An hour with Richard Rothstein

today hank at our present all look at institutionalized racism in the united states and to a mac entire cities and towns across the country became largely segregated in the twentieth century my guest today says that didn't just happen it was a deliberate result of actions taken by the government at all levels federal state and local richard rothstein is the author of the color of law a forgotten history of how our government segregated america the color of law was named an npr best book of the year when he came out in two thousand seventy it was all so long listed for the national book award in nonfiction richard rothstein stop by the akp our studios while in lawrence on september fifth two thousand seventeen well let me begin by saying that we have a national miss that we call de facto segregation is though the racial segregation of every metropolitan area in the country happened by accident because of private prejudice or discrimination by private individuals who may be people's

personal choices of wanted to live with some same race neighbors and because we have that myth of de facto segregation we also believe if there's nothing we can do about it because the supreme court has said that you can't remedy something that happened because of private action and because of what happened by a million private actions it's hard to imagine a million private actions might be to reverse it so that myth of de facto segregation prevents us from from dealing with this pervasive racial segregation and for every metropolitan area in fact the government was a primary mover in creating the segregation every metropolitan area and it did so with many programs perhaps the two most important are first the federal housing program which began in nineteen thirty three and second those federal mortgage insurance program which began in nineteen thirty four most people think a public housing today is a place where poor people live a

baby high rises certainly a unemployed families very poor single mothers frequently that somehow public housing began public housing began during the depression or that he was a new deal program and it was designed to solve a housing crisis for more middle class working class families who had lost their homes and depression who were unemployed there's a housing shortage because no housing was being built in the slowdown of economic activity so the federal government built public housing across the country for the first time for a lower middle class working class families and a segregated it's everything is in every metropolitan area not just in the south but in the north and the midwest and the west so for example in the boston cambridge want most liberal areas of the country the federal government demolished an integrated neighborhood in the nineteen thirties and built to separate public housing projects one for african americans one for whites grating public housing segregation creating

segregation the entire area never known before and this went on across the country it extends way during world war two when hundreds of thousands of workers black and white flock to centers of the fence production to get jobs in the war industry and the expansion of population in these centers of the fed's production was so rapid that there was no housing available if the government wanted to keep the assembly lines going to have to build housing for years so it built segregated public housing often in places where there were no african americans living before so creating segregation we had previously existed in my book the color of law i focus on the area in northern california outside surface cisco thought to be one more liberal areas of the country and yet the richmond california across the bay from san francisco was center of shipbuilding of the kaiser shipyards of a larger ship building center during the war there were no african americans living in richmond prior to world war two to

speak of there were few domestic servants living there but hundreds of thousands of workers a flop that area of the population of richmond went from about twenty thousand over a hundred thousand just four years so obviously there's the house of workers the federal government built segregated public housing in richmond va built public housing for the black workers along the shipyards along the railroad tracks in the industrial area he built public housing for white workers in the residential areas to the east creating again public housing segregation creating community segregation where it'd never been on before you just heard a distinction between the location where african american public housing was located and white public housing was located and how did that continue to play out in terms of the desirability of neighborhoods and i understand that you have to put that the second major federal program to create a segregation of the year after the federal government began building public housing in nineteen

thirty three congress established the federal housing administration now many people are familiar with the fact that the federal housing administration red line the african american communities and didn't give mortgages to african americans in primarily black communities that was a small part of what the federal housing administration did desegregate the country the primary thing that the federal housing administration did was to finance mass production builders of entire subdivisions to create subdivisions on condition that they'd be for whites only a prairie village in an outside kansas city this is one example of that but there were many others in every metropolitan area of the country that the builders of the j c nipples in kansas or or other eleven perhaps the most famous example levittown he said we're actually those buildings could never have assembled the capital to build these giant subdivisions on their own to have no buyers for these houses before they build them levittown east of new york city seventeen thousand homes built in the late nineteen forties the only

way left it could assemble the capital to build those homes was by taking his plans to the federal government getting the federal government guarantee the bank loans you would get to construct the housing and then go ahead and building the housing but the guarantee of the federal government gave levitt was conditioned on a requirement that no homes be sold to african americans and the federal housing administration for the required that the deed of every home in levittown and many of these other suburbs across the country include applause that prohibit resell to african americans so you ask how public housing has deteriorated into a program for low income on employer family's wealth starting in the nineteen forties when the federal housing administration subsidize white families to leave public housing to leave urban areas to moves to suburbs eventually through a large vacancies in the public housing projects serving whites because they were taking advantage of these federal

