![]() ![]() ![]() This segregation was the result of individual acts of prejudice, certainly, but also of overtly racist federal, state and local laws. As Rothstein shows in example after example, residential segregation wrapped itself like barbed wire around the best neighborhoods throughout the nineteenth and well into the middle of the twentieth century, keeping black people out. Significant when published, The Color of Law is essential reading now. It was fortuitous, in the way that even a pandemic can bring about unexpected openings in one’s life. ![]() This unlikely pairing helped contextualize the book (and TV show). I also was binge-watching the classic, 1950s-era family sitcom Father Knows Best at night. This summer, I found myself holed up at my mother’s house north of Austin, Texas, reading Richard Rothstein’s excellent 2017 polemic against state-sponsored residential segregation and its toll on black Americans, The Color of Law. The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein (Liveright) By Wendy Parris ![]()
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