Government, not individuals, segregated America. That is the awful truth.
I’ve been engrossed in Richard Rothstein’s book, “The Color of Law.” Rothstein–a fellow at the Economic Policy Institute and a senior fellow at the Haas Institute at the University of California, Berkeley–wrote a devastating account of how state, national, and local governments segregated America. We should all read it or listen to it on Audible. I have a master’s in history, including a concentration in Post-Reconstruction African American history, and I still learned new things from this powerful book. I know you will, too. And you’ll never look at our nation the same way again.
For many of my constituents, it’s easy to see that some people are racist. They’ve seen it in their communities, in their workplaces, and in their own life experiences. There’s always that icky guy who tells the inappropriate joke at the office party. Or yet another “Karen” on the news who’s calling the police on a wholly innocent Black man who’s just trying to live his life. What’s harder for a lot of folks to accept and understand is that institutional racism has been ever present in our nation. This book lays out how mechanisms of institutional racism–fully intentional mechanisms–segregated our towns, cities and neighborhoods.
If you took a 20th century history class in high school, you probably learned about FDR’s New Deal and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), which was created to bring jobs and an economic boost to a region hit hard by the Depression. What you probably didn’t hear about was that African Americans who worked for the TVA were not allowed to live in the village created in Norris, TN to house employees. These houses were for white workers only. African American employees had to live in a rundown barracks a distance away.
This was not the only New Deal agency that strictly segregated its housing. The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) work camps for jobless youth and adults were also segregated–not just in the South but in the North as well. Governor Harold Hoffman of New Jersey refused to allow any work camp housing to be integrated because, he said, there would be “local resentment.” President Roosevelt’s Public Works Administration (PWA) also strictly instituted and enforced housing segregation. As did the U.S. Housing Authority (USHA). And the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). And housing authorities in cities across the country.
Rothstein also masterfully documents how racial zoning reversed progress that had been made after the Civil War. Then he turns his attention to systemic barriers that African Americans confronted in securing mortgages. The Federal Home Loan Bank, which chartered, insured, and regulated savings and loan associations did not oppose the denial of mortgages to African Americans until 1961. And the IRS routinely granted tax exempt status to churches, hospitals, schools and other organizations that clearly continued to promote racial segregation in their neighborhoods.
There’s a lot in this book that makes me furious. One passage in particular had me cursing out loud. Because African Americans could not secure FHA mortgages, they were often forced to purchase their homes through installment plans. These “contract sales” required payment every month, like a mortgage. But unlike a mortgage, these buyers built up no equity. If they missed even one installment, they could be evicted and would lose all the money they’d paid in to the house. Think about that. A family that had paid years and years on a house could be evicted and not have any money to show for their investment.
And we wonder why we’ve had a persistent gap in wealth between whites and non-whites in America? The system was quite literally set up to keep African Americans less wealthy.
I’m only a third of the way through the book, but with each page I gain a much more complete sense of how exactly we arrived at this place of racial and economic injustice. It is much more complicated than the “one bad apple” arguments that often take center stage when we try to have conversations about racism and its impact on Americans. It’s not just about individual actions. The real story is about the systems that have been in place for a very long time. It is going to take a lot of work to undo them. The first step is understanding the oppressive system well enough to fully dismantle it.
