May 27, 2021 • 47 mins
In this powerful episode, Laverne talks with Richard Rothstein, the author of The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. Rothstein breaks down how the government implemented housing policies in order to segregate Black people primarily in the 1930s and 50s. Though many decades ago, the effects are as present as ever in the education gap, income gap, wealth gap, and “slums.” As violations of the Constitution, it is a requirement to correct past injustices. //
INFO:
New Movement to Redress Racial Segregation
Email to Get Involved: carrie@nmrrs.org //
Richard Rothstein is a Distinguished Fellow of the Economic Policy Institute and a Senior Fellow (emeritus) at the Thurgood Marshall Institute of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. //
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to the Laverne Cox Show. A reduction of shondaland
Audio in partnership with I Heart Radio. As the homes
became more overcrowded, people needed to conduct their social life
in the streets because every available space was being used
for a bedroom for multiple families living in space that
should have been for a single family. Governments stopped collecting
(00:25):
garbages frequently in those neighborhoods. They became African American and
they became slums, and whites looked at those slums and
they decided, well, African Americans are slum dwellers, not understanding
that the slum conditions were created by government policy. Hey, everyone,
(00:47):
Welcome to the Laverne Cox Show. I'm Laverne Cox. In America,
owning a home is presented as like part of the
American dream, and I've always wanted to own my own home.
I bought my first home about almost three years ago now,
and it was a huge thing for me, especially as
(01:09):
someone who used to live in government subsidized housing. And
when I think about being black, being an African American,
and being a homeowner, I can't help but think about
the history of how that has been a fraud enterprise
for a lot of black people in this country. And
I can't help and think about the relationship between home
(01:30):
ownership and wealth, and then home ownership and structural racism.
And I knew when I had this podcast that I
would want to have a conversation about residential segregation, home ownership,
and structural racism. And I discovered this book called The
Color of Law through the four Harriet YouTube page. Shout
(01:51):
out to Kimberly Foster, and I knew I wanted to
have Richard Rothstein, who wrote the book, on the podcast
to talk about the history of racial segregation in the
United States. Richard Rothstein is the author of The Color
of Law, a forgotten history of how our government segregated America.
According to the New York Times, there is no better
(02:13):
history of house in segregation. Mr Rostein is a Distinguished
Fellow at the Economic Policy Institute and a Senior Fellow
Emeritus at the Inn Double a CP legal defense spot.
Please enjoy my conversation with Richard Rothstein. Hello Richard Rothstein,
(02:35):
and welcome to the podcast. How are you doing today?
I thank you, I appreciate being with you. I am
so excited that you're here. To have this conversation with me.
So in your amazing book The Color of Law, A
Forgotten History of how our government segregated America, you use
the term de jury segregation a lot. So can we
(02:57):
start off by having you defined the collegible might not
hear that term did jury segregation? Can you define that
in relationship to do it back though segregation both? Please?
Certainly we have a national myth in this country that
the reason we're so racially segregated, with every metropolitan area
having clearly defined areas that are all white or mostly white,
(03:19):
and clearly defined areas that are all black or mostly black,
that the reason that's, uh, we're so segregated is because
of private activity, because of banks or real estate agents
or insurance companies that discriminated, wouldn't ensure mortgages for African Americans. Uh,
because of bigoted homeowners or landlords who wouldn't rent or
(03:43):
sell to African Americans. Or maybe we tell ourselves that
it's all because people like to live with each other
of the same race and that's why we're so segregated.
They choose to do it. Or maybe we tell ourselves
it's just because of income differences on average African Americans
of lower incomes than whites, and so many African Americans
(04:03):
can't afford to move to higher opportunity neighborhoods, and we
tell ourselves, this is the reason we're segregated. The Supreme
Court has embraced this view, and it's given a name
to this view. It says, we have defact those segregation,
something that just happened, in fact, not by policy, not
by law, and not by ordinance, not by regulation, just
(04:24):
sort of happened naturally. And the Supreme Court has said,
and we've all adopted this view, but if it happened naturally,
if it happened by accident de fact, those segregation, not
by government, and it wasn't a constitutional violation, there's nothing
unconstitutional about it. It's not a civil rights violation. It's
just self choice and private bigotry. And the Supreme Court said,
(04:49):
if you have something that just happened naturally, happened by
accident de fact, those segregation, it can only unhappen by accident.
There's nothing we have an obligation to do anything about
because it's a not a civil its violation. In contrast,
if we thought that the residential segregation of every metropolitan
area was not accidental, but the product of very explicit federal, state,
(05:13):
and local policy designed to ensure the African Americans and
Whites could not live near one another in any metropolitan area.
That's a civil rights violation. We call that the jury segregation.
And if it's a civil rights violation, we have an
obligation as American citizens to undo it, to remedy it.
And that's what the why the two terms are so significant.
(05:34):
The first, the fact of segregation is a paralyzing myth
because it prevents us from feeling an obligation to retrest segregation.
The second, the reality that I described in my book
of many, many federal, state, and local policies who were
racially explicit that are the cause of residential segregation today,
(05:57):
that created it, sustained it, perpetuated it. It's a civil
rights violation. Our racial boundaries in every metropolitan area are
as much as civil rights violation as a segregation of
schools or water fountains or buses or any of the
things we addressed in the twentieth century. But this one
we've left untouched. And so it's important to understand the
(06:17):
history of how our government segregated in America because if
you understand its history, then we have no choice but
to accept the obligation to remedy it because it's a
violation of our constitution. Wow, you said so much there.
It's like you just said, if we accept the history,
we have no choice. And I feel so often in
this country maybe if that we don't want to accept
(06:39):
the history. And I think white supremacy seems to exist
in a sort of since since a perpetual sort of
denial that in that it's something that's going on. So,
but before we get there, I would love to talk
about some of the ways in which in the twentieth
century our government participated in what you call the jury segregation.
(07:00):
And I love the way you start your book. You
tell us about the story of a man named Frank
Stephen Fenn. Can you tell us a bit about Mr
Stephen Fenn and the story of richment in California. Sure,
during World War Two, hundreds of thousands of white and
black workers flocked to the West Coast to take jobs
(07:21):
in war industries making airplanes and ships, tanks and jeeps. Well,
Frank Stevenson came to California as a young man during
World War Two and got a job in a forward
plant that had been converted to making tanks and jeeps.
And at the end of the war that plant converted
(07:42):
back into the manufacturer of automobiles, and it did so
for about ten years, and in the nineteen that plant
moved to the suburbs. At the time, many many urban plants,
we're moving to suburban locations because all of a sudden,
the highways were being built and plants not a longer
(08:03):
needed to be located near a deep water port or
a railroad terminal to get their parts and ship their
final products. Richmond was a deep water port. That's why
the Ford plant was there. But they moved to a
suburb called Mill Peteris but now part of the Silicon
Valley in California, and the United all the workers the
union negotiating agreement with Ford that all the workers in
(08:25):
the Richmond plant could move to Mill Peters. It was
about fifty miles away. The workers in that plant had
the opportunity to keep their jabs by moving to Mill Peters.
But the white workers were able to move because there
was housing for them. The African American workers were not
able to move because there was no housing for them. Well,
(08:47):
why was there no housing for them? The reason there
was no housing for them wasn't The federal government had
embarked in the period after World War two two create
suburbs like Mill Peters with single family homes for white
workers only, and created these suburbs with a prohibition that
any homes could be occupied by African Americans. This is
(09:10):
an explicit racial policy. Perhaps the biggest and best well
known of these is maybe you've heard of it, Levitt
Town east of New York City, seventeen thousand homes in
one place, uh. But the suburbs and the communities in
Milpitis were smaller, but still financed by the Federal Housing
Administration and Veterans Administration Before that Levitt or these other
(09:34):
developers Frank Bohannan in UH northern California in the Milpitis area,
these developers could never assemble the capital to build these
suburbs on their own because we were in the suburban
country yet and the banks thought, this is a crazy idea.
Why would you lend somebody the money in Levitt's case,
(09:54):
to build seventeen thousand homes that nobody was going to
want to buy. Who wants to move to the suburbs.
