The Color of Law A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein (z-lib.org).epub

exit. No other term succinctly describes this combination of characteristics,
so I use the term as well. †
We’ve developed other euphemisms, too, so that polite company doesn’t
have to confront our history of racial exclusion. When we consider problems
that arise when African Americans are absent in significant numbers from
schools that whites attend, we say we seek diversity, not racial integration.
When we wish to pretend that the nation did not single out African
Americans in a system of segregation specifically aimed at them, we diffuse
them as just another people of color. I try to avoid such phrases.
Because our majority culture has tended to think of African Americans as
inferior, the words we’ve used to describe them, no matter how dignified
they seem when first employed, eventually sound like terms of contempt.
African Americans react and insist on new terminology, which we
eventually accept until it too seems to connote inferiority. So at the
beginning of the twentieth century, America’s subordinated race was called
colored. Later, we came to think of it as Negro, first with a lowercase and
then with a capital N. It was replaced by black, a term that has had a
seemingly permanent currency. Today African American strikes us as most
appropriate. In these pages, it’s the term I’ll use most frequently, but I will
sometimes use black as well. Occasionally, in describing historical events, I
will refer to Negroes, intending the same respect that it enjoyed in those
earlier periods.
This shifting of terminology should not distract us from this underlying
truth: We have created a caste system in this country, with African
Americans kept exploited and geographically separate by racially explicit
government policies. Although most of these policies are now off the books,
they have never been remedied and their effects endure.
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* From this evidence, federal district court judge Stephen J. Roth, in his opinion that was overruled by
the Supreme Court, concluded: “The policies pursued by both government and private persons and
agencies have a continuing and present effect upon the complexion of the community—as we know,
the choice of a residence is a relatively infrequent affair. For many years FHA and VA openly advised
and advocated the maintenance of ‘harmonious’ neighborhoods, i.e., racially and economically
harmonious. The conditions created continue.” Judge Roth urged that to acknowledge that other