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

Governmental policy deliberately suppressed the income of African Americans. These policies contributed to de jure segregation. There is a common narrative that African Americans can’t afford to live in predominately White areas. Low incomes are the problem, not de jure segregation. The solution to racial segregation is education. Once African Americans have higher levels of education, they will move into better neighborhoods. However, most people remain in the same income class as their parents. The standard of living has increased, but the relative income of individuals remains relatively fixed. A number of methods were used to depress African American economic growth. The roots of this issue date back to slavery, when enslaved people were denied access to the labor market and unable to save money. The denial of access continued after the abolition of slavery, and sharecropping perpetuated indentured servitude. Arrests and fines for petty infractions were another common method of indebting African Americans.

Higher expenses in predominately African American neighborhoods reflected the long-term impact of government action. Smaller disposable incomes and lower savings depressed generational wealth. African Americans had higher property tax burdens while some municipalities taxed African Americans at higher rates. Excessive taxation contributed to the decline of neighborhoods as African Americans had less income to put into maintaining their property. African Americans were also charged higher rents than White renters due to limited housing supply.

During World War II, African American workers sought jobs in the war industry, migrating from all over the country. The government’s active role in repressing wages was devastating. African Americans were only hired for the lowest-paying jobs, and many unions excluded African American workers. As White workers gained more job security and higher wages, African American wages stagnated. Whites-only unions were not banned by the National Labor Relations Board until 1964.

Between 1957 and 1968, several laws were adopted by Congress that prohibited racial discrimination in voting, employment, public accommodations, and transportation. While these laws were largely successful, ending segregation in housing was more difficult. In 1962 an executive order by President Kennedy sought to prevent federal agencies from financing residential segregation. In 1966 President Lyndon Johnson’s housing discrimination bill failed to pass in the Senate. Although the Fair Housing Act was implemented in 1968, even 50 years later, racial segregation in housing still persists.

Racial segregation is difficult to undo for several reasons. Economic status is replicated in the next generation, and depressed incomes in African American families has become a multigenerational problem. Suburban housing has increased in value over the years, building wealth in White working- and middle-class families. Since African Americans do not typically have the same assets, the wealth gap has increased. Homes outside of Black urban neighborhoods are now prohibitively expensive to many African American working- and middle-class families. Government programs continue to implicitly enforce segregation.

De jure segregation has had an enormous impact on American society. Residential segregation has disadvantaged generations of African American families; it has also increased racial and social conflict. Ghettos are testaments to inequality and structural racism. Racial segregation also makes society less innovative and creative. Students who go to segregated schools do not learn how to navigate our diverse society. High average achievement is incredibly difficult to realize in a low-income, segregated school located in a segregated neighborhood. Segregation also gives White people an unrealistic sense of their superiority. Students must be taught the history of de jure segregation and the inequality it reinforced. Today, students are taught a history that hides the active role governments played in residential segregation. Until this changes, attitudes toward integration will not shift.

In the 1970s Housing and Urban Development Secretary George Romney sought to implement a program called Open Communities that denied federal funds to suburbs that hadn’t revised exclusionary zoning laws. The public backlash to the program led President Nixon to intervene and Romney to repudiate his plan; Romney was eventually removed from office. A 2015 provision implemented by the Obama administration required jurisdictions that receive federal funds to assess their concentrations of disadvantaged populations and to identify goals to remedy segregation. However, there were no actionable outcomes if communities failed to “affirmatively further” their suburbs (200). Romney’s plan was introduced at a moment of high visibility for issues of racial segregation due to the civil rights movement. By 2015, Americans were less familiar with the effects and extent of de jure segregation.

The chapter concludes by returning to Frank and Rosa Lee Stevenson, who raised three daughters in a segregated neighborhood in Richmond. They attended Verde Elementary School, where student performance was very low. Schools were segregated in a reflection of housing policies. Today, all students receive subsidized lunches, and 58% of the students have parents who did not complete high school, pointing to the ongoing costs of segregated housing. The Stevenson children attended high schools that focused on manual training. Rothstein reflects on how these limited opportunities will affect Frank Stevenson’s grandchildren. He challenges readers to wonder how we might fulfill our obligation to correct the inequality that resulted from years of lost opportunities.

Rothstein concludes that racial segregation in housing was driven by government policies. Individual choices contributed to residential segregation. However, governments and institutions provided structural support to discriminatory beliefs. Rothstein contests Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote that “residential segregation ‘is a product not of state action but of private choices, it does not have constitutional implications,’” charging that this stance is built upon the “inaccurate factual background” that “residential segregation was mostly created by private choices” (215). Rothstein then lists how governments contributed to segregation: by racially segregating public housing, which resulted in ghettos and White suburbs; by enacting exclusionary zoning laws; by allowing discriminatory practices at the FHA; by evicting African Americans who moved into White neighborhoods; by upholding tax-exempt status for institutions with discriminatory practices; by continuing to license real estate brokers who imposed segregation; by segregating schools so families had to move to access education; by using interstate highways to destroy African American neighborhoods; by denying African Americans labor rights; by not providing proper public transit access to African American neighborhoods; and by continuing to direct African Americans who receive housing assistance into segregated neighborhoods. Undoing the effects of years of de jure segregation begins with acknowledging this history, accepting responsibility on behalf of our government, and demanding change.