The only way that these developers Frank Bohannan and in
the East Bay or Levitt and Levitt Town or any
of the others, the only way they could build these
projects was by going to the Federal Housing Administration and
Veterans Administration, submitting their plans for the projects, the architectural
(10:17):
design of the homes, the layout of the streets, the
construction materials they were going to use, and a commitment
required by the Federal Housing or Veterans Administration never to
sell a home to an African American. Now do we
know why they didn't want to un sailed to African
Americans and they wanted these to have these communities and
(10:37):
be exclusively white. Was there a reason or they were
just like, we can't have black people there. Well, this
country has never dealt with the legacy of slavery and
Jim Crow, and it was assumed by policy makers. They
didn't have to say why. It was assumed by policy
wakers as well as many of their constituents that African
(10:59):
Americans were in inferior race and didn't belong mixing with
with whites. This was not just a phenomenon in the South,
there was a policy of the National Democratic Party. It's
very interesting, you know I I talked in the book
and the Color of Laws. You may may recall the
vern that in thirteen Woodrow Wilson was elected President of
(11:23):
the United States. He was the first Southern Democrat to
be elected president since the Civil War, and prior to that,
prior to nineteen thirteen, when he assumed office, we had
an integrated federal civil service. Integrated the civil service wasn't
large like it is today, but there was an integrated
federal civil service. The Wilson administration embarked on a program
(11:47):
to segregate the federal civil service for the first time,
first time in nineteen thirteen. This was fifty years after
the end of the Civil War, just about so this
is not something that dates from the end of the
Civil War. This is something that was imposed in the
twentieth century. Well, the biggest department in the government, one
(12:07):
of the biggest departments in the government at that time
was the Navy Department. In all departments of the government
that they were putting up curtains to separate black and
white workers in federal office buildings. They were firing any
African Americans who were in supervisory positions because it was
no longer permitted for African Americans to supervise whites. Separate
(12:29):
watching facilities were established in basements for African American workers. Well,
as I said, Navy departments in the largest departments. And
who was the assistant secretary of the Navy at that time?
In this is a quiz, I have no idea the
assistant Secretary of the Navy in nineteen thirteen who was
(12:50):
responsible for segregating the Navy department was Franklin del or Roosevelt.
I'm not suggesting that this was Roosevelt's idea, or he
would have done it on his own. They certainly an
object and this is the environment of the Democratic Party
with which he matured as a politician, and uh eventually
(13:11):
twenty years later, was elected President of the United States
and implemented these policies that I've described now. As you
may know, when Rosel was first elected nineteen thirty two,
African Americans didn't support them. They've voted overwhelmingly for the
Republican candidate. Herbert Hoovers voted Republican until the realignment in night.
(13:36):
I think posts the right act um to vote Republican
because the Democratic Party with the pro third segregation party.
Am I completely wrong with that? In my American history, Yeah,
I don't think that's right. The big shift of the
of African Americans to the Democratic Party took place in
nineteen thirty six, four years after Rosevelt was elected. And
(13:59):
the reason they shifted to the Democratic Party was because
prior to that, prior to the New Deal, to the Depression,
to the Roosevelt administration, the federal government never offered any
benefits to African Americans. M on the Roosevelt the federal
government offered segregated benefits the African Americans, and the African
American voting population on the whole thought that segregated benefits
(14:24):
were better than no benefits at all. Can you explain
the segregated benefits, the details of how the New Deal
with segregating, and how certain policies, particularly in terms of wages,
were despair it in relationship to black folks. There are
many many policies. Let me describe one that I talked
about at great length in my book because it has
the impact on residential segregation that we know today. There
(14:47):
was no public housing in this country prior to the
New Deal. As I say, the previous administrations gave no
benefits of any kind to African Americans or to whites
for that better. The first public housing in this country,
the first civilian public housing in this country, was created
by the Roosevelt administration when it first took office. The
Public Works Administration, one of the first New Deal agencies,
(15:10):
built the first civilian public housing in this country. And
everywhere it built it, it built segregated projects, separate projects
for whites, separate projects for African Americans. And this isn't
just in the South. This is all over the country.
And people shouldn't know that, even though Jim Crowe was
a thing of the South that segregated housing with all
over the country. We talked about California, You talked about
(15:31):
Letty Town in New York. Yes, well, I'm sure you're
familiar with the great African American poet, novelist, playwright Lanks
the News he grew up in Cleveland. In his autobiography,
he describes how he grew up in an integrated Cleveland neighborhood.
There were many downtown integrated neighborhoods at that time. We'd
be stunned if we were transported back to that period
(15:52):
in history. The reason is simple of why there were
so many integrated neighborhoods. I mentioned earlier that we were
a manufest actoring economy, and all the factories had to
be located in the central district near a deep waterport
or railroad terminal. And because workers in those factories didn't
have automobiles to drive to work, they had to live
(16:12):
relatively close to the factories. So there were many broadly
integrated neighborhoods. I'm not suggesting every other house was a
different race, but broadly integrated neighborhoods in downtown areas of
lengths and News grew up in one of them in Cleveland.
He said when he went to high school, it was
an integrated high school. He said his best friend was Polish.
He said he dated a Jewish girl in high school.
(16:34):
Integrated high school and integrated neighborhood. That's not surprising. Public
Works administration went into that neighborhood of Cleveland, demolished housing
there and created two separate projects, one for whites, one
for African Americans, creating segregation where it hadn't previously existed.
And you you observed this was not just in the South.
It was in the North. It was in places that
(16:57):
self satisfied, smug places that today think they're better than
everybody else on these issues. One of the ones I
described in the Color of Law is Cambridge, Massachusetts. I
imagine you may have heard of that. The area in
Cambridge between Harvard and m I T. The Central Square neighborhood,
was a fully integrated neighborhood in the nineteen thirties, but
(17:17):
the Public Works Administration created segregation there for the first
time uh A separate project for whites, separate project for
African Americans created by the federal government, creating segregation there
and with other segregated projects elsewhere in Boston, that created
the pattern that exists to this day. Now. As you
mentioned earlier, it wasn't just in housing policy. The Civilian
(17:40):
Conservation Corps, the federal program that provided jobs for the
first time during the Depression, had segregated work units, not
just in the South and the North, as well. National
legislation like the Social Security Act or the Fair Labor
Standards Act, that is, the Minimum Wage Law. The first
MEAN and Muage Law were adopted in the nineteen thirties,
(18:03):
excluded occupations from their coverage where African Americans participated agriculture,
for example, or domestic work were excluded from Social Security
or minimum wage laws because these were predominantly African American populations. Now,
let me just say the Social Security Act and the
Fair Labor Standards Act excluded African Americans because Southern congressmen
(18:28):
and senators demanded that exclusion. But no Southern Democrats, no
Southern congressmen or senators, insisted that housing projects in Cleveland
be segregated. That's a different There's no national program that
requires the same policy to be followed everywhere. So even
(18:48):
if and I'm not suggesting that they should have done this,
but even if the Roosevelt administration had created segregated projects
in the South to pacify Southern congressman and senators, there's
no reason why they had to create segregated projects in Cleveland,
or in Cambridge, Massachusetts, or in California or any of
(19:10):
the other places they did that. This was a policy
of the Democratic Party. African Americans, I said, we're grateful
to get any housing at all, because we had a
terrible housing shortage in the depression. Uh, And so they
flocked to the Democratic Party as a result, and segregated
benefits were better than no benefits at all in their view.
And I think that is the that's the piece that
(19:33):
is so intense that there so many they were integrated
communities and the government forced this segregation, which just boggles
my mind on so many different levels. So this is
the Public Worth administration that this is the result of
road developed and then the next big push for we
can call it governments at today, how thing would be
after World War Two, which we alluded to a bit earlier,
(19:54):
and we go to some places like Levitt Town. Right, So, um,
you talked a little bit about the fic A. Um,
can you tell the difference between that in red lining? Well,
I will, but I want to if if I may,
and I think you'd like to hear this, I'd like
to say something a bit more about the f h Okay,
it's subsidies of these suburbs. These suburbs that were created
(20:15):
by the f h A and v A, the Veterans
Administration in the post World War two period were affordable
to working class families of either race Blacks and whites
could have afforded them. Returning war veterans, whether they were
black or white, could have afforded, and they were inexpensive homes,
no down payment, very small modest homes uh fifty square feet,
(20:38):
two bedroom, one bath, modest homes. Working class families, Whites
were subsidized to move to them. African Americans prohibited. They
sold at the time for about eight thousand dollars UH.
In today's money, that's about a hundred thousand dollars. Well,
those homes, as you know, but don't sell for a
hundred thousand dollars today. The homes and mill petis million dollars.
(21:02):
The homes in Levitt Town three hundred, four hundred, five
hundred thousand dollars. Perhaps the white working class families returning
war veterans were subsidized to move to these suburbs, gained
over the next couple of generations wealth from the appreciation
of the value of their homes. African Americans were prohibited
(21:24):
from participating in this wealth generating program. The result is
that today African American incomes on average or about six
six percent of white incomes. There are a number of
reasons for that, some of them up I mentioned a
few minutes ago, and we talked about the Social Security
Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act. But you would
(21:44):
think if the African American families on average at six
of the incomes of white families, African Americans would also
have six of the wealth on average of white families.
You can say the same amount of money from the
same incomes. The reality, though, is that while African American
incomes on average are about six of white family incomes,
(22:09):
African American household wealth is about five of white wolf
And that enormous disparity between a income ratio and a
five percent wealth ratio is entirely attributable the unconstitutional federal
housing policy that was practiced in the mid twentieth century.
(22:29):
It's never been remedied, and we have an obligation to
remedy uh that five percent wealth gap is the contributor
major way to the ongoing inequality that we have today.
