The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America *(ebook)
New York Times Bestseller • Notable Book of the Year • Editors' Choice Selection One of Bill Gates’ “Amazing Books” of the Year One of Publishers Weekly’s 10 Best Books of the Year Longlisted for the National Book Award for Nonfiction An NPR Best Book of the Year Winner of the Hillman Prize for Nonfiction Gold Winner • California Book Award (Nonfiction) Finalist • Los Angeles Times Book Prize (History) Finalist • Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize This “powerful and disturbing history” exposes how American governments deliberately imposed racial segregation on metropolitan areas nationwide (New York Times Book Review). Widely heralded as a “masterful” (Washington Post) and “essential” (Slate) history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law offers “the most forceful argument ever published on how federal, state, and local governments gave rise to and reinforced neighborhood segregation” (William Julius Wilson). Exploding the myth of de facto segregation arising from private prejudice or the unintended consequences of economic forces, Rothstein describes how the American government systematically imposed residential segregation: with undisguised racial zoning; public housing that purposefully segregated previously mixed communities; subsidies for builders to create whites-only suburbs; tax exemptions for institutions that enforced segregation; and support for violent resistance to African Americans in white neighborhoods. A groundbreaking, “virtually indispensable” study that has already transformed our understanding of twentieth-century urban history (Chicago Daily Observer), The Color of Law forces us to face the obligation to remedy our unconstitutional past. 13 illustrations Read more
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Why Must Read The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America?
Finally, somebody takes the time to confirm what many of us had always suspected, that is was the law that prevented integration. I grew up one of the all black communities the author talked about. Made up of temporary housing left over the WW2. My Father a returning war vet, tried, again and again, to get a VA loan to get a house the only places where the houses were, the white communities where he watched white vets get their loans and move out years before. Finally my parents saved their money and checked out several places (By then fair housing was the law in California but it did nothing about federal law forbidding financing), they found a white owner not only willing to sell but loaned them part of the down payment (this was in the mid 60's, 20 years after the end of WW2). Not only did that owner catch flack but the other white neighbors were not happy with us moving in, one of whom was an officer...in the German army during the war(so an African-American vet can't move into a neighborhood that a former enemy can - just because he's white?). We were "lucky" there was no violence, many neighbors just ostracized us, and a few wanted to buy us out. Other Black families who moved out found themselves all put into the same block. Imagine in the 60's in an era where there was no internet, faxes, bulletin boards, nor large realtors like Century 21. Realtors were all local, and territorial and yet they all decided to forgo competition and agreed to block place all the black families in one block where they can be "monitored". Every time I hear someone spread that myth "Oh Black people don't want to move into white neighborhoods because they love being among their own" I straighten them out, African Americans never had a choice!
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