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Chapter 11
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Color of Law, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
De Jure vs. De Facto Segregation
Segregation and the Preservation of Racial Caste
Racism, Profit, and Political Gain
Separation of Powers, Legal Activism, and Minority Rights
Summary
Analysis
Rothstein declares that “unconstitutional segregation” in the United States has not only devastated African American people, but also negatively affected white people by isolating them from their “fellow citizens of different racial backgrounds,” which has contributed to the racialization and “corrupt[ion of] our politics.” Low-income white and black Americans fail to see the political interests they share, and white people either try to avoid thinking about America’s “inequalities and history,” or fall into “a dysfunctional cynicism” about the contradiction between America’s “values of justice” and the “racial inequalities that belie those values.” Besides, diverse teams consistently produce better results in the workplace, which means that segregation is also harmful to economic productivity.
Rothstein’s argument that segregation also harms white people is powerful, but should not be taken too far: while it is true that integration clearly makes for a more harmonious and just society, Rothstein does not mean to say that white people’s fears about integration are completely unfounded. Rather, he emphasizes that the demands of racial justice trump these fears because African American people have a right to equal, integrated housing, and white Americans have no corresponding right to live in segregated bubbles or gain from the unfair distribution of property, as they do now. The institution of slavery offers a good comparison: slaveowners refused to give it up without a fight, but that fight was not justified, because the demands of justice outweighed slave owners’ (non-existent) right to own human beings. Rothstein thinks that white people must confront the fact that they have no choice but to integrate: it is a moral obligation, whether they like it or not. Rothstein suggests that lying to white people and promising that they will benefit in every way from integration is likely to invite a backlash that would reestablish segregation even more forcefully.
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In Part I of this chapter, Rothstein explains how segregation is harmful to children. Not only does it deprive all children of exposure to diversity, but it also puts significant “handicaps” on black children at school. Because students share these disadvantages, teachers cannot remedy them by giving “special attention” to individual students, and all students’ learning is negatively impacted.
Inequalities in the education system were what drove Rothstein to begin studying housing inequality in the first place—the educational “handicaps” created by attending lower-quality schools in poor minority neighborhoods in turn lead to a lack of income and economic mobility later in life, which is another element of the self-perpetuating cycle of inequality.
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In Part II, Rothstein admits that it is simply too late to “provide adequate justice” to make up for the unconstitutional segregation imposed upon several generations of African American people by the government. Instead, policies should pursue integration and equality, while realizing that both are “impossible to fully” achieve. For one, integration requires giving many African American people the chance to build wealth and live middle-class lives, which requires changing policy to improve the working and living conditions of all low-income workers in the United States. Rothstein notes that he “hesitate[s] to offer” specific desegregation policy ideas because no such policy will ever pass so long as people “continue to accept the myth of de facto segregation.”
In Part III, Rothstein does look at some “promising programs” currently under way and concrete steps that can be taken to combat segregation. For instance, a number of history textbooks completely fail to mention the government's role in producing segregation or the discrimination written into the New Deal, and one falsely calls segregation “de facto” and blames it on “unwritten custom or tradition.” It makes sense that everyone believes in the myth of de facto segregation, then, because “students are being taught a false history.”
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In Part IV of this final chapter, Rothstein notes that President Barack Obama’s administration planned to truly enforce the Fair Housing Act’s mandate that local governments “‘affirmatively further’ the purposes of the law.” But the government never got around to specifying how they would enforce it, and as of 2017, Republicans have tried “to prohibit enforcement of the ‘affirmatively furthering’ rule.”
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In Part V, Rothstein notes that the strongest push for integration happened in 1970, after a string of riots across the country. George Romney, then Housing and Urban Development secretary, planned to withdraw government funding support from segregationist suburbs—but his Republican colleagues were so outraged that he was forced to resign. Rothstein notes that Romney’s proposal would probably win even less support today, since people have largely forgotten “the extent of de jure segregation.”