It explains why, even though housing discrimination is now against
the law, these suburbs are no longer accessible to working
class families of either race Whites. If they have down
(22:52):
payments that they've been bequeathed by their parents and grandparents
who gained wealth from these appreciating homes, they can move
to these suburbs. But the African Americans who have no
wealth cannot do so, so that the ongoing segregation that
we have today is in good part an ongoing effect
(23:14):
of these federal policies. Now, you asked about redlining. Actually,
before we get to redline, i'd I'd love to just
emphasize what you just said, because I think it's really important. Um.
Last year, post George Floyd's horrible murder, there were a
lot of conversations online about structural racism. Actually, I shared
a video on my Instagram page about structural racism, and
(23:36):
then I begin to see online all the people attempted
to debunk that video and like say, structural racism, it
is something that doesn't exist. I think that residential segregation
is a really good example, and these policies are a
really good example of structural racism and how that structural
racism continues to have disparate outcomes for black and white
people till this day, when we look at their wealth gap,
(23:58):
and we actually look at educated and there's a relationship
between housing and education. There's so many things that we
can look at around housing policy that are consistent to
this day. This is a good time to take a
little break. We'll be right back though. Okay, that's taken
(24:23):
care of. Let's get back to our chat. A dear
friend of mine just bought a house in Beechwood Canyon
here in Los Angeles, and her attorney told her that
there was a racial covenant in the contract. She's a
black woman, so apparently she was the first black person,
you know, to buy the house. But this is one
she just closed in our house and there's still a
racial covenant in the contract. Can you actually explain to
(24:45):
people what racial covenants are, because I think everybody might
not know. Sure. I mentioned before that the in order
to get the guaranteed bank loans from the federal government,
the developers and not only had to agree there for
the show home to an African American, but they had
to include a clause in the deed of every home
prohibiting resale to African Americans are rental to African Americans.
(25:10):
These clauses and deeds are called covenants restrictive convenance In California,
they're part of the covenants, conditions and restrictions, which is
an amendment to the deed. Well, you can't change a
deed once uh languages in there, but you can make
it unenforceable, and of course those racial convenants are now
on enforceable, but the language remains. You can't change that.
(25:33):
You can't remove something from your deed anymore. You can
wake up in the middle of the night and say
you want to change your property line, the deeds, the deed,
and so these this language continues to exist, and it's
important that people look at their deeds and be reminded
of how their community was segregated. This wasn't a natural phenomenon.
(25:55):
This was an explicit requirement. Now many of these deeds
have these racial covenants even without a government requirement. I'm
not suggesting at the only time you'll find a deed
is when the government required it. There were many private
builders who put these deeds in even when they didn't
have federal financing. But this is an example of how
(26:15):
African Americans were excluded from these suburbs, not only when
they were first built, but later on when the original
owners might have wanted to resell them. There were hundreds
and hundreds of cases around the country of African Americans
who bought homes in the neighborhoods that were previously all white,
(26:37):
bought them legitimately paid for them. Neighbors went to court
and the courts ordered them to be evicted because they
had no right to live in a home that was
for Caucasians only. Now, these actions of the courts were
also a violation of the Constitution that have never been remedied.
(26:57):
There are many African Americans who lost their homes because
of these racial covenants. You tell the story of a
Bill Myer. It's a black man who was a war
veteran who was in a similar situation in Levittown, Pennsylvania.
I believe this is in the nineteen fifties, and he
bought his home. And what was really interesting is that
(27:19):
the police participated in sort of the mob riots that
sort of happened outside his home. Can you tell us
a little bit about Bill Meyers and his story. Well, sure,
not only did the police participate in this mob violence
to drive the first African American out of his home
in Levittown, Pennsylvania, but frequently the police organized and led
(27:44):
these riots, this mob violence. This is actually how I
started writing the book. The Supreme Court had issued the
decision in two thousand and seven in which are prohibited
the city of Louisville, Kentucky from embarking on a very
hoken planned desegregated schools, and the Supreme Court explained that
(28:05):
the schools in Louisville, Kentucky was segregated because the neighborhoods
was segregated de facto as I described before. The Supreme
Court said that it was by private prejudice and private
businesses and people wanting to live with each other the
same race and income differences. And the Supreme Court said,
since the segregation of Louisville, Kentucky was the fact, though
(28:28):
the school district was prohibited from doing anything to fix
it because it wasn't a constitutional violation. Well, I read
the Supreme Court decision. This isn't two thousand and seven,
and I remembered reading about something else that happened to Louisville,
Kentucky and very similar to the situation that you mentioned.
In Levittown, Pennsylvania, there was an all white suburb in
(28:51):
the Louisville called Shivli. There was a white home honor
in this all white suburb. Who owned the home. It
was a single, single family home suburb. He had an
African American friend living in the center city of Louisville
renting an apartment, had a wife and the child. He
was also a decorated Navy veteran. The white homeowner in
the suburb of Shively bought a second home in his
(29:13):
suburb and re sold it to his African American friend.
And when the African American friend moved in with his
wife and daughter, an angry police protected mob surrounded the
home through rocks, through the windows, fire bombed, and dynamited
the home. Police made no effort to stop this, but
when this riot was all over the state of Kentucky arrested, tried, convicted,
(29:38):
and jailed with a fifteen year jail sentence. The white
homeowner forced sedition having sold a home in a white
neighborhood to a black family. So I said to myself,
this doesn't sound to me much like the fact of segregation,
because the police are agents of government there. It's a
Fourteenth Amendment violation for the police, the prosecutors, the criminal
(30:00):
justice system to be mobilized to enforce racial boundaries. It's
a civil rights violation. And I began to look into
it further that at that point, and that's when I
discovered this case in um Levittown, Pennsylvania, very similar in
that case of there was a police sergeant who tried
to restrain the white mob, but he was demoted. And
(30:21):
as I looked into it further, I found and I'm
not exaggerating here, there were hundreds of cases in cities
all across the country North Midwest, as well as border
states like Louisville. But the Pennsylvania's outside Philadelphia, as you described, Chicago, Detroit,
Los Angeles, where you are San Francisco, police protected. Sometimes
(30:44):
police organized and led mob violence to drive African Americans
out of their homes. One of the ones that I
I discovered this research and I'm embarrassed. I forget the
name of the area of Los Angeles. It's where Occidental
Call is located. Eagle Rock. Eagle Rock, Eagle Rock, that's
the that's the name. But now even in that area,
(31:07):
the police actually organized a violent mob to drive an
African American family out of a home that who legitimately
purchased there. Wow um. Senator Corey Booker often tells the
story that a dear friend of his white friend of
his father's went to the real estate agent and and
pretended to, you know, buy the house. And then when
(31:28):
you know it was time to move in they tried
to protest it, but he was able to stay in
this white neighborhood and you know, got a better education
and he lived a better life, etcetera, etcetera. And it's
really interesting. I think about this too. When I was
in elementary school, my mother lied about where we lived
so we could go to a better school, a better
school district. So that the relationship between school and and
(31:53):
residential in terms of segregation, it's it's really deep because
there's the income peace and the accumulating of wealth issue,
but there's also the education issue. And if you're in
a better neighborhood, you get a better quality of education
and also can contribute to upward mobility. Oh my god,
this is so many things, um that are running through
(32:13):
my head right now. Well, let me say something about that.
It's not only that the schools are better, but when
African Americans were concentrated in neighborhoods that were less healthy
and less well resourced, their children were unable to do
as well in school, even if the schools were good.
I remember once writing a column about asthma as as
(32:36):
you may know, African American children and low income neighborhoods
segregated neighborhoods have asthma at four times the rate of
middle class children. And they have asthma at four times
the rate because they live in more polluted neighborhoods, more
diesel trucks driving through, more dilapidated buildings, more vermin in
the environment, more empty lots kicking up dust. And uh,
(32:59):
if you have a child who has asthma, there's a
chance more than a child who doesn't that that child
might be up at night wheezing mhm and come to
school the next day drowsy. And if you have two
groups of children who are identical in every respect, same
racial composition, same social and economic background, same family structure,
but one group is a higher rate of asthma than
(33:20):
the other, that group is going to have lower average
achievement no matter how good the schools are, because it's
going to be sleepier. It doesn't make a big difference.
But then when you begin to think of all the
other conditions that impact children, and poorly resourced neighborhoods, less
well maintained water delivery systems, and more dilapidated buildings with
(33:43):
lead paint peeling, African American children have much higher rates
of lead poisoning than white middle class children and have
lower achievement. For that reason, lead poisoning causes the decline
in i Q. So it's lead poisoning, it's asthma, it's
economic and security, it's homelessness. And so no matter how
(34:03):
good the schools are in those neighborhoods, they are going
to have lower average achievement than schools and neighborhoods where
children come to school healthy and well rested and well
nourished and economically secure homes. So that the effect of
racial segregation is enormous in creating ongoing and equality racial
(34:24):
inequality in this country. It's not just in housing, it's
in schools, it's in health. African Americans, as you know,
have sure the life expectancies on average, greater rates of
cardiovascular disease because they live in less healthy neighborhoods, less
access to fresh food, again, more diesel trucks driving through.
