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

Leading housing policy expert Richard Rothstein dispels the myth that racial segregation in American cities resulted from de facto segregation—that is, from personal prejudices, disparities in income, or the actions of private organisations like banks and real estate companies—in this ground-breaking history of the modern American metropolis. The Colour of Law, on the other hand, unequivocally demonstrates that the laws and policies enacted by municipal, state, and federal governments—known as de jure segregation—were what really encouraged the discriminatory practises that persist to this day.

Rothstein chronicles nothing less than an untold story that begins in the 1920s, showing how this process of de jure segregation began with explicit racial zoning, as millions of African Americans moved in a great historical migration from the south to the north. Through astounding revelations and extensive research that Ta-Nehisi Coates has praised as "brilliant" (The Atlantic).

Many of the destitute neighbourhoods we know now were founded by the very bad urban planning of the 1950s, as Jane Jacobs demonstrated in her seminal work The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Now, Rothstein deepens our comprehension of this history by demonstrating how official segregation in public housing and the dismantling of integrated neighbourhoods were caused by government policy. Urban neighbourhoods progressively degraded, but government incentives for builders on the condition that no houses be sold to African Americans drove the massive American suburbanization of the post-World War II period. Lastly, Rothstein demonstrates how violent opposition to black families in white neighbourhoods was encouraged by police and prosecutors, who mercilessly enforced these norms.

The 1968 Fair Housing Act forbade discrimination in the future, but it did nothing to change deeply ingrained residential patterns. However, recent violent episodes in places like Ferguson, Minneapolis, and Baltimore demonstrate to us just how much the history of these past periods continues to fuel racial discontent. President of the NAACP Legal Defence Fund Shirley Ifill said, "Readers of this important book will never look the same" because Rothstein's invaluable analysis demonstrates that only by relearning this history will we be able to finally pave the way for the country to right its unconstitutional past.