The Color of Law
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: Liverlight; Liveright Publishing Corporation
Published: 2017
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Format: Electronic resource
ISBN-13: 9781631492860
Copyright date: 2017
First sentence: WHEN, FROM 2014 TO 2016, riots in places like Ferguson, Baltimore, Milwaukee, or Charlotte captured our attention, most of us thought we knew how these segregated neighborhoods, with their crime, violence, anger, and poverty came to be.
Description: 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.
Table of contents: title: If San Francisco, then everywhere? --; title: Public housing, black ghettos --; title: Racial zoning --; title: "Own your own home" --; title: Private agreements, government enforcement --; title: White flight --; title: IRS support and compliant regulators --; title: Local tactics --; title: State-sanctioned violence --; title: Suppressed incomes --; title: Looking forward, looking back --; title: Considering fixes --; title: Epilogue.