So the ongoing effects of the segregation that we our
(34:49):
government has unconstitutionally created exists with us today and they
demand remedy. Before we talk about that remedy, there's one
point in your book that you may that I just
really have to highlight. I was amazed when black folks
were able to get home so right. There are a
lot of predatory things that began to happen in the
(35:10):
nineteen fifties when black folks were not able to get
access to loans because of redlining, which just haven't talked
about and f h A policies, and so they often
had these mortgages that were really expensive, and to pay
for those mortgages, they would have multiple people would live
in the homes, right, and so the neighborhoods have become overcrowded,
(35:31):
they'd be working so much, and so these f h
A policies, these government policies ultimately created slums. And I
think there's this myth that, like, you know, black people,
you know, we we don't keep our neighborhoods when there's
their conditions that are structural that have led to these
kinds of neighborhoods. Can talked to us a little bit
about that, Richard, Well, of course you just did, you
(35:53):
stud as well as got to take a teensy break here.
I'll be fast m h already. Then let's just dive
right back. The f h A not only prohibited African
(36:16):
Americans from moving to suburban locations, but it refused to
ensure conventional mortgages for African Americans and existing urban neighborhoods.
That's what we call redlining. The federal government drew maps
of every metropolitan area in the country and colored red
the neighborhoods and those maps that had a lot of
(36:37):
African Americans living in them, or even that have African
Americans a few living in them. The cover of my
book The Color of Law has one of those red
line maps. It's actually the map of Newark, and it
shows how the federal government the redlined neighborhoods. And the
purpose of these maps was to indicate to the federal
government where it would be too risky to u ensure mortgages. So,
(37:02):
as you said, there's a result of that. Slums were
created because if people can't get conventional mortgages frequently there
were speculators who exploited them by selling them homes on contract,
something like the installment plan. If you put something away
in the department store and you make payments and then
you never finish it, you lose everything you put in.
(37:23):
You don't gain any equity in the furniture or the
dress that you've put aside. Um, this is how these
homes were sold. They were sold at much higher prices
then the market required, and families gained no equity. So
as you say, they had to subdivide their homes rent
apartments to other families. As the homes became more overcrowded,
(37:47):
the people needed to conduct their social life in the
streets because every available space was being used for a
bedroom for multiple families living in space that should have
been for a single family. Uh. Government stopped collecting garbages frequently,
and those neighborhoods that became African Americans and they became slums.
And why it's looked at those slums and they decided, well,
(38:10):
African Americans are slum dwellers, and uh, we don't want
them near us, not understanding that the slum conditions were
created by government policy. So you're absolutely right when you
described this. Thank you so much for that. And when
we think about remedies, how do we make this better.
I I just bought my first home a few years ago,
(38:31):
and so I'm like, okay, appreciation and property value. When
I think about writing this sort of residential segregation, I
think that like, is it there was there were the
conventional wisdom by the government in the nineteen fouries with
that property values would go down if black people moved
into a neighborhood. And I feel like that steal the
conventional wisdom and that black people lived in a neighborhood,
the property value goes down. And I think if you
(38:53):
starts messing with people's property value, people who canna get
really really incensed. Right. There have been a tempts to
put governments that says housing in different suburbs, and a
lot of people in suburbs like protest and and it
gets really really tricky when you talk about people's property value.
What do you think the remedy for this residential segregation
would be richer? Well, let me say first about property values.
(39:17):
And in fact, because African Americans had access to so
few homes, they paid more for homes in um single
family home neighborhoods. Then white's willing to pay for the
same homes simply a question of supply and demands. So
the supply available to African Americans are so small that
they paid more. Property values went up when African Americans
(39:41):
moved into a neighborhood for that reason, and frequently it
was remarked that the best maintained houses in the neighborhood
was a few that were owned by an African American.
So this was a myth. Well, of course, it becomes
a self perpetuating prophecy. What happened was that when those
neighborhoods have got a few African Americans, speculators went into
them tried to persuade white families of their property values
(40:02):
would go down because African Americans were living in them.
In my book, I describe speculators that hired black women
to walk baby beverages through white neighborhoods to try to
scare whites that the neighborhood was turned involved black. They
even organized home burglaries to uh persuade whites that they
better flee that neighborhood. The speculators then bought those homes
(40:25):
from whites at far below market value because they persuaded
whites their their homes would lose even more value if
they sell quickly, and then resolved them to African Americans
that have much more than market value, creating enormous profits.
This was a commonplace practice. It was called blockbusting in
the twentieth century and a further contributed to the segregation
(40:48):
of this country. Wow, that reminds me off the sub
prime loans that plagued the Financial Question two thousand and eight.
The subprime mortgages that happened that affected disproportionately are Arican
American folks. What would you think? What can we do
to make this better? Well, the policies to redress segregation
(41:08):
are well known. There's no mystery about them. We should
have an affirmative action followed program and housing that subsidizes
African Americans to move to neighborhoods that are now unaffordable
to working class families of either race, but that would
have been affordable to African Americans at the time. We
should have bothered zoning laws, government debtities to working class people,
(41:28):
particularly African Americans, to move to certain neighborhoods to de
segregate them. And not just government. Banks and the real
estate agencies and the insurance companies and the developers that
created the segregation have an obligation to contribute to those
remedies as well. We should stop placing all of our
affordable housing and low income segregated neighborhoods to reinforce their segregation.
So what's missing, and let me conclude with this. What's
(41:51):
missing is not policy ideas to redress segregation. Those are
well known. What's missing is a new civil rights movement
that's going to engage in the kinds of militant action
that the civil rights movement to engage in the nineteen
fifties and sixties to make it uncomfortable to maintain these
policies of segregation, to create the political support to implement
(42:15):
the kinds of programs to retests regulation that we know.
I am actually working with a group of national civil
rights leaders to create a new movement to redress racial segregation.
That movement will create local committees and communities around the
country to create the political pressure to implement the policies
(42:36):
that I say are well known to redress segregation. And
we're about to launch it. And if any of your
listeners wanted to be on the mailing list to receive
the announcement of the launch of this new movement to
redress racial segregation, they should send an email and I'll
give it to you now. Carry see a r rn't
lady at n m r r S dot org and
(43:00):
m R artists do ward for the new movement to
reach ress racial segregation, and hopefully we'll see some of
these policies implemented in the not too distant future. That's amazing.
Thank you so much. Richard Richard is the author of
The Color of Law of Forgotten History of How our
Government segregated America. I like to end the podcast with
(43:25):
this question what else is true? And basically this question
comes out of my therapy in the community resiliency model
is about being in the space of both and um
when things are hard, what helps you get through? Basically, so, Richard,
for you, what helps you get through? What else is true? Well?
You know this would may surprise you, but I found
(43:47):
the research that I did for this book very hopeful. Uh.
I found it very hopeful because as long as we
believe that this will happen by accident, it's just natural
to believe that could only unhappen by accident. I didn't
see how that was going to happen. Once we Once
we understand that this segregated pattern everywhere in the country
(44:07):
was created by explicit government policy, it's easy to see
that equally explicit government policy can fix it. And we
are now having a more accurate and passionate discussion about
race and the legacy of slavery, and Jim Crow in
this company who ever have had before in American history. Uh,
it's not that it's gone far enough, needs to go
(44:28):
much farther. It's not that there isn't an enormous white
supremacist opposition to it. But I take great hope in
the Black Lives Matter movement demonstrations that enlisted the twenty
million Americans, mostly white, to protest the police abuse and
murder of African Americans. I think we're in a period
(44:48):
where the future can look right, despite the fact that
it may not seem that way immediately. So that gives
me hope. M M. That's wonderful that it's a beautiful
note to end on. Thank you so much, Richard Rothstein.
The Color of Law. It is ribbon ng. You should
go and read it. Everyone. Thank you so much, Richer
Thank you. Wow. My mind is just really blown. I'm
(45:17):
I mean, it's so angering so much of the history,
and I think it is really disingenuous at the Supreme
Court in their decision, and disingenuous for anyone to say
that we should just let things be when the government
explicitly if you read his book, they explicitly created policies
to segregate neighborhoods when it was completely not even necessary.
(45:40):
I mean, you have to read this book. You know.
I was in a conversation with someone last year and
they were like, structural racism, is that really a thing?
And I cited residential segregation. Um. Another point that he
didn't get to that he reads in his book is
that our schools are still very much segregated, you know,
sixty years after Brown versus Board of Education. So we
(46:01):
need a new civil rights movement. We need a new
civil rights movement to address this, to kind of talk
about what our government did and the continuing effects of
those policies, continuing effects when we think about the wealth
got when we think about education, Wow, I'm like, I'm
(46:22):
just imagining like people in their property value. I wonder,
I wonder, I wonder how that's going to go. But
that's up to all of you out there here were there.
Thank you for listening to the Laver and Cut Show.
(46:43):
Please rate, review, subscribe, and share with everyone you know.
Join me next week when I'll be talking to actress,
writer and activist Jin Richards about dating as a trans woman.
It's going to be lit, It's going to be right,
all real and amazing. You have to check it out.
