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

example, the minimum lot size for house construction was a full acre.
Because many of the new African American workers were unable to find
housing for sale near the Mahwah plant, they drove sixty to seventy miles
each way or depended on carpools and lengthy bus rides. Some rented single
small apartments in nearby towns, returning to their families on weekends.
African American autoworkers who commuted from distant urban
neighborhoods incurred annual costs attributable to the travel of $1,000 to
$1,500 each in 1970, or about 10 percent of their annual gross incomes, far
more than if they had lived in Mahwah or its vicinity. The African American
autoworkers’ incomes were also depressed because the excessive travel
contributed to job losses when workers were fired for absenteeism that was
partly attributable to transportation obstacles. Ford executives complained of
high turnover, and later, when they closed the Mahwah plant and reopened it
in Mexico, high absenteeism was a factor executives cited in explaining the
decision. This was not a problem unique to workers in Mahwah. Nationwide,
African Americans had disposable incomes that were lower than those of the
whites with whom they worked, because of higher commuting costs from
segregated neighborhoods to jobs that were now found in the suburbs.
It is certainly true that one cause of segregation today is the inability of
many African Americans to afford to live in middle-class communities. But
segregation itself has had a high cost for African Americans, exacerbating
their inability to save to purchase suburban homes. Income differences are
only a superficial way to understand why we remain segregated. Racial
policy in which government was inextricably involved created income
disparities that ensure residential segregation, continuing to this day.
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* Thirteen years later, Mark Ethridge was still publisher of his Louisville newspaper when Andrew
Wade attempted to occupy the home he had bought from Carl and Anne Braden. As violence flared at
the Wade residence, the Courier-Journal published an editorial urging the mob to use “proper legal
procedures” to evict the Wades, even though these events occurred six years after the Supreme Court
had found that no such legal procedures were permissible. Ethridge’s editorial stated, “The real fault of
judgment, in our opinion, lies with Mr. and Mrs. Carl Braden. . . . [Their white neighbors] are entirely
within their rights . . . in protesting the purchase of property in their subdivision by Negroes . . . [and]
there is no use denying that the value of their property will decrease as a result of the sale.”