Colorblind Law -- NOT
Book Review
Feeley, Dianne
http://solidarity-us.org/atc/198/colorblind-law/
Date Written: 2019-01-01
Publisher: Against the Current
Year Published: 2019
Resource Type: Article
Cx Number: CX23474
Positive review of Color of Law by Richard Rothstein. It looks at the history of how states circumvented federal desegregation laws.
Abstract:
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Excerpt:
The Color of Law:
A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
By Richard Rothstein
New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 348 pages, paper $17.95, cloth $27.95
Contrary to various U.S. Supreme Court rulings that sidestepped or outright denied the role of local, state and federal governments in imposing racial segregation in America, The Color of Law recounts the many ways that bias has been, in fact, state sponsored. In a dozen chapters Richard Rothstein outlines the particular mechanisms that prevented African Americans from exercising their constitutional rights. Although his focus is housing segregation he discusses how that in turn leads to school segregation....
If African Americans, at least since the Civil War, were guaranteed these rights, how could odious laws and practices that enforced housing segregation flourish, North and South? Through specific cases, Rothstein outlines the various ways. These include local zoning laws, construction of segregated public housing, the federal requirement prohibiting mortgages in integrated neighborhoods, and the approval of restricted covenants.
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