(47:04):
You can find me on Instagram and Twitter at Laverne
Cox and on Facebook at Laverne Cox or real. Until
next time, stay in the life. The Laverne Cox Show
is a production of Shonda land Audio in partnership with
I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from Shonda land Audio,
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
(47:27):
you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to the Laverne Cox Show. A reduction of shondaland
Audio in partnership with I Heart Radio. As the homes
became more overcrowded, people needed to conduct their social life
in the streets because every available space was being used
for a bedroom for multiple families living in space that
should have been for a single family. Governments stopped collecting
(00:25):
garbages frequently in those neighborhoods. They became African American and
they became slums, and whites looked at those slums and
they decided, well, African Americans are slum dwellers, not understanding
that the slum conditions were created by government policy. Hey, everyone,
(00:47):
Welcome to the Laverne Cox Show. I'm Laverne Cox. In America,
owning a home is presented as like part of the
American dream, and I've always wanted to own my own home.
I bought my first home about almost three years ago now,
and it was a huge thing for me, especially as
(01:09):
someone who used to live in government subsidized housing. And
when I think about being black, being an African American,
and being a homeowner, I can't help but think about
the history of how that has been a fraud enterprise
for a lot of black people in this country. And
I can't help and think about the relationship between home
(01:30):
ownership and wealth, and then home ownership and structural racism.
And I knew when I had this podcast that I
would want to have a conversation about residential segregation, home ownership,
and structural racism. And I discovered this book called The
Color of Law through the four Harriet YouTube page. Shout
(01:51):
out to Kimberly Foster, and I knew I wanted to
have Richard Rothstein, who wrote the book, on the podcast
to talk about the history of racial segregation in the
United States. Richard Rothstein is the author of The Color
of Law, a forgotten history of how our government segregated America.
According to the New York Times, there is no better
(02:13):
history of house in segregation. Mr Rostein is a Distinguished
Fellow at the Economic Policy Institute and a Senior Fellow
Emeritus at the Inn Double a CP legal defense spot.
Please enjoy my conversation with Richard Rothstein. Hello Richard Rothstein,
(02:35):
and welcome to the podcast. How are you doing today?
I thank you, I appreciate being with you. I am
so excited that you're here. To have this conversation with me.
So in your amazing book The Color of Law, A
Forgotten History of how our government segregated America, you use
the term de jury segregation a lot. So can we
(02:57):
start off by having you defined the collegible might not
hear that term did jury segregation? Can you define that
in relationship to do it back though segregation both? Please?
Certainly we have a national myth in this country that
the reason we're so racially segregated, with every metropolitan area
having clearly defined areas that are all white or mostly white,
(03:19):
and clearly defined areas that are all black or mostly black,
that the reason that's, uh, we're so segregated is because
of private activity, because of banks or real estate agents
or insurance companies that discriminated, wouldn't ensure mortgages for African Americans. Uh,
because of bigoted homeowners or landlords who wouldn't rent or
(03:43):
sell to African Americans. Or maybe we tell ourselves that
it's all because people like to live with each other
of the same race and that's why we're so segregated.
They choose to do it. Or maybe we tell ourselves
it's just because of income differences on average African Americans
of lower incomes than whites, and so many African Americans
(04:03):
can't afford to move to higher opportunity neighborhoods, and we
tell ourselves, this is the reason we're segregated. The Supreme
Court has embraced this view, and it's given a name
to this view. It says, we have defact those segregation,
something that just happened, in fact, not by policy, not
by law, and not by ordinance, not by regulation, just
(04:24):
sort of happened naturally. And the Supreme Court has said,
and we've all adopted this view, but if it happened naturally,
if it happened by accident de fact, those segregation, not
by government, and it wasn't a constitutional violation, there's nothing
unconstitutional about it. It's not a civil rights violation. It's
just self choice and private bigotry. And the Supreme Court said,
(04:49):
if you have something that just happened naturally, happened by
accident de fact, those segregation, it can only unhappen by accident.
There's nothing we have an obligation to do anything about
because it's a not a civil its violation. In contrast,
if we thought that the residential segregation of every metropolitan
area was not accidental, but the product of very explicit federal, state,
(05:13):
and local policy designed to ensure the African Americans and
Whites could not live near one another in any metropolitan area.
That's a civil rights violation. We call that the jury segregation.
And if it's a civil rights violation, we have an
obligation as American citizens to undo it, to remedy it.
And that's what the why the two terms are so significant.
(05:34):
The first, the fact of segregation is a paralyzing myth
because it prevents us from feeling an obligation to retrest segregation.
The second, the reality that I described in my book
of many, many federal, state, and local policies who were
racially explicit that are the cause of residential segregation today,
(05:57):
that created it, sustained it, perpetuated it. It's a civil
rights violation. Our racial boundaries in every metropolitan area are
as much as civil rights violation as a segregation of
schools or water fountains or buses or any of the
things we addressed in the twentieth century. But this one
we've left untouched. And so it's important to understand the
(06:17):
history of how our government segregated in America because if
you understand its history, then we have no choice but
to accept the obligation to remedy it because it's a
violation of our constitution. Wow, you said so much there.
It's like you just said, if we accept the history,
we have no choice. And I feel so often in
this country maybe if that we don't want to accept
(06:39):
the history. And I think white supremacy seems to exist
in a sort of since since a perpetual sort of
denial that in that it's something that's going on. So,
but before we get there, I would love to talk
about some of the ways in which in the twentieth
century our government participated in what you call the jury segregation.
(07:00):
And I love the way you start your book. You
tell us about the story of a man named Frank
Stephen Fenn. Can you tell us a bit about Mr
Stephen Fenn and the story of richment in California. Sure,
during World War Two, hundreds of thousands of white and
black workers flocked to the West Coast to take jobs
(07:21):
in war industries making airplanes and ships, tanks and jeeps. Well,
Frank Stevenson came to California as a young man during
World War Two and got a job in a forward
plant that had been converted to making tanks and jeeps.
And at the end of the war that plant converted
(07:42):
back into the manufacturer of automobiles, and it did so
for about ten years, and in the nineteen that plant
moved to the suburbs. At the time, many many urban plants,
we're moving to suburban locations because all of a sudden,
the highways were being built and plants not a longer
(08:03):
needed to be located near a deep water port or
a railroad terminal to get their parts and ship their
final products. Richmond was a deep water port. That's why
the Ford plant was there. But they moved to a
suburb called Mill Peteris but now part of the Silicon
Valley in California, and the United all the workers the
union negotiating agreement with Ford that all the workers in
(08:25):
the Richmond plant could move to Mill Peters. It was
about fifty miles away. The workers in that plant had
the opportunity to keep their jabs by moving to Mill Peters.
But the white workers were able to move because there
was housing for them. The African American workers were not
able to move because there was no housing for them. Well,
(08:47):
why was there no housing for them? The reason there
was no housing for them wasn't The federal government had
embarked in the period after World War two two create
suburbs like Mill Peters with single family homes for white
workers only, and created these suburbs with a prohibition that
any homes could be occupied by African Americans. This is
(09:10):
an explicit racial policy. Perhaps the biggest and best well
known of these is maybe you've heard of it, Levitt
Town east of New York City, seventeen thousand homes in
one place, uh. But the suburbs and the communities in
Milpitis were smaller, but still financed by the Federal Housing
Administration and Veterans Administration Before that Levitt or these other
(09:34):
developers Frank Bohannan in UH northern California in the Milpitis area,
these developers could never assemble the capital to build these
suburbs on their own because we were in the suburban
country yet and the banks thought, this is a crazy idea.
Why would you lend somebody the money in Levitt's case,
(09:54):
to build seventeen thousand homes that nobody was going to
want to buy. Who wants to move to the suburbs.
The only way that these developers Frank Bohannan and in
the East Bay or Levitt and Levitt Town or any
of the others, the only way they could build these
projects was by going to the Federal Housing Administration and
Veterans Administration, submitting their plans for the projects, the architectural
(10:17):
design of the homes, the layout of the streets, the
construction materials they were going to use, and a commitment
required by the Federal Housing or Veterans Administration never to
sell a home to an African American. Now do we
know why they didn't want to un sailed to African
Americans and they wanted these to have these communities and
(10:37):
be exclusively white. Was there a reason or they were
just like, we can't have black people there. Well, this
country has never dealt with the legacy of slavery and
Jim Crow, and it was assumed by policy makers. They
didn't have to say why. It was assumed by policy
wakers as well as many of their constituents that African
(10:59):
Americans were in inferior race and didn't belong mixing with
with whites. This was not just a phenomenon in the South,
there was a policy of the National Democratic Party. It's
very interesting, you know I I talked in the book
and the Color of Laws. You may may recall the
vern that in thirteen Woodrow Wilson was elected President of
(11:23):
the United States. He was the first Southern Democrat to
be elected president since the Civil War, and prior to that,
prior to nineteen thirteen, when he assumed office, we had
an integrated federal civil service. Integrated the civil service wasn't
large like it is today, but there was an integrated
federal civil service. The Wilson administration embarked on a program
(11:47):
to segregate the federal civil service for the first time,
first time in nineteen thirteen. This was fifty years after
the end of the Civil War, just about so this
is not something that dates from the end of the
Civil War. This is something that was imposed in the
twentieth century. Well, the biggest department in the government, one
(12:07):
of the biggest departments in the government at that time
was the Navy Department. In all departments of the government
that they were putting up curtains to separate black and
white workers in federal office buildings. They were firing any
African Americans who were in supervisory positions because it was
no longer permitted for African Americans to supervise whites. Separate
(12:29):
watching facilities were established in basements for African American workers. Well,
as I said, Navy departments in the largest departments. And
who was the assistant secretary of the Navy at that time?
