The Color of Law
A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
Richard Rothstein · 2017 · History
12 min · 11 chaptersNarrated in your voice
What it's about
Rothstein argues that residential segregation in American cities was not the accidental result of private prejudice or economic choice, but the deliberate product of federal, state, and local government policy. Through zoning, public housing placement, FHA and VA loan rules, and enforcement of restrictive covenants, government at every level built and enforced the racial boundaries that persist today. The book matters because it reframes segregation as a constitutional violation requiring remedy, not a social pattern to be shrugged at.
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Who it's for
- Readers who assume housing segregation was caused mainly by private choice or de facto drift, not law - Policy makers, urban planners, and lawyers working on fair housing, zoning, or reparations questions - Anyone trying to understand the racial wealth gap and why it tracks so closely with homeownership history
What’s inside
- 1Segregation Was Policy, Not Preference1 min
American residential segregation resulted primarily from explicit government action rather than private market forces or personal choice.
- 2Public Housing as a Segregating Machine1 min
Federal public housing programs, intended to help the poor, were deliberately designed and administered to create and harden racial boundaries rather than integrate them.
- 3The FHA and the Invention of Redlining1 min
The Federal Housing Administration systematically denied mortgage insurance to Black neighborhoods and Black buyers, manufacturing the wealth gap that homeownership was supposed to close for everyone.
- 4Zoning as a Legal Workaround for Racial Exclusion1 min
After explicit racial zoning was ruled unconstitutional, municipalities used facially neutral zoning laws, minimum lot sizes, single-family requirements, to achieve the same racially exclusionary outcomes.
- 5Restrictive Covenants and Government Enforcement1 min
Private restrictive covenants excluding Black buyers were not merely tolerated by government but actively enforced by courts and effectively mandated by federal lending standards, making them a government instrument in practice.
- 6Violence, Intimidation, and the Government's Passive Complicity1 min
When Black families did attempt to move into white neighborhoods, government police and officials frequently failed to protect them from violent white resistance, effectively ratifying segregation through selective non-enforcement of the law.
- 7The Persistence of Segregation After Formal Laws Changed1 min
The Fair Housing Act of 1968 and subsequent civil rights laws did not undo decades of government-built segregation because the underlying wealth and location disparities they created remained locked in place.
- 8Toward Remedy: What Rothstein Proposes1 min
Because segregation was deliberately created by government, Rothstein argues government has an affirmative obligation to actively dismantle it through specific remedial policy, not merely to stop discriminating going forward.
About Richard Rothstein
Richard Rothstein is a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute and senior fellow at the Thurgood Marshall Institute of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. He spent decades studying education and housing policy before compiling the archival research behind this book, drawing on federal records, court cases, and local zoning histories.
