The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America

by Richard Rothstein

until the last quarter of the twentieth century, racially explicit policies of federal, state, and local governments defined where whites and African Americans should live.

Segregation by intentional government action is not de facto. Rather, it is what courts call de jure: segregation by law and public policy.

By failing to recognize that we now live with the severe, enduring effects of de jure segregation, we avoid confronting our constitutional obligation to reverse it.