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

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

by Richard Rothstein

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History & Foreign Affairs

Near Detroit, a developer built a wall between a white development and a Black neighborhood to win federal backing. Rothstein shows you how ordinary that was, from racial zoning and segregated public housing to court-enforced covenants, and argues segregation written into regulation is a constitutional wrong government must remedy.

Core ideas
  • National, not Southern: The FHA, created in 1934, insured all-white suburbs like Levittown on condition of racial covenants, and liberal administrations like FDR's carried the policy too.
  • The wealth gap: Black incomes average about 60 percent of white incomes but Black wealth about 5 percent, largely from exclusion from suburban homeownership in the 1940s through 60s.
  • Contested emphasis: Richard Walker, writing in Jacobin, argues the book overemphasizes federal policy relative to other forces.
Published2017
Pages368
ISBN9781631492853
ReadApr 2023

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