Episode 2: Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law

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Prof. Sachs speaks with historian Richard Rothstein about his groundbreaking history of the modern American metropolis, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, in which Rothstein explodes the myth that America’s cities came to be racially divided through individual prejudices, income differences, or the actions of private institutions. Rather, he makes clear that it was the laws and policy decisions of local, state, and federal governments that actually promoted the discriminatory patterns that continue to affect Black Americans to this day.

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Footnotes:

• Richard Rothstein. (2020, Jan. 20). The Neighborhoods We Will Not Share. The New York Times.
• Richard Rothstein. (2020, Aug. 14). The Black Lives Next Door. The New York Times.
• Richard Rothstein. (2004), Modern Segregation.
• Federal Housing Administration (FHA)
• Levittown, NY
• Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution
• Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution
• Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution
• Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School Dist. No. 1, 551 U.S. 701 (2007)
• Braden v. United States :: 365 U.S. 431 (1961)
• Princeton’s decision to remove Woodrow Wilson’s name from its school of public policy and residential college
• The Warren Court (1953 – 1969)
• American Apartheid

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Shocking Federal Policy Hidden in Plain Sight

I was a child of 12 when my family moved from Norfolk, Virginia to a suburb in Northern California as described in this episode. It never occurred to me then or since to question or even examine the racial makeup of my neighborhood, school, church or other community attributes. I merely accepted them as they were and it never once crossed my mind that I was living in a community totally devoid of nonwhite individuals. Today at the age of 82 as I finish listening to this episode, I am confronting this reality for the very first time finding it absolutely shocking that I failed to notice this fact or wonder where all the black people were. I was never taught that they had been deliberately excluded from my community because they were considered to be less valuable than whites or that they in any way were less deserving of the right or ability to live in my town. I am thoroughly amazed that I never seemed to notice that I lived in a totally white world. How could I have missed that?