subsidies both the federal housing administration and the veterans administration are pursuing the segregationist policy to move whites into single family homes the suburbs large vacancies a developed in in the housing for whites do a long waiting lists for housing for blacks in the public housing for blacks eventually the situation became so conspicuous everywhere in the country but all public housing was opened up to african americans at the same time that industry left the central cities and moved to the suburbs where the white suburbanites were now living so the people who are living in public housing african americans became poorer and poorer as jobs disappear they weren't allowed access to the communities where the jobs existed she had these two policies of working together to create what scholars later came to call a white noose around african american neighborhoods in urban areas if i'm not mistaken you're saying this happened during the administration of franklin delano roosevelt who was otherwise seen as

fairly friendly to african american communities well in one says he was previous administrations if they have a program like this would build no housing for african americans so african americans benefit to some extent from above the new deal not the accent that white stay because many of the programs were discriminatory in themselves but on a segregated base its lead new deal was a segregationist as any previous administrations when it came to assigning housing the blacks and whites things that happen in the nineteen thirties nineteen forties nineteen fifties why is this continuing to this day you know it's a good question and the reality is that these programs that the federal government pursued the twentieth century had effects it was so powerful that they have determined the patterns of race and residential racial segregation exist today

for example i mentioned a few minutes ago that a town the end the warmth hundreds of other suburbs like this developed by the federal housing administration for all whites only or those homes in them mid twentieth century in levittown was built in nineteen forty seven nineteen forty nine los angeles the big symbol of suburbanization nineteen fifties the lakewood south of los angeles a panorama city north of los angeles those rolls of the deal with the same fha requirements those homes sold at that time for about oh eight nine ten thousand dollars apiece and now that they're in today's dollars that's about a hundred thousand dollars which is about twice median family income and working class families can afford to buy a home with a mortgage guaranteed by the federal government for twice national median income there were many many african americans returning war veterans and working class families who could've afforded to buy homes in places like levittown or prairie village or liquid or panama city

today those homes those same homes from which african americans were excluded and forced to live in rented apartments in the urban areas those homes now sell in levittown for three hundred four hundred five hundred thousand dollars the white families who were were permitted to encourage unsubsidized to buy homes and those developments gained over the next few generations of two hundred three hundred four hundred five hundred thousand dollars of equity in wells african american families who were forced to have no alternative but to live in and rent apartments in the urban areas they know wells during that period the day on average nationally african american incomes are about sixty percent of white poems but african american wealth is only about seven percent of white wealth and that enormous disparity between a sixty percent income ratio and a seven percent wealth ratio is almost entirely attributable to unconstitutional federal housing policies practices in the mid twentieth century so in

nineteen sixty eight we passed the fair housing act which said in effect ok african americans are now free to move into levittown in prairie village of lake within an interim city in the hundreds of others like this but it was an empty promise foremost of course a few days we've had some scary slight integration since then but those homes in these suburbs that will create as whites only suburbs in the mid twentieth century and now an affordable for working class families of the race a home that sells for four hundred thousand dollars today is seven times national median income not twice national median income on affordable to working families so we created these patterns in the mid twentieth century and they exist today because the fair housing act prohibits future discrimination but it never did anything to remedy the creation of the whites only suburbs that that took place in the twentieth century what was the federal

government's incentive to create those policies back in the nineteen thirties and nineteen forties that they would create capital for whites only suburbs what was thinking then that well that's part of the question you have to ask about what has been the thinking of the entire racial history of this country and we are a country that was founded on slavery we create assumptions about the characteristics of african americans that derive from slavery has never been changed the new deal the roosevelt administration was a demonstration that was almost exclusively peopled by white anglo saxon protestant somehow they leaked assumption of their own superiority and look down on others and so this is part of their culture but it doesn't excuse it because there were dissenting voices they have a choice one dissenting voice was the president's wife paul rust belt too in the course of the administration of the twelve years that that russell was in office and she was sent out

because of his paralysis to visit communities around the country report back to him and she became familiar with african americans for the first time and gradually over the course of his administration became were more committed to integration as eight necessary standard for the country so she was a dissenting voice or other dissenting voices as well so it's not this old people didn't know any better but they never overcame their own assumptions of racial superiority to enact a different program it did say that there were many communities that were integrated before the federal government got involved in housing policy yes so in the mid twentieth century early twentieth century there was many integrated neighborhoods in cities across the country for the simple reason that workers didn't have one appeals that they worked in in factories in downtown areas they had to live close enough to those areas to be able to walk

to work and so you had communities in major metropolitan areas everywhere in which irish immigrants italian immigrants jewish immigrants and african americans in rural migrants were we're living in the same neighborhoods the great african american poet langston hughes wrote in his autobiography the dixie talks about how he grew up in the early twentieth century in a cleveland integrated neighborhood he says his best friend was polish heat pot bellied at a jewish girl that's one neighborhood that the federal government demolish notre built segregated public housing of course once whites had been subsidized to move out of those integrated neighborhoods into suburbs and african americans had no option but to remain we got much less integration then we have today i'm reminded of some years ago i had the opportunity to interview a historian who studied sundown towns and insulin guest james blunt and fun and how