In this is a quiz, I have no idea the
assistant Secretary of the Navy in nineteen thirteen who was
(12:50):
responsible for segregating the Navy department was Franklin del or Roosevelt.
I'm not suggesting that this was Roosevelt's idea, or he
would have done it on his own. They certainly an
object and this is the environment of the Democratic Party
with which he matured as a politician, and uh eventually
(13:11):
twenty years later, was elected President of the United States
and implemented these policies that I've described now. As you
may know, when Rosel was first elected nineteen thirty two,
African Americans didn't support them. They've voted overwhelmingly for the
Republican candidate. Herbert Hoovers voted Republican until the realignment in night.
(13:36):
I think posts the right act um to vote Republican
because the Democratic Party with the pro third segregation party.
Am I completely wrong with that? In my American history, Yeah,
I don't think that's right. The big shift of the
of African Americans to the Democratic Party took place in
nineteen thirty six, four years after Rosevelt was elected. And
(13:59):
the reason they shifted to the Democratic Party was because
prior to that, prior to the New Deal, to the Depression,
to the Roosevelt administration, the federal government never offered any
benefits to African Americans. M on the Roosevelt the federal
government offered segregated benefits the African Americans, and the African
American voting population on the whole thought that segregated benefits
(14:24):
were better than no benefits at all. Can you explain
the segregated benefits, the details of how the New Deal
with segregating, and how certain policies, particularly in terms of wages,
were despair it in relationship to black folks. There are
many many policies. Let me describe one that I talked
about at great length in my book because it has
the impact on residential segregation that we know today. There
(14:47):
was no public housing in this country prior to the
New Deal. As I say, the previous administrations gave no
benefits of any kind to African Americans or to whites
for that better. The first public housing in this country,
the first civilian public housing in this country, was created
by the Roosevelt administration when it first took office. The
Public Works Administration, one of the first New Deal agencies,
(15:10):
built the first civilian public housing in this country. And
everywhere it built it, it built segregated projects, separate projects
for whites, separate projects for African Americans. And this isn't
just in the South. This is all over the country.
And people shouldn't know that, even though Jim Crowe was
a thing of the South that segregated housing with all
over the country. We talked about California, You talked about
(15:31):
Letty Town in New York. Yes, well, I'm sure you're
familiar with the great African American poet, novelist, playwright Lanks
the News he grew up in Cleveland. In his autobiography,
he describes how he grew up in an integrated Cleveland neighborhood.
There were many downtown integrated neighborhoods at that time. We'd
be stunned if we were transported back to that period
(15:52):
in history. The reason is simple of why there were
so many integrated neighborhoods. I mentioned earlier that we were
a manufest actoring economy, and all the factories had to
be located in the central district near a deep waterport
or railroad terminal. And because workers in those factories didn't
have automobiles to drive to work, they had to live
(16:12):
relatively close to the factories. So there were many broadly
integrated neighborhoods. I'm not suggesting every other house was a
different race, but broadly integrated neighborhoods in downtown areas of
lengths and News grew up in one of them in Cleveland.
He said when he went to high school, it was
an integrated high school. He said his best friend was Polish.
He said he dated a Jewish girl in high school.
(16:34):
Integrated high school and integrated neighborhood. That's not surprising. Public
Works administration went into that neighborhood of Cleveland, demolished housing
there and created two separate projects, one for whites, one
for African Americans, creating segregation where it hadn't previously existed.
And you you observed this was not just in the South.
It was in the North. It was in places that
(16:57):
self satisfied, smug places that today think they're better than
everybody else on these issues. One of the ones I
described in the Color of Law is Cambridge, Massachusetts. I
imagine you may have heard of that. The area in
Cambridge between Harvard and m I T. The Central Square neighborhood,
was a fully integrated neighborhood in the nineteen thirties, but
(17:17):
the Public Works Administration created segregation there for the first
time uh A separate project for whites, separate project for
African Americans created by the federal government, creating segregation there
and with other segregated projects elsewhere in Boston, that created
the pattern that exists to this day. Now. As you
mentioned earlier, it wasn't just in housing policy. The Civilian
(17:40):
Conservation Corps, the federal program that provided jobs for the
first time during the Depression, had segregated work units, not
just in the South and the North, as well. National
legislation like the Social Security Act or the Fair Labor
Standards Act, that is, the Minimum Wage Law. The first
MEAN and Muage Law were adopted in the nineteen thirties,
(18:03):
excluded occupations from their coverage where African Americans participated agriculture,
for example, or domestic work were excluded from Social Security
or minimum wage laws because these were predominantly African American populations. Now,
let me just say the Social Security Act and the
Fair Labor Standards Act excluded African Americans because Southern congressmen
(18:28):
and senators demanded that exclusion. But no Southern Democrats, no
Southern congressmen or senators, insisted that housing projects in Cleveland
be segregated. That's a different There's no national program that
requires the same policy to be followed everywhere. So even
(18:48):
if and I'm not suggesting that they should have done this,
but even if the Roosevelt administration had created segregated projects
in the South to pacify Southern congressman and senators, there's
no reason why they had to create segregated projects in Cleveland,
or in Cambridge, Massachusetts, or in California or any of
(19:10):
the other places they did that. This was a policy
of the Democratic Party. African Americans, I said, we're grateful
to get any housing at all, because we had a
terrible housing shortage in the depression. Uh, And so they
flocked to the Democratic Party as a result, and segregated
benefits were better than no benefits at all in their view.
And I think that is the that's the piece that
(19:33):
is so intense that there so many they were integrated
communities and the government forced this segregation, which just boggles
my mind on so many different levels. So this is
the Public Worth administration that this is the result of
road developed and then the next big push for we
can call it governments at today, how thing would be
after World War Two, which we alluded to a bit earlier,
(19:54):
and we go to some places like Levitt Town. Right, So, um,
you talked a little bit about the fic A. Um,
can you tell the difference between that in red lining? Well,
I will, but I want to if if I may,
and I think you'd like to hear this, I'd like
to say something a bit more about the f h Okay,
it's subsidies of these suburbs. These suburbs that were created
(20:15):
by the f h A and v A, the Veterans
Administration in the post World War two period were affordable
to working class families of either race Blacks and whites
could have afforded them. Returning war veterans, whether they were
black or white, could have afforded, and they were inexpensive homes,
no down payment, very small modest homes uh fifty square feet,
(20:38):
two bedroom, one bath, modest homes. Working class families, Whites
were subsidized to move to them. African Americans prohibited. They
sold at the time for about eight thousand dollars UH.
In today's money, that's about a hundred thousand dollars. Well,
those homes, as you know, but don't sell for a
hundred thousand dollars today. The homes and mill petis million dollars.
(21:02):
The homes in Levitt Town three hundred, four hundred, five
hundred thousand dollars. Perhaps the white working class families returning
war veterans were subsidized to move to these suburbs, gained
over the next couple of generations wealth from the appreciation
of the value of their homes. African Americans were prohibited
(21:24):
from participating in this wealth generating program. The result is
that today African American incomes on average or about six
six percent of white incomes. There are a number of
reasons for that, some of them up I mentioned a
few minutes ago, and we talked about the Social Security
Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act. But you would
(21:44):
think if the African American families on average at six
of the incomes of white families, African Americans would also
have six of the wealth on average of white families.
You can say the same amount of money from the
same incomes. The reality, though, is that while African American
incomes on average are about six of white family incomes,
(22:09):
African American household wealth is about five of white wolf
And that enormous disparity between a income ratio and a
five percent wealth ratio is entirely attributable the unconstitutional federal
housing policy that was practiced in the mid twentieth century.
(22:29):
It's never been remedied, and we have an obligation to
remedy uh that five percent wealth gap is the contributor
major way to the ongoing inequality that we have today.
It explains why, even though housing discrimination is now against
the law, these suburbs are no longer accessible to working
class families of either race Whites. If they have down
(22:52):
payments that they've been bequeathed by their parents and grandparents
who gained wealth from these appreciating homes, they can move
to these suburbs. But the African Americans who have no
wealth cannot do so, so that the ongoing segregation that
we have today is in good part an ongoing effect
(23:14):
of these federal policies. Now, you asked about redlining. Actually,
before we get to redline, i'd I'd love to just
emphasize what you just said, because I think it's really important. Um.
