For more than 30 years, Richard Rothstein, author of The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, has been studying the systemic inequalities that continue to exacerbate racial tensions and segregation in the United States. The Norman and Florence Brody Family Foundation Public Policy Forum recently invited Rothstein to discuss how federal and state housing policy prevents residential integration and exacerbates the racial wealth divide.
Rothstein attributes his passion in housing inequality to his original interest in addressing segregated schools, or schools with high concentrations of disadvantaged students. While many policy-makers address that this inequality exists, they claim that it occurred “naturally” and thus requires no legal intervention. However, Rothstein argues that this segregation in fact occurred as a direct result of government policies reducing residential integration within urban and suburban areas.
“There are many, many racially explicit federal, state and local policies that were designed to ensure that African Americans and white people could not live near one another in any metropolitan area of this country,” explains Rothstein “We have an unconstitutional system of residential segregation that we as American citizens have an obligation to remedy.”
During the creation of suburban areas following the end of World War II, the Federal Housing Administration sold affordable homes to working class families on the borders of metropolitan areas, with strict stipulations imposed by the federal government prohibiting sale or tenancy to non-white residents. As these homes grew in value over the following decades, white families were able to use their equities to pass on generational wealth. Unable to access the inflating suburban housing market, many African American families were stranded in low-income urban neighborhoods.
What is needed is a new civil rights movement that is going to make it uncomfortable not to implement policy to address segregationRichard Rothstein Author, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
“The result is that today, on average, African American incomes are about sixty percent of white incomes,” says Rothstein. “This enormous disparity is entirely attributable to federal housing policy that was practiced in the mid-twentieth century.”
Rothstein explains that many of the racial tensions and inequalities within the United States are a direct result of unaddressed, historic segregation, of which we can still see the effects of today. Politicians are reluctant to address this issue because there is no political pressure to create solutions for residential segregation, he says.
The solution? Rothstein believes it will have to be a second civil rights movement to address the lingering systemic issues continuing to affect minorities within the United States.
According to Rothstein, “what is needed is a new civil rights movement that is going to make it uncomfortable not to implement policy to address segregation.”