Luke Miller
October 25, 2017
AfAmSt 363
The Color of Law Book Review
In Richard Rothstein’s book, The Color of Law, he argues that de jure segregation, segregation by law and public policy, explains how and where people of color, specifically Black people, live in the United States of America. This belief, that African Americans are still segregated due to policies implemented by the American government, is in direct contest with the prevailing view by U.S. officials (specifically Supreme Court Justices) that any segregation still withstanding in this country is a result of de facto segregation, or segregation by choice. Rothstein argues against this by saying, “Today’s residential segregation….is not the unintended consequence of individual choices….but of unhidden public policy that explicitly segregated every metropolitan area in the United States” (preface VII). Throughout the book, he provides evidence to this argument. He even goes as far as to say that “many aspects of de jure segregation were once well known, but we have suppressed memories of this history because addressing it seems too daunting” (Rothstein p. 241). This quote of his suggests that not only has this discussion been purposefully cast aside, but that even after reading this book it will still be daunting and difficult to ameliorate the conditions of low-income people of color that time has since exacerbated and society has since forgotten. Throughout this book, Rothstein conveys that there are structural barriers still in place that our government has been ignoring or at least has forgotten. Through this, and without him actually defining the term “racism,” one can see that Rothstein views racism as a specific form of government that has allowed whites to flourish at the expense of African Americans. From early 20th century redlining (or the purposeful color-coding of different ethnic and racial neighborhoods by real estate developers and banks which made it difficult or impossible to get a housing loan by African Americans) to the exclusion of access and then segregation of public housing units separating African Americans and whites, the U.S. government has specifically targeted and undermined the ability of African Americans to get ahead. Though these specific policies are nearly a century old and are now illegal, their adverse effects have persisted generational poverty within the African American community—something that de facto segregation believers either dismiss or ignore. At a time when white Americans were buying their own homes and moving to the suburbs in droves (something that increased their wealth generationally), African Americans were stuck in poorer housing stock in segregated urban neighborhoods. Even after the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which made it illegal for home sellers to discriminate against potential homebuyers, real estate agents developed ways to get around this by steering potential African American homebuyers away from certain areas. This inability to access the wealth afforded to white Americans, Rothstein argues, is a key determinant as to why poverty is still so pervasive in the African American community. The Color of Law discusses all of this and more in order to convey that how and where people of color, specifically Black people, live is directly related to unresolved government housing policies. Therefore, Rothstein uses racism (though, without defining the term) as a concept that informs the United States’ certain form of government. By seeing racism as a certain form of government, Rothstein bolsters the primary strength of The Color of Law, which is its ability to point out how ingrained the belief of de facto segregation currently is in our country. It does this specifically by pointing out key flaws in Supreme Court decisions around housing policy and the effects those policies have had on American communities. By emphasizing opinions that promoted the de facto view of American segregation made by Justices Kennedy and Roberts, Rothstein successfully points out multiple flaws in their arguments. For example, in the preface Rothstein points out that Chief Justice John Roberts continued a history of Supreme Court belief in de facto segregation by discussing Roberts’ opinion which prohibited Louisville and Seattle school districts from listing a student’s race in order to push forward integration efforts. By pointing out these flaws, Rothstein provides future court cases the ability to question these assumptions in a way they have not been able to before. If housing advocates, lawyers, and even Supreme Court justices read this book, there may be a chance for stronger anti-de jure segregation policies. As Rothstein himself admits in his Frequently Asked Questions section, it may be some time before any positive result comes out of this book, but his eloquence and facts can quickly call into question any other de facto segregation beliefs. While his emphasis on de jure segregation is this book’s strength, its primary weakness is its last chapter. Entitled Considering Fixes, Rothstein writes this chapter without deep analysis on his continuous suggestion that in order to curb racial segregation the United States must, in part, integrate the suburbs. While at face value this suggestion seems acceptable and justifiable, the true impact of it may have far worse repercussions for impoverished people of color than if they were to live in an urban environment. This book does not delve into the unsustainability of suburban living for even those that can easily afford to live this way, nor does it focus on gentrification and its effects on people of color who want to live in an urban environment. The following paragraphs will attempt to explain why this is the primary weakness of this book. To begin, it is incredibly difficult for anyone, no matter their race, class, gender, or other defining characteristic, to live a suburban lifestyle without a car. Places designed after World War II were specifically designed for this luxury item’s use and its use only. While some suburbs came into existence prior