In Chapter Two, he looks at public housing, which the government began constructing on a large scale during Franklin D.

Rothstein next dedicates one chapter to each strategy the government has used to segregate America over time. The government subsequently withdrew services from those black neighborhoods, turning them into the “ slum” that they remain today. African Americans were thus confined to certain neighborhoods, and those neighborhoods consequently became entirely African American over time. Stevenson was out of luck, because it was impossible for black people to live in Milpitas: Federal Housing Administration (FHA) funds were only allocated to all-white neighborhoods, so while housing options multiplied for white people in places like Milpitas, nobody built housing for African Americans. Stevenson worked at a Ford Motor factory, which was soon relocated an hour away to Milpitas after the war. To keep up with demand, the government built public housing-for white people, it built a comfortable suburb called Rollingwood, but black working families were crowded into “poorly constructed” apartments in industrial neighborhoods, or even left to live on the street.

A former manufacturing town, Richmond grew rapidly during World War II. In Chapter One, Rothstein illustrates the problem of de jure segregation with the representative story of Frank Stevenson, an African American man living in Richmond, California in the mid-20th century. Throughout The Color of Law, Rothstein traces the history of this phenomenon in the 20th century and explains what the American citizenry and government must do in this century to remedy it. To make matters worse, governments, financial institutions, and the real estate industry continue to actively segregate American cities, to African Americans’ disadvantage.

Since residential segregation pertains to where and how people live their lives, the issue is harder to undo than injustices like the deprivation of voting rights, public services, and equal legal protection to African Americans. And this segregation continues well into the 21st century. Planned and implemented by all levels of American government, residential racial segregation impoverishes and disempowers African Americans by confining them to ghettos and blocking them out of homeownership.

In The Color of Law, historian Richard Rothstein notes that every single American city is segregated on racial lines and argues that this segregation is de jure rather than de facto: it is the deliberate product of “systemic and forceful” government action, and so the government has a “constitutional as well as a moral obligation” to remedy it.

Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher Program.

The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein