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

corners to study, and less adequate health care, all of which contribute to
worse average school performance and, as a result, less occupational success
as adults.
Certainly some children overcome these difficulties. But the average
child living in a poor household is less likely to escape poverty as an adult,
and the average child living in a poor household in a poor neighborhood is
even less likely to do so. The cycle can be broken only by a policy as
aggressive as that which created ghettos of concentrated poverty in the first
place.
V
BECAUSE AMERICANS vary greatly in their economic and social
circumstances, any government program will affect different Americans
differently even if, on its face, the program treats all alike. A sales tax, for
example, applies equally to all but will be more of a burden to lower-income
consumers than to higher-income ones. The legal jargon for this is that it has
a “disparate impact” on different groups. In a society where everyone’s
situation is different, disparate impacts are unavoidable, but we can try to
minimize them—in the case of a sales tax, by exempting grocery purchases.
Once de jure segregation was established, African Americans and whites
were not affected similarly by subsequent race-neutral policies. The Fair
Housing Act prohibits housing programs whose disparate impact on African
Americans reinforces their segregation, unless the programs have a
legitimate purpose that cannot be accomplished otherwise. But the Fair
Housing Act does not prevent disparate impacts from other, nonhousing
programs that build on preexisting residential patterns. Unlike the activities
that comprise de jure segregation, these programs need not have the intent of
harming African Americans (although sometimes they may) but they do
harm nonetheless. Several seemingly “race-neutral” programs have
reinforced the disadvantages of African Americans that were initially created
by race-conscious housing policy.