surprising to most of us it was that many towns that now are white only are predominantly white work white integrated in the early part of the twentieth century well that's true and in my book i go into detail about one state montana that have a significant african american population in the early twentieth century late nineteenth century only interesting things is the policeman who was responsible in helena montana for patrolling one of those most no a class white neighborhoods of color was african american in the early twentieth century says was true everywhere that average americans and were driven out during the jim crow era that began in the early twentieth century and the african american population today in montana is much much smaller than it was a hundred years ago so you've been focusing on what the federal government did to

promote segregated housing you also argue that states and local governments played prominent roles now yes they did that at the state level the state real estate commissions everywhere licensed real estate agents were openly promoting segregation the national association of real estate boards had a code of ethics that prohibited real estate agents from selling homes in white neighborhoods to african americans so it was open sonic question of rogue real estate agents who happen to quietly suggest the families that they should move to a same race neighborhood state governments were intimately involved in the regulation of real estate industry ensuring that though they sold homes only in segregated neighborhoods to people of the race of that neighborhood that was one way that the state governments played a very important and unconstitutional wrong move the behavior state real estate commissions or throughout the twentieth century was unconstitutional local police forces also enforced segregation

in many cases young african americans were living in urban areas in very overcrowded conditions because they had very few options of where to live except and in neighborhoods that as the african american population grew became or more overcrowded and middle class families were living in very dense urban neighborhoods well when they had the money and many of them did they frequently attempted to buy a home in the adjoining white neighborhood and frequently more often than not once an african american family did buy a home in an adjoining white neighborhood violence would occur and it was usually under the watchful eye supervision and consent of local police and prosecutors in los angeles it i write in the book about the one hundred incidents of violence against african americans in the nineteen forties who were trying to move into white neighborhoods block homes were driven out by

violence there was only one prosecution in those entire one hundred cases and that's because the state government stepped in because local prosecutors said they couldn't identify any of the perpetrators i actually got interested in writing this book because it used to be like i still am a panelist of education policy and two thousand and seven the supreme court issued a decision for him giving the school district's of willful and seattle from adopting very very modest integration plans of these were school choice plans parents could choose a school that their parents their children would go to a but if their choice which involves the school racially that choice would be placed second to a choice of the family who had helped integrate the school this report said that couldn't be done in the supreme court's reason for prohibiting those policies was that the us school district

level and seattle was segregated because the neighborhoods in which they were located were segregated the fact that there's no government involvement and therefore there was no possible remedy well i remember reading of many years ago about the incident and local kentucky where a white family sold a home in the nineteen fifties to a black navy veteran it an officer in the navy very distinguished family lee a mob developed to drive the family out of its home in the state of kentucky arrested prosecuted and jailed a white solar force addition they jailed him for sedition for having sold a home to an african american and a white neighborhood so i said to myself this doesn't sound to me like de facto segregation and that's what started me on this inquiry to see how much deeper and more extensive government participation in the segregation of american neighborhoods was distressing talk about how the

segregation of housing goes way beyond housing how it affects our society beyond just where you live well residential segregation is the root of many of the most serious social problems we face in this country as i mentioned it out when i was a kid and still am i guess an atlas of education policy the biggest problem we face in schools today nationwide the thing that policymakers are most concerned about this what they referred to as the black white achievement gap the fact that low income african americans have low achievement that so much for so far below that of whites little less children well the reason for that is not the sort of the scent if you take children who come to school with serious social and economic problems of their achievement is going to suffer for example if you have a child who comes to school having with asthma african american children

in urban areas have four times a reassessment of white children or the child is going to be drowsy from being up at night maybe sleepless maybe not even come to school are because here she didn't carry sleep tonight before all they have asthma because of the polluted conditions the gray pollution exists environmental pollution exists in dense urban neighborhoods as opposed to a suburban white middle class neighborhoods well if you have a child who comes to school sleepless sort of drowsy that child is going to achieve a much lower level than other children of who come to school well rest it's not to say every child has that wave but on average children with asthma are going to have lower achievement than children without bats no other things equal without trial to a school like that a teacher and have a special attention to the child then perhaps overcome some of the lessons from absenteeism and other other problems like that but if you have a school where every child is

facing some problem like that whether its asthma whether it's stress from parental unemployment or whether it's other health problems are so much greater in african american communities every child can get special attention so the oven curriculum becomes more remedial being on task children come to school under great stress because of for example parental unemployment are more likely to have behavioral issues issues of more oil resources have to be deported to a classroom management than to instruction to the achievement level the clients well we have a school which concentrated chill disadvantage of the kind of just got we call those cool segregated schools and law schools are segregated because of neighborhoods in segregated its neighborhoods were segregated of african americans were living as part of the broader population of this country the way other minorities are the way other ethnic groups are we would not have the enormous achievement gap that we have today sets one problem that stems directly from residential center geisha

