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

added to higher incarceration and unemployment rates of young African
American men, it is apparent that single motherhood among African
Americans will remain high.
There are well-designed educational programs that aim to teach better
parenting skills to low-income African American mothers, but Congress has
not funded them on more than a token experimental scale. It is a bit cynical
to say that we can’t support the integration of African American women into
middle-class neighborhoods until they become better mothers, then fail to
provide the support they want and need. And we have no right to wait until
every low-income and poorly educated mother develops perfect parenting
skills before we move to desegregate metropolitan areas. Middle-class
whites aren’t perfect caregivers either, but for their children to succeed, the
mothers only have to be half as good.
Why do you only talk about African Americans? Don’t other minorities
face discrimination as well? Don’t Hispanics also live in segregated
communities?
Two distinct problems are easily confused. One, the subject of this book,
is the de jure segregation of African Americans that has yet to be remedied.
The other is growing economic inequality, including housing prices and
rents that are unaffordable in many middle-class communities to families of
all races and ethnicities.
Although our history includes government-organized discrimination and
even segregation of other groups, including Hispanics, Chinese, and
Japanese, it was of a lesser degree, and is in the more distant past, than the
de jure segregation experienced by African Americans.
First- and second-generation Hispanics (mostly Mexican but also from
other Latin American countries) frequently live in ethnically homogenous
low-income neighborhoods. But for the most part, few have been
“segregated” in those neighborhoods—forced to live there by private
discrimination or by government policies designed to isolate them.
Low-income immigrants have always lived for the first few generations
in ethnic enclaves where their language is spoken, familiar foods are
accessible, ethnic churches are nearby, and rent is relatively cheap for