Last year, post George Floyd's horrible murder, there were a
lot of conversations online about structural racism. Actually, I shared
a video on my Instagram page about structural racism, and
(23:36):
then I begin to see online all the people attempted
to debunk that video and like say, structural racism, it
is something that doesn't exist. I think that residential segregation
is a really good example, and these policies are a
really good example of structural racism and how that structural
racism continues to have disparate outcomes for black and white
people till this day, when we look at their wealth gap,
(23:58):
and we actually look at educated and there's a relationship
between housing and education. There's so many things that we
can look at around housing policy that are consistent to
this day. This is a good time to take a
little break. We'll be right back though. Okay, that's taken
(24:23):
care of. Let's get back to our chat. A dear
friend of mine just bought a house in Beechwood Canyon
here in Los Angeles, and her attorney told her that
there was a racial covenant in the contract. She's a
black woman, so apparently she was the first black person,
you know, to buy the house. But this is one
she just closed in our house and there's still a
racial covenant in the contract. Can you actually explain to
(24:45):
people what racial covenants are, because I think everybody might
not know. Sure. I mentioned before that the in order
to get the guaranteed bank loans from the federal government,
the developers and not only had to agree there for
the show home to an African American, but they had
to include a clause in the deed of every home
prohibiting resale to African Americans are rental to African Americans.
(25:10):
These clauses and deeds are called covenants restrictive convenance In California,
they're part of the covenants, conditions and restrictions, which is
an amendment to the deed. Well, you can't change a
deed once uh languages in there, but you can make
it unenforceable, and of course those racial convenants are now
on enforceable, but the language remains. You can't change that.
(25:33):
You can't remove something from your deed anymore. You can
wake up in the middle of the night and say
you want to change your property line, the deeds, the deed,
and so these this language continues to exist, and it's
important that people look at their deeds and be reminded
of how their community was segregated. This wasn't a natural phenomenon.
(25:55):
This was an explicit requirement. Now many of these deeds
have these racial covenants even without a government requirement. I'm
not suggesting at the only time you'll find a deed
is when the government required it. There were many private
builders who put these deeds in even when they didn't
have federal financing. But this is an example of how
(26:15):
African Americans were excluded from these suburbs, not only when
they were first built, but later on when the original
owners might have wanted to resell them. There were hundreds
and hundreds of cases around the country of African Americans
who bought homes in the neighborhoods that were previously all white,
(26:37):
bought them legitimately paid for them. Neighbors went to court
and the courts ordered them to be evicted because they
had no right to live in a home that was
for Caucasians only. Now, these actions of the courts were
also a violation of the Constitution that have never been remedied.
(26:57):
There are many African Americans who lost their homes because
of these racial covenants. You tell the story of a
Bill Myer. It's a black man who was a war
veteran who was in a similar situation in Levittown, Pennsylvania.
I believe this is in the nineteen fifties, and he
bought his home. And what was really interesting is that
(27:19):
the police participated in sort of the mob riots that
sort of happened outside his home. Can you tell us
a little bit about Bill Meyers and his story. Well, sure,
not only did the police participate in this mob violence
to drive the first African American out of his home
in Levittown, Pennsylvania, but frequently the police organized and led
(27:44):
these riots, this mob violence. This is actually how I
started writing the book. The Supreme Court had issued the
decision in two thousand and seven in which are prohibited
the city of Louisville, Kentucky from embarking on a very
hoken planned desegregated schools, and the Supreme Court explained that
(28:05):
the schools in Louisville, Kentucky was segregated because the neighborhoods
was segregated de facto as I described before. The Supreme
Court said that it was by private prejudice and private
businesses and people wanting to live with each other the
same race and income differences. And the Supreme Court said,
since the segregation of Louisville, Kentucky was the fact, though
(28:28):
the school district was prohibited from doing anything to fix
it because it wasn't a constitutional violation. Well, I read
the Supreme Court decision. This isn't two thousand and seven,
and I remembered reading about something else that happened to Louisville,
Kentucky and very similar to the situation that you mentioned.
In Levittown, Pennsylvania, there was an all white suburb in
(28:51):
the Louisville called Shivli. There was a white home honor
in this all white suburb. Who owned the home. It
was a single, single family home suburb. He had an
African American friend living in the center city of Louisville
renting an apartment, had a wife and the child. He
was also a decorated Navy veteran. The white homeowner in
the suburb of Shively bought a second home in his
(29:13):
suburb and re sold it to his African American friend.
And when the African American friend moved in with his
wife and daughter, an angry police protected mob surrounded the
home through rocks, through the windows, fire bombed, and dynamited
the home. Police made no effort to stop this, but
when this riot was all over the state of Kentucky arrested, tried, convicted,
(29:38):
and jailed with a fifteen year jail sentence. The white
homeowner forced sedition having sold a home in a white
neighborhood to a black family. So I said to myself,
this doesn't sound to me much like the fact of segregation,
because the police are agents of government there. It's a
Fourteenth Amendment violation for the police, the prosecutors, the criminal
(30:00):
justice system to be mobilized to enforce racial boundaries. It's
a civil rights violation. And I began to look into
it further that at that point, and that's when I
discovered this case in um Levittown, Pennsylvania, very similar in
that case of there was a police sergeant who tried
to restrain the white mob, but he was demoted. And
(30:21):
as I looked into it further, I found and I'm
not exaggerating here, there were hundreds of cases in cities
all across the country North Midwest, as well as border
states like Louisville. But the Pennsylvania's outside Philadelphia, as you described, Chicago, Detroit,
Los Angeles, where you are San Francisco, police protected. Sometimes
(30:44):
police organized and led mob violence to drive African Americans
out of their homes. One of the ones that I
I discovered this research and I'm embarrassed. I forget the
name of the area of Los Angeles. It's where Occidental
Call is located. Eagle Rock. Eagle Rock, Eagle Rock, that's
the that's the name. But now even in that area,
(31:07):
the police actually organized a violent mob to drive an
African American family out of a home that who legitimately
purchased there. Wow um. Senator Corey Booker often tells the
story that a dear friend of his white friend of
his father's went to the real estate agent and and
pretended to, you know, buy the house. And then when
(31:28):
you know it was time to move in they tried
to protest it, but he was able to stay in
this white neighborhood and you know, got a better education
and he lived a better life, etcetera, etcetera. And it's
really interesting. I think about this too. When I was
in elementary school, my mother lied about where we lived
so we could go to a better school, a better
school district. So that the relationship between school and and
(31:53):
residential in terms of segregation, it's it's really deep because
there's the income peace and the accumulating of wealth issue,
but there's also the education issue. And if you're in
a better neighborhood, you get a better quality of education
and also can contribute to upward mobility. Oh my god,
this is so many things, um that are running through
(32:13):
my head right now. Well, let me say something about that.
It's not only that the schools are better, but when
African Americans were concentrated in neighborhoods that were less healthy
and less well resourced, their children were unable to do
as well in school, even if the schools were good.
I remember once writing a column about asthma as as
(32:36):
you may know, African American children and low income neighborhoods
segregated neighborhoods have asthma at four times the rate of
middle class children. And they have asthma at four times
the rate because they live in more polluted neighborhoods, more
diesel trucks driving through, more dilapidated buildings, more vermin in
the environment, more empty lots kicking up dust. And uh,
(32:59):
if you have a child who has asthma, there's a
chance more than a child who doesn't that that child
might be up at night wheezing mhm and come to
school the next day drowsy. And if you have two
groups of children who are identical in every respect, same
racial composition, same social and economic background, same family structure,
but one group is a higher rate of asthma than
(33:20):
the other, that group is going to have lower average
achievement no matter how good the schools are, because it's
going to be sleepier. It doesn't make a big difference.
But then when you begin to think of all the
other conditions that impact children, and poorly resourced neighborhoods, less
well maintained water delivery systems, and more dilapidated buildings with
(33:43):
lead paint peeling, African American children have much higher rates
of lead poisoning than white middle class children and have
lower achievement. For that reason, lead poisoning causes the decline
in i Q. So it's lead poisoning, it's asthma, it's
economic and security, it's homelessness. And so no matter how
(34:03):
good the schools are in those neighborhoods, they are going
to have lower average achievement than schools and neighborhoods where
children come to school healthy and well rested and well
nourished and economically secure homes. So that the effect of
racial segregation is enormous in creating ongoing and equality racial
(34:24):
inequality in this country. It's not just in housing, it's
in schools, it's in health. African Americans, as you know,
have sure the life expectancies on average, greater rates of
cardiovascular disease because they live in less healthy neighborhoods, less
access to fresh food, again, more diesel trucks driving through.