to World War II, such as the towns of Evanston and Oak Park, Illinois, and are therefore still built to walkable specifications, many suburbs and subdivisions were built after the war with the car in mind. If government programs and initiatives, such as former-President Obama’s push to affirmatively further fair housing (which Rothstein discusses as a good way to integrate the suburbs in Considering Fixes), push poor people of color into the suburbs, where public transit to necessary jobs is either non-existent or unreliable, where it can be nearly impossible to gather the necessary resources to survive without the means of a car (and the proper maintenance of this luxury item), where that car-dependent lifestyle leads to higher obesity rates and health risks due to a lack of consistent exercise (which walking in an urban environment would have brought), this belief that the government must integrate the suburbs may lead to more harm than good for low-income people of color. Also in this chapter, Rothstein advocates that the federal government should buy up homes in intentionally segregated suburbs like Levittown specifically for qualifying African Americans in order to integrate those suburbs. As mentioned above, this could have adverse effects that Rothstein has not considered, though the good intention is clear. Rothstein also believes that “the most important disadvantage [for middle-class African Americans] is that they are frequently adjacent to low-income communities.” And that “Black middle-class adolescents living in such close proximity to ghettos must resist the lure of gangs and of alienated behavior if they aspire to duplicate their parents’ middle-class status.” Here, Rothstein seems to not be advocating for racial integration but instead for stricter economic segregation. From this, it seems that Rothstein focuses more on getting African Americans out of poor neighborhoods rather than emphasizing ways to improve the neighborhoods they are currently in. He advocates for incentives for low-income African Americans who could not otherwise afford to leave minority neighborhoods to indeed do so. He advocates for incentives that result in the non-forced removal of people of color from their current neighborhoods rather than for incentives that encourage upward mobility within those neighborhoods. What he advocates for leads not to sustained integration, but to perhaps yet another mass shift in how and where Americans live. Altogether this chapter, though necessary in order to bring the story full-circle, seems like an after-thought. Rothstein more so admits this on page 198 when he writes, “I hesitate to offer suggestions about desegregation policies and remedies because, imprecise and incomplete though they may be, remedies are inconceivable as long as citizens, whatever their political views, continue to accept the myth of de facto segregation” (Rothstein p. 198). If more work had gone into this chapter, and specifically on housing policy recommendations, it could have been much stronger. In his book, How to Kill a City: gentrification, inequality, and the fight for the neighborhood, Peter Moskowitz writes in agreement with Rothstein that Black Americans are poorer and less likely to achieve success than whites specifically because of past housing policies, but they disagree with what to do about it now. While Rothstein advocates for integration of predominately white spaces, Moskowitz advocates for more resources devoted to specifically Black and Brown spaces. In Moskowitz’ view, upper-middle class white folks are pricing out Black and Brown people from their neighborhoods and so the government should give Black and Brown people incentives to be able to stay and make better the place they currently live. Rothstein, on the other hand, seems to primarily advocate for Black and Brown families to follow white families into the suburbs or wherever they are in order to integrate those suburbs and other spaces. While Moskowitz believes in empowering existing communities, Rothstein vies for their abandonment, or at least incentivizes their continued decline. Rothstein also barely discusses gentrification, or the pushing of poorer people out of urban neighborhoods by upper-middle class people and businesses, which is what Moskowitz’ book is primarily about. With Rothstein’s seemingly-dated perception that urban spaces are bad for people and that Black and Brown people specifically should move out, he is actually encouraging gentrification since richer white people are rediscovering the benefits of city-living. Rothstein must focus more on policies that lift people of color up within their current communities because they may not have as much of an ability to do so in the suburbs. In another urban-oriented book, Thoughts on Building Strong Towns, Charles Marohn Jr. advocates for a much more radical shift in resources away from predominately white suburbs. This is not because of their racial makeup in particular, but because of what he views as the unsustainability of their current set up. Marohn views suburbs, specifically automobile-oriented suburbs, as a half-century-long nationwide experiment that is the direct cause of much of the economic and social issues currently facing our country. Marohn advocates for the removal of suburb-creating government incentives, something Rothstein promotes, and pushes for urbanizing incentives instead. The main reason Marohn advocates for suburb removal is because they promote stagnation by their very design. While urban spaces can mix uses and change shape over time, suburban spaces are designed to be single use only and never change with the times. According to Marohn, for someone like Rothstein to advocate for suburban expansion or at least integration is highly dangerous for the continued security of each community and for the poor, specifically. His plan to disincentivize suburban living, whether achievable or not, would incentivize the removal of suburbs completely and promote integration by way of limiting the ability for another kind of “white flight” since no government subsidies