The Color of Law

by Richard Rothstein

Book Reviews

  • @afalli The enactment and enforcement of a large swath of laws in the US have a racial basis including the war on drugs. Some laws such as anti-abortion or anti-sodomy laws have a religious basis but there are way more people punished for the former than latter https://t.co/3vxao8UmENLink to Tweet
  • here are some good books to distribute: https://t.co/zKqS7tn6wK https://t.co/U0SKds1pdm https://t.co/uWhCYtA3uB https://t.co/96Q6MgA5THLink to Tweet
  • @yrechtman @zmholland Excellent read on both white flight and redlining: https://t.co/Lt960Ncu4VLink to Tweet
  • @varma_ashwin97 Yes glad you like it! I'm blanking at the moment but this one is also well worth reading https://t.co/ouS6LXw3MqLink to Tweet
  • @Mr_Keels @MehrsaBaradaran Color of Law explains the role of segregated housing policies causing wealth inequalityLink to Tweet
  • Black Americans being segregated into poor neighborhoods explicitly by law & implicitly by realtors/banks then schools underfunded since funding comes from property taxes matters. Hard to become a lawyer, doctor or engineer if your K12 education was 💩 https://t.co/3vxao8CdqFLink to Tweet

About Book

Lauded by Ta-Nehisi Coates for his "brilliant" and "fine understanding of the machinery of government policy" (The Atlantic), Richard Rothstein has painstakingly documented how American cities, from San Francisco to Boston, became so racially divided. Rothstein describes how federal, state, and local governments systematically imposed residential segregation: with undisguised racial zoning, public housing that purposefully segregated previously mixed communities, subsidies for builders to create whites-only suburbs, tax exemptions for institutions that enforced segregation, and support for violent resistance to African Americans in white neighborhoods. He demonstrates that such policies still influence tragedies in places like Ferguson and Baltimore. Scholars have separately described many of these policies, but until now, no author has brought them together to explode the myth of de facto segregation arising from private prejudice or the unintended consequences of economic forces. Like The New Jim Crow, Rothstein's groundbreaking history forces us to face the obligation to remedy our unconstitutional past.

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