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

by Richard Rothstein

Yet horrific though our treatment of Mexican immigrants and Puerto Ricans has sometimes been, it is not comparable to our treatment of African Americans. In many communities, restrictive covenants prohibited sales not only to African Americans but also to Hispanics (and frequently to Jews, the Irish, Asians, and others deemed “non-Caucasians”). Yet judges often deemed Mexican Americans to be “Caucasians” and not subject to exclusion by restrictive covenants. As the twentieth century progressed, property and residency restrictions mostly faded away for all except African Americans. Only African Americans have been systematically and unconstitutionally segregated for such a long period, and with such thorough repression, that their condition requires an aggressive constitutional remedy.