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Racial Equality
White Amnesia and the Racial Wealth Divide
Chuck Collins speaks with Richard Rothstein about ‘The Color of Law,’ his new book on the government’s role in segregating the United States.
Richard Rothstein has titled his new book The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, and the operative word here is indeed “forgotten.” With white amnesia, we have forgotten the history of race-based public policies that have divided people and shaped the racial wealth divide.
The Color of Law offers a powerful history of how the past shows up in the present — how a century of de jure legally and government-sanctioned patterns of residential segregation are imprinted on our geography and communities.
Many presume that residential segregation is the historical result of private actors — redlining by banks, steering by real estate agents, and racially-motivated neighborhood pressures. But The Color of Law explains how government actions have generated extreme patterns of racial spatial separation. Among these actions: the government enforcement of racially restrictive covenants, rules governing public housing placement, exclusionary zoning policies, and the explicit racial provisions of Federal Housing Administration mortgage-ensuring policies.
Wellesley, Massachusetts has selected The Color of Law as its “all community read” for 2018. The author Richard Rothstein spoke on March 26 for a program hosted by “Welcome to Wellelsey.” Last year, my book Born on Third Base was the all-community read, so I was invited back to introduce Richard and have a conversation with him. You can watch the full discussion below.
Rothstein is a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute and a fellow at the Thurgood Marshall Institute of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. He is the author of several books in addition to The Color of Law, including Class and Schools: Using Social, Economic and Educational Improvement to Close the Black-White Achievement Gap.
Chuck Collins directs the Program on Inequality at the Institute for Policy Studies. He is co-editor of Inequality.org and the author of Born on Third Base: A One Percenter Makes the Case for Tackling Inequality, Bringing Wealth Home, and Committing to the Common Good and his new book, Is Inequality in America Irreversible?