So the ongoing effects of the segregation that we our
(34:49):
government has unconstitutionally created exists with us today and they
demand remedy. Before we talk about that remedy, there's one
point in your book that you may that I just
really have to highlight. I was amazed when black folks
were able to get home so right. There are a
lot of predatory things that began to happen in the
(35:10):
nineteen fifties when black folks were not able to get
access to loans because of redlining, which just haven't talked
about and f h A policies, and so they often
had these mortgages that were really expensive, and to pay
for those mortgages, they would have multiple people would live
in the homes, right, and so the neighborhoods have become overcrowded,
(35:31):
they'd be working so much, and so these f h
A policies, these government policies ultimately created slums. And I
think there's this myth that, like, you know, black people,
you know, we we don't keep our neighborhoods when there's
their conditions that are structural that have led to these
kinds of neighborhoods. Can talked to us a little bit
about that, Richard, Well, of course you just did, you
(35:53):
stud as well as got to take a teensy break here.
I'll be fast m h already. Then let's just dive
right back. The f h A not only prohibited African
(36:16):
Americans from moving to suburban locations, but it refused to
ensure conventional mortgages for African Americans and existing urban neighborhoods.
That's what we call redlining. The federal government drew maps
of every metropolitan area in the country and colored red
the neighborhoods and those maps that had a lot of
(36:37):
African Americans living in them, or even that have African
Americans a few living in them. The cover of my
book The Color of Law has one of those red
line maps. It's actually the map of Newark, and it
shows how the federal government the redlined neighborhoods. And the
purpose of these maps was to indicate to the federal
government where it would be too risky to u ensure mortgages. So,
(37:02):
as you said, there's a result of that. Slums were
created because if people can't get conventional mortgages frequently there
were speculators who exploited them by selling them homes on contract,
something like the installment plan. If you put something away
in the department store and you make payments and then
you never finish it, you lose everything you put in.
(37:23):
You don't gain any equity in the furniture or the
dress that you've put aside. Um, this is how these
homes were sold. They were sold at much higher prices
then the market required, and families gained no equity. So
as you say, they had to subdivide their homes rent
apartments to other families. As the homes became more overcrowded,
(37:47):
the people needed to conduct their social life in the
streets because every available space was being used for a
bedroom for multiple families living in space that should have
been for a single family. Uh. Government stopped collecting garbages frequently,
and those neighborhoods that became African Americans and they became slums.
And why it's looked at those slums and they decided, well,
(38:10):
African Americans are slum dwellers, and uh, we don't want
them near us, not understanding that the slum conditions were
created by government policy. So you're absolutely right when you
described this. Thank you so much for that. And when
we think about remedies, how do we make this better.
I I just bought my first home a few years ago,
(38:31):
and so I'm like, okay, appreciation and property value. When
I think about writing this sort of residential segregation, I
think that like, is it there was there were the
conventional wisdom by the government in the nineteen fouries with
that property values would go down if black people moved
into a neighborhood. And I feel like that steal the
conventional wisdom and that black people lived in a neighborhood,
the property value goes down. And I think if you
(38:53):
starts messing with people's property value, people who canna get
really really incensed. Right. There have been a tempts to
put governments that says housing in different suburbs, and a
lot of people in suburbs like protest and and it
gets really really tricky when you talk about people's property value.
What do you think the remedy for this residential segregation
would be richer? Well, let me say first about property values.
(39:17):
And in fact, because African Americans had access to so
few homes, they paid more for homes in um single
family home neighborhoods. Then white's willing to pay for the
same homes simply a question of supply and demands. So
the supply available to African Americans are so small that
they paid more. Property values went up when African Americans
(39:41):
moved into a neighborhood for that reason, and frequently it
was remarked that the best maintained houses in the neighborhood
was a few that were owned by an African American.
So this was a myth. Well, of course, it becomes
a self perpetuating prophecy. What happened was that when those
neighborhoods have got a few African Americans, speculators went into
them tried to persuade white families of their property values
(40:02):
would go down because African Americans were living in them.
In my book, I describe speculators that hired black women
to walk baby beverages through white neighborhoods to try to
scare whites that the neighborhood was turned involved black. They
even organized home burglaries to uh persuade whites that they
better flee that neighborhood. The speculators then bought those homes
(40:25):
from whites at far below market value because they persuaded
whites their their homes would lose even more value if
they sell quickly, and then resolved them to African Americans
that have much more than market value, creating enormous profits.
This was a commonplace practice. It was called blockbusting in
the twentieth century and a further contributed to the segregation
(40:48):
of this country. Wow, that reminds me off the sub
prime loans that plagued the Financial Question two thousand and eight.
The subprime mortgages that happened that affected disproportionately are Arican
American folks. What would you think? What can we do
to make this better? Well, the policies to redress segregation
(41:08):
are well known. There's no mystery about them. We should
have an affirmative action followed program and housing that subsidizes
African Americans to move to neighborhoods that are now unaffordable
to working class families of either race, but that would
have been affordable to African Americans at the time. We
should have bothered zoning laws, government debtities to working class people,
(41:28):
particularly African Americans, to move to certain neighborhoods to de
segregate them. And not just government. Banks and the real
estate agencies and the insurance companies and the developers that
created the segregation have an obligation to contribute to those
remedies as well. We should stop placing all of our
affordable housing and low income segregated neighborhoods to reinforce their segregation.
So what's missing, and let me conclude with this. What's
(41:51):
missing is not policy ideas to redress segregation. Those are
well known. What's missing is a new civil rights movement
that's going to engage in the kinds of militant action
that the civil rights movement to engage in the nineteen
fifties and sixties to make it uncomfortable to maintain these
policies of segregation, to create the political support to implement
(42:15):
the kinds of programs to retests regulation that we know.
I am actually working with a group of national civil
rights leaders to create a new movement to redress racial segregation.
That movement will create local committees and communities around the
country to create the political pressure to implement the policies
(42:36):
that I say are well known to redress segregation. And
we're about to launch it. And if any of your
listeners wanted to be on the mailing list to receive
the announcement of the launch of this new movement to
redress racial segregation, they should send an email and I'll
give it to you now. Carry see a r rn't
lady at n m r r S dot org and
(43:00):
m R artists do ward for the new movement to
reach ress racial segregation, and hopefully we'll see some of
these policies implemented in the not too distant future. That's amazing.
Thank you so much. Richard Richard is the author of
The Color of Law of Forgotten History of How our
Government segregated America. I like to end the podcast with
(43:25):
this question what else is true? And basically this question
comes out of my therapy in the community resiliency model
is about being in the space of both and um
when things are hard, what helps you get through? Basically, so, Richard,
for you, what helps you get through? What else is true? Well?
You know this would may surprise you, but I found
(43:47):
the research that I did for this book very hopeful. Uh.
I found it very hopeful because as long as we
believe that this will happen by accident, it's just natural
to believe that could only unhappen by accident. I didn't
see how that was going to happen. Once we Once
we understand that this segregated pattern everywhere in the country
(44:07):
was created by explicit government policy, it's easy to see
that equally explicit government policy can fix it. And we
are now having a more accurate and passionate discussion about
race and the legacy of slavery, and Jim Crow in
this company who ever have had before in American history. Uh,
it's not that it's gone far enough, needs to go
(44:28):
much farther. It's not that there isn't an enormous white
supremacist opposition to it. But I take great hope in
the Black Lives Matter movement demonstrations that enlisted the twenty
million Americans, mostly white, to protest the police abuse and
murder of African Americans. I think we're in a period
(44:48):
where the future can look right, despite the fact that
it may not seem that way immediately. So that gives
me hope. M M. That's wonderful that it's a beautiful
note to end on. Thank you so much, Richard Rothstein.
The Color of Law. It is ribbon ng. You should
go and read it. Everyone. Thank you so much, Richer
Thank you. Wow. My mind is just really blown. I'm
(45:17):
I mean, it's so angering so much of the history,
and I think it is really disingenuous at the Supreme
Court in their decision, and disingenuous for anyone to say
that we should just let things be when the government
explicitly if you read his book, they explicitly created policies
to segregate neighborhoods when it was completely not even necessary.
(45:40):
I mean, you have to read this book. You know.
I was in a conversation with someone last year and
they were like, structural racism, is that really a thing?
And I cited residential segregation. Um. Another point that he
didn't get to that he reads in his book is
that our schools are still very much segregated, you know,
sixty years after Brown versus Board of Education. So we
(46:01):
need a new civil rights movement. We need a new
civil rights movement to address this, to kind of talk
about what our government did and the continuing effects of
those policies, continuing effects when we think about the wealth
got when we think about education, Wow, I'm like, I'm
(46:22):
just imagining like people in their property value. I wonder,
I wonder, I wonder how that's going to go. But
that's up to all of you out there here were there.
Thank you for listening to the Laver and Cut Show.
(46:43):
Please rate, review, subscribe, and share with everyone you know.
Join me next week when I'll be talking to actress,
writer and activist Jin Richards about dating as a trans woman.
It's going to be lit, It's going to be right,
all real and amazing. You have to check it out.
(47:04):
You can find me on Instagram and Twitter at Laverne
Cox and on Facebook at Laverne Cox or real. Until
next time, stay in the life. The Laverne Cox Show
is a production of Shonda land Audio in partnership with
I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from Shonda land Audio,
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
(47:27):
you listen to your favorite shows.
Host
Laverne Cox
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