted working and middle class white and black Americans' attempts to li
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Excellent. Eye opening read.
An important read for anyone interested in segregation, racism, and social justice. Lays out a compelling argument for how government action at the federal, state, and local level--and not simply the decisions of individual racists--have resulted in and perpetuated segregation in America.
Jan 17, 2021
Boston
added it
This book is a really good resource for segregation policies from after the end of slavery until present day. I’m not rating it, but I highly recommend it to anyone interested in learning more. Even as someone who has only surface level knowledge of mortgages and such, I was able to grasp most of the ideas, so if that’s a concern then you shouldn’t worry.
5* for the information and 3* for writing style
MUST-read book! Do not ignore what happened, rather learn from these mistakes and do the right thing in the future!
It took me almost two months to finish this book. There is so much resistance in accepting that one race can so strategically with a strong support of the law and government), so purposefully segregate American population for decades leading to pretty much unfixable damage where and creating an enourmous gap between "the whites" and "th ...more
MUST-read book! Do not ignore what happened, rather learn from these mistakes and do the right thing in the future!
It took me almost two months to finish this book. There is so much resistance in accepting that one race can so strategically with a strong support of the law and government), so purposefully segregate American population for decades leading to pretty much unfixable damage where and creating an enourmous gap between "the whites" and "th ...more
Makes a very convincing case that the racial segregation of American neighborhoods was the result of explicit US government action, rather than an accidental byproduct of people clustering with others like them. The book is structured as a legal argument in reaction to a series of Supreme Court decisions (e.g. 1973, 2007) that found that neighborhood segregation was de facto (by fact) rather than de jure (by law, i.e. government mandated), and therefore not the responsibility of government to fi
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This is a very informative book about a piece of American history that many of us don’t fully understand, even if we think we do: specifically, how we arrived at a place of extensive residential segregation, and how the government was way more involved in creating it than most Americans believe. The text is compact (217 pages, followed by 20 pages of FAQs and then extensive notes and bibliography) and a little bit dense, but it is accessible even if not quite as entertaining as much of the nonfi
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After hours about how government policies perpetuated racism, excuse me if I'm skeptical that the solution is more government.
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As a keen urbanist, I've been aware of issues like redlining, inequality in mortgage lending, "urban renewal," and replacing minority neighborhoods with highways for a long time. But this book still startled me with how brazen and official it all was. Although many Americans assume that neighborhood segregation and black poverty emerged through gradual processes, sleazy local institutions, or de facto preferences, Rothstein makes clear that they are in fact the result of de jure planning at all
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In the "Color of Law", Richard Rothstein shows that the use of discriminatory residential practices in the US, including 'racially' zoned housing areas, restrictive covenants, the creation of fear of loss of property values and at times violence have been in effect from the reconstruction period in the late 19th Century and continued into 21st Century. These practices have disproportionately affected African Americans, keeping their communities poor and leading to the creation of segregated neig
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This one is a bonafide Must Read! Highly recommend to everyone! If you’ve read The New Jim Crow or Evicted and felt like you’ve learned a lot, this one will open your eyes even more to the history & complexity of the moment we find ourselves in, how it got this way, and how we might just be able to unravel it if we have the will. This book takes us through how this country was segregated long after it was legal to do so, and how it’s become self perpetuating. I really can not recommend it enough
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"Half a century ago, the truth of de jure segregation was well known, but since then we have suppressed our historical memory and soothed ourselves into believing that it all happened by accident or by misguided private prejudice. Popularized by Supreme Court majorities from the 1970s to the present, the de facto segregation myth has no been adopted by conventional opinion, liberal and conservative alike."
This is such a deeply well-researched and unflinching look into the role that federal, stat ...more
This is such a deeply well-researched and unflinching look into the role that federal, stat ...more
Must read for any student of history.
5 Stars
Required reading. Between the years 1865 - 1965, we had legal apartheid in these United States. It was called Jim Crow. After 1965; we had illegal apartheid practices being upheld. If you believe that there is no racism, that we are all one big happy family, then this book is not for you. If you want to learn something; break out of your bubble, then read this book. These are facts. These are laws that are written in the books, to keep black folks right where they are. Too bad, many bucke ...more
Required reading. Between the years 1865 - 1965, we had legal apartheid in these United States. It was called Jim Crow. After 1965; we had illegal apartheid practices being upheld. If you believe that there is no racism, that we are all one big happy family, then this book is not for you. If you want to learn something; break out of your bubble, then read this book. These are facts. These are laws that are written in the books, to keep black folks right where they are. Too bad, many bucke ...more
This book may have been very dry and repetitive in the manner of writing but it’s also insightful in its subject matter, showing the myriad ways in which the federal, state and local governments used their laws explicitly and also provided cover for private enterprises, to discriminate against Black people when it came to housing, ensuring that they would never have the generational equity which had led to the rise of the white middle class, also leading to the current state of segregated housin
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This is, without a doubt, the single most important book of non-fiction I have ever read. I have felt, over the last ten days, alternately despondent, furious, embarrassed,ashamed, ignorant—both willfully and unconsciously—and, ultimately, broken-hearted. What I have learned about the systematic racism in this country goes far beyond what I thought I knew. And, for my ignorance, I am sorrier than I can ever say.
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“Today’s residential segregation in the North, South, Midwest, and West is not the unintended consequence of individual choices and of otherwise well-meaning law or regulation but of unhidden public policy that explicitly segregated every metropolitan area in the United States.”
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“In 1944, the G.I. Bill was adopted to support returning servicemen. The VA not only denied African Americans the mortgage subsidies to which they were entitled but frequently restricted education and training to lower-level jobs for African Americans who were qualified to acquire greater skills.”
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