i mentioned a few minutes ago the enormous wealth gap that exists between african americans and whites primarily because our constitutional federal housing policy to segregate metropolitan areas and wealth effect so many other areas of our lives white families can use their wealth to send their children to college to take care of aging parents to take care of medical emergencies to retire the african americans who have lower incomes to start with have to delve into what income they can if they're able to do any of those things and many cases they can't do those things and then a third very important ones were very concerned policymakers are at least today with the lack of upward mobility that this come to characterize american society that their children have much less a chance to rise above that karen station in life and then we assume from our national myth

but the lack of mobility is accentuated to a great extent by residential segregation in low income african american child who lives in a segregated neighborhood is much less likely as an adult to have a middle class income the african american child with the same low income as a child living in an integrated neighborhood so the fact of being surrounded by other families in equally desperate circumstances and he's the upward mobility of all of that so many of our social problems can be traced in large part to the fact that week have maintained the system of residential segregation in this country for a hundred years that do you see that same scenario playing out where the other minority groups too much lesser extent to a much lesser extent you're immigrant groups i think what the money people think honestly they think that the for example mexican immigrants have the same kinds of problems that african americans

do to some extent they do but immigrants to this country low wage immigrants have always lived in an ethnically homogenous neighborhoods with that language spoken where the networks can provide jobs and are hispanic immigrants are no different from that but the reality is that hispanic immigrants in the second and third generations are assimilating into the broader society to a much greater extent than has been possible for african americans are part of the reason is that the hispanics become white after the third generation and many of the mo don't even identify themselves as hispanics on census forms they identify themselves as white so when we see that of the shows a hispanic population not doing well we have to remember that the population is doing well is largely dutch included notes that forty percent of third generation and beyond hispanics are marrying non hispanics today in this country that's nothing like the very low percentage of african americans who

are into marrying into the white population and vice versa so certainly low income hispanics immigrants have socially economic problems that are similar to those that african americans have their many social programs that we should be implementing and i'm not there with a new year at the conditions both of low income hispanic immigrants and low income african americans but those social economic programs which are good to do you know to improve the cohesion of american society in the upward mobility of low income families than good social programs they're not the response that unconstitutional federal policy we have an additional reason to address the segregation of african americans and that is you as accomplished in violation of our constitution and your constitution doesn't have a close that says let's let the bygones be bygones it was stolen cars is who should we have the remedy it so can you give a couple

specific examples of what we could do to remedy it i can well i'm very cautious about talking about remedies because unless we change this national myth unless we confront the national myth that all happened by accident any remedies that we proposed would seem ridiculous a completely impractical and id be no political support for them so the first thing we have to do is to educate ourselves educate the public about the unconstitutional fashion and which residential segregation was created so we understand we have an obligation to remedy perhaps the first thing we should do is address the way in which our schools teach this history and in the course of writing the color of law i investigated the all the most commonly use american history textbooks in high school someday and not a single one of them addressed even mentioned the history that i've been describing to you in those textbooks and if we do is

poor job of educating young people about this history as we've done in previous generations won't the next generation is going to do is poor job a remedy and as our generation has done so my emphasis is on expanding the extent to which the american public and policymakers understand this history if they don't understand the history there are many things we could do i describe some of them but they're completely unrealistic now for example i'll give you just a couple of examples of many of the suburbs lights cried there were created are unconstitutionally as white only suburbs the mid twentieth century then adopted zoning ordinances which excluded them families from building single family homes and small lot sizes or townhouses york apartments in those sectors those zoning ordinances are unconstitutional because of the way in which they were motivated and the way in which they developed we don't understand that we all recognize that now but we should prohibit suburbs

jurisdictions for maintaining zoning ordinances that prohibit mixed income housing from being developed within their jurisdictions that would be a step forward towards helping to integrate the society every suburb every community should have a mix of incomes in it we shouldn't have some sober children or white affluent and other places that are all black and low income that has to be done with reform of selling a but as i say there's no political support for that now in fact though the opposite with the biggest federal housing programs we will maintain today subsidizes the suburbs with the mortgage interest deduction which is a subsidy for unconstitutional practices let them have their origins in the mid twentieth century richard rothstein is the author of the color of law a forgotten history of how our government segregated america the color of law was named an npr best book of the year and long listed for the national book award in two thousand seventy in this conversation was taped at a k pr studios on

september fifth two thousand seventeen i'm kay mcintyre broadcasting from home coming up another forgotten chapter in our nation's racial history that as k pr present continues right after this