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In Part VI, Rothstein explains that he has a few ideas for how “to rectify the legacy of de jure segregation,” although none are “politically possible” yet. His first, most just, and least realistic is that the government should buy a proportion of suburban homes equal to the percentage of African American people in the population, and then sell them to African American people at the rates they would have paid when those suburbs were first built (but segregated). For instance, the government would buy “the next 15 percent of houses that come up in Levittown” and “resell [them] to qualified African American borrowers for $75,000.” Rothstein notes that this would be constitutional, legal, and correct—but impossible to do now, since most Americans believe in “the de facto segregation myth.”
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In Part VII, Rothstein emphasizes that “black middle-class town[s]” need desegregation, too. Such neighborhoods are often near ghettos, and their youth must struggle to “resist the lure of gangs and of alienated behavior,” as well as learning how to deal with America’s “predominantly white professional culture.” An easy way to promote this integration would be “federal subsidies for middle-class African Americans to purchase homes in suburbs that have [historically] been racially exclusive.” But this would not happen either in the current political climate. One way that individual neighborhoods can start to help is to ensure African American people feel welcome there—that the police are trained properly, and that real estate agents will show houses in the area to black buyers.
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In Part VIII of this chapter, Rothstein proposes banning zoning laws that limit areas to relatively large single-family houses, or that deny mortgage-related tax breaks to people who live in such neighborhoods. Either policy must be accompanied by “a requirement for inclusionary zoning.” Massachusetts and New Jersey already do this, forcing affluent suburbs to build or reserve housing for low-income families, but these states base their calculations entirely on income and ignore race. Evidence from these states shows that new low-income residents do not deteriorate the quality of life in such neighborhoods. Certain municipalities elsewhere have similar laws, but they are ineffective unless “implemented on a metropolitan-wide basis.” One Maryland county does this, and low-income children who benefit from this subsidized housing show “measurably higher achievement” in school.
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In Part IX, Rothstein summarizes law professor John Boger’s proposal for “a national ‘Fare Share Act’” to mandate that localities be racially and economically diverse, and revoke their tax deductions when they are not. This “would give citizens a powerful economic incentive to press their local officials to take reasonable steps toward integration,” and the additional revenue could go directly to subsidizing anti-segregation programs.
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In Part X, Rothstein mentions some “innovative programs” that have arisen through lawsuits and pushed for integration. After losing a lawsuit, Baltimore’s local government started giving a comparatively higher Section 8 subsidy to African American people who rent in integrated, middle-class neighborhoods, and it also provides them with “intensive counseling […] to help them adjust to” these new neighborhoods. Dallas and a small number of other cities have similar programs, but few reach any significant percentage of people with public housing support.
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Rothstein also proposes that the rest of the country should follow some model cities and states that ban landlords from discriminating against families with Section 8 vouchers. He also notes that only a small portion of the people who qualify for vouchers are actually given them, and argues that this is unjust and that the program should be expanded. In a parallel example, Rothstein points out that no middle-class family qualifies for homeownership-related tax deductions, but does not receive them. In short, the Section 8 program needs more funding, to ensure that recipients can afford apartments outside poor neighborhoods and expand the reach of the program. Builders and landlords should also be rewarded for promoting integration, rather than for building housing that only “reinforce[s] segregation.” Revitalization must happen without displacing local communities and must involve “surrounding community improvements,” rather than gentrification that displaces poor residents to “newly segregated inner-ring suburbs.”
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In Part XI of the final chapter, Rothstein returns to the story of Frank Stevenson and his wife Rosa Lee, who ultimately raised their children in Richmond’s segregated school system. Their daughters went to an overcrowded, all-black school that was nearly integrated by a court ruling—but Richmond then “elected an anti-integration majority to the school board” that changed very little. To this day, the elementary school that Stevenson’s daughters attended remains under-resourced. The area’s high schools were segregated in a more complicated way that required students to make long commutes, but this still had the same effect: Stevenson’s daughter Terry never finished college, and all of his grandchildren work relatively low-wage jobs. Rothstein asks “what might have become of” them if they had grown up in an integrated suburb, and what obligation “the American community” has to them and families like them.
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