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

information to do so. Giving suburbs around the country the benefit of the
doubt may have been a smart way to encourage them to fulfill their
“affirmatively furthering” obligations; left unsaid was what HUD might do if
suburbs don’t take steps necessary to advance integration. Did the Obama
administration plan to deny federal funds to suburbs that remain segregated?
Police killings of young black men in 2014 and 2015 called renewed
attention to our racial divide. The presidential election of 2016 revealed that
the nation was almost evenly split between those who believe that we’ve
done too much to remedy racial inequality and those who believe we’ve
done not nearly enough. In early 2017, congressional Republicans proposed
legislation to prohibit enforcement of the “affirmatively furthering” rule. But
even if the rule were to survive, or if a future administration reintroduces it,
effective remedies for racial inequality will be unlikely unless the public is
disabused of the de facto myth and comes to understand how government at
all levels insulted our constitutional principles regarding race.
V
IN 1970, stung by riots in more than a hundred cities by angry and
embittered African Americans, HUD secretary George Romney tried to
pursue integration more vigorously than any other administration, either
before or since. Observing that the federal government had imposed a
suburban “white noose” around urban African American neighborhoods,
Romney devised a program he called Open Communities that would deny
federal funds (for water and sewer upgrades, green space, sidewalk
improvements, and other projects for which HUD financial support is
needed) to suburbs that hadn’t revised their exclusionary zoning laws to
permit construction of subsidized apartments for lower-income African
American families. The anger about Open Communities among voters in the
Republican Party’s suburban base was so fierce that President Nixon reined
in Romney, required him to repudiate his plan, and eventually forced him
from office.