would be used in such exclusive ways in his scenario. Though indeed radical, Marohn provides Rothstein with another avenue away from suburbanizing and therefore harming people of color. To put Rothstein in context with the journal article, The Diversity of Integration in a Multiethnic Metropolis: Exploring What Whites, African Americans, and Latinos Imagine, Krysan et al. studies what white, Black, and Latino Americans consider to be their ideal neighborhood racial makeup. She and her colleagues found that each group desired an integrated neighborhood, something that Rothstein stated as well, but how integrated that neighborhood would be changed greatly from group to group. The Black, white, and Latino participants were asked to select the percentages of whites, Asians, Blacks, Latinos, and Arab Americans they wished to have in their ideal neighborhood. From this, Krysan et al. not only found interesting racial preference percentage differences, they also found an unmistakable racial hierarchy in the U.S. that each group identified. This hierarchy went from whites on top to Asians to Latinos and then Arab Americans and African Americans at the bottom. Whites never wanted to be in a neighborhood in which they were the minority. Adding data like this to his book, may have further strengthened Rothstein’s argument that even if government officials recognize de jure segregation still persists, they worry the implications of admitting such a thing since whites have very strong preferences as to who they live near. In another journal article, City Lines, County Lines, Color Lines: The Relationship between School and Housing Segregation in Four Southern Metro Areas, Genevieve Siegel-Hawley found that school district borders can have as much effect in segregating communities as restrictive housing policies. While many people choose to live in the suburbs specifically for their children’s sake, by identifying that suburban school districts tend to be of a higher quality, they are also perpetuating racial strife since school districts are funded by property taxes. This is an issue particularly because real estate agents view the presence of people of color as a negative for property values, so with more people of color, the lower the property value, the less money the school gets and the worse the quality is. This was a matter completely overlooked by Rothstein to explain why segregation persists in the U.S. He may have overlooked this perhaps because his focus was specifically on housing policy, but considering the relationship between school districts and housing policy, and that he does mention Louisville and Seattle school district efforts to integrate their schools, it should have been included in his book. In conclusion, Rothstein’s Color of Law rediscovered an important facet in the fight against racial segregation by emphasizing how de jure segregating housing policies have continued to weigh on the futures of people of color, specifically African Americans. Rothstein uses the concept of racism to understand the United States’ specific form of government which has historically, as outlined in his book, bolstered the wealth and wellbeing of white Americans while either directly hurting or in the least ignoring the efforts of African Americans to find the same wealth and wellbeing. He successfully argues that American courts and laws have been ignoring de jure segregation for years and have instead blamed African Americans for de facto segregating by arguing that African Americans would rather live in poorer conditions in order to be near others like them. With the help of this book, this line of thinking may be challenged in the coming future. However, his proposed fixes at the end of the book lack clarity and, if followed, may lead to a worse off fate for low-income people of color. As he freely admits, his proposals are not the emphasis of this book and that his primary goal for this book was to shed light on the impact segregation by law has had and continues to have on this country, and that this book was not intended as a promoter of any specific policies. However, he still provides his own suggestions even after saying they are not the crux of his writing, which still leads them to be criticized. On page 226, Rothstein writes, “African Americans whose opportunities have been limited because their families were locked in ghettos should be given some compensation in the form of access to jobs and educations that their forebears were denied.” This sentence could have been the end of the book, but yet he chose to write an entire chapter on specific policy positions and admit that they are not well thought out. Reading Moskowitz, Marohn, Krysan, and/or Siegel-Hawley could have led Rothstein to write a stronger ending (or in Siegel-Hawley’s case a stronger middle) which would have made for a better book all around. Altogether, Rothstein’s The Color of Law should be cited often and read aloud, but readers can skip the last chapter.
Bibliography
Krysan, M., Carter, C., & Van Londen, M. (2017). THE DIVERSITY OF INTEGRATION IN A MULTIETHNIC METROPOLIS: Exploring What Whites, African Americans, and Latinos Imagine. Du Bois Review, (Spring), 35-71. Retrieved October 25, 2017, from https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/du-bois-review-social- science-research-on-race/article/diversity-of-integration-in-a-multiethnic- metropolis/0DA91857701752DED7DBD53E30486E3B/core-reader.
Marohn, C. L. (2016). Thoughts on building strong towns. Lexington, KY: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.
Moskowitz, P. (2017). How to kill a city: gentrification, inequality, and the fight for the neighborhood. New York, NY: Nation Books.
Rothstein, R. (2017). COLOR OF LAW: a forgotten history of how our government segregated America. S.l.: LIVERIGHT PUBLISHING CORP.
Siegel-Hawley, G. (2013). City Lines, County Lines, Color Lines: The Relationship between School and Housing Segregation in Four Southern Metro Areas. Teachers College Record. Retrieved October 25, 2017, from http://www.tcrecord.org/Content.asp?ContentId=16988