The Color of Law

A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America

By: Richard Rothstein

Narrated by: Adam Grupper

In this groundbreaking history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein, a leading authority on housing policy, explodes the myth that America's cities came to be racially divided through de facto segregation - that is, through individual prejudices, income differences, or the actions of private institutions like banks and real estate agencies. Rather, The Color of Law incontrovertibly makes clear that it was de jure segregation - the laws and policy decisions passed by local, state, and federal governments - that actually promoted the discriminatory patterns that continue to this day.

Through extraordinary revelations and extensive research that Ta-Nehisi Coates has lauded as "brilliant" (The Atlantic), Rothstein comes to chronicle 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.

As Jane Jacobs established in her classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities, it was the deeply flawed urban planning of the 1950s that created many of the impoverished neighborhoods we know. Now, Rothstein expands our understanding of this history, showing how government policies led to the creation of officially segregated public housing and the demolition of previously integrated neighborhoods. While urban areas rapidly deteriorated, the great American suburbanization of the post-World War II years was spurred on by federal subsidies for builders on the condition that no homes be sold to African Americans. Finally, Rothstein shows how police and prosecutors brutally upheld these standards by supporting violent resistance to Black families in White neighborhoods.

The Fair Housing Act of 1968 prohibited future discrimination but did nothing to reverse residential patterns that had become deeply embedded. Yet recent outbursts of violence in cities like Baltimore, Ferguson, and Minneapolis show us precisely how the legacy of these earlier eras contributes to persistent racial unrest. Rothstein's invaluable examination shows that only by relearning this history can we finally pave the way for the nation to remedy its unconstitutional past.

©2017 Richard Rothstein (P)2017 Recorded Books

Critic reviews

"With confidence and clarity, narrator Adam Grupper describes discriminatory laws governing the actions of the Federal Housing Administration, Department of Education, Department of Veterans Affairs, and other government agencies that have shaped African-Americans' ability to gain wealth, health, education, and voting power, not merely in the past but in the present day.... The Color of Law is compelling and convincing - and maybe even essential." (AudioFile)

It is clear that poverty is not an accident.

I hope that a number of educators will read this book and stop perpetuating myth that low-income African-American Children and Families are somehow incapable of overcoming the poverty and blighted conditions that they were born into. With the correct information, attitude and out look hope is possible, progress can only be made on facts not fiction.

What the...

I feel like I made it to a new level of "woke" after reading this book. It is absolutely disgusting and shocking what we continued and continue to do to oppress people of color.
I love that the author offered solutions for how to right this HUGE and deliberate wrong. The solutions or "remedies" as he calls them, are big and sweeping and unfortunately I don't think I'll see that in my lifetime.
I am glad I have a much better understanding of the ways we used and abused or simply ignored laws to continually and purposefully enforce segregation and poverty among black people.

A Question of Fairness

As an army brat, my family and I travelled throughout the country and I remember asking my parents why blacks were nearly always congregated in specific areas? I was born in 1954, so I’d say my observation became apparent about age nine or ten around the time of the voting rights and civil rights acts. If the constitution is this framework for a just society then government sanctioned continuation of policies clearly outlawed by the fourteenth amendment is patently unfair.

Very informative

I found the narration to be well delivered and the overall premise of the book to be very enlightening. It covers a largely overlooked piece of the puzzle and explains much of not only the stereotypes of today towards people of color, but how they came to be and the origins of systemic segregation behind them.

Best book on segregation of housing in America

This is best book I have read describing segregation of housing in America. It hit home as I realized I grew up 1/2 block away from the redline in the 1960's and 70's. There were no black people I know that lived in the segregated neighborhood of North Oakland.