I grew
up in the pre-Vietnam era. Our high schools taught a sanitized version of
American history. I was in college before I learned about the country’s
incarceration of ethnic Japanese, many of whom were citizens, during World War
II. I was shocked. Our country had concentration camps, and we put our own
people in them.
I had a
bit of the same feeling when I was reading The
Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America,
by Richard Rothstein. I’d known that the GI Bill offered financing for veterans
returning from World War II to buy homes, and how that financing led to
suburban developments like Levittown on Long Island. What I didn’t know is that
the federal government, through both Veterans Administration (VA) and Federal
Housing Administration (FHA) loans, secured financing only for white veterans.
And, as I’ll soon discuss, both VA and FHA went beyond merely not providing
financing for black veterans. Further, the educational opportunities for black
veterans were often limited to vocational schools. Some benefit administrators
refused to process applications to four-year colleges for black veterans. I
guess I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was. Black veterans, like their
white counterparts, had just returned from fighting a nearly four-year war only
to be treated like second-class citizens.
The book
goes back to post-Civil War era and especially the end of Reconstruction, but
I’ll start with a 1917 Supreme Court ruling in Buchanan v. Worley, which ruled that racial zoning violated the
Fourteenth Amendment, not because of protections granted freed slaves, but
because of a business rule—the freedom to contract, or the right of a property
owner to sell to whomever he wanted.
In our
day, a Supreme Court decision would be final, but not in the 1920s. Buchanan was not only ignored, but
flouted. As it would turn out, in the post-War housing boom, which was largely
financed by VA and FHA loans, subdivisions were not only encouraged, but required
to include covenants restricting the subdivisions to “Caucasians.” Our
government, in other words, enforced segregation in any area where VA or FHA
loans were used to finance homes. In one example, a man in Berkley, California
bought a house financed by FHA and was not able to move into the house. He let
a black teacher rent the house until he could move in. As a result he was
advised he’d lost his participation in the FHA insurance program and that he’d
never again be able to obtain a government-backed mortgage. And this was in 1959.
In Berkley.
The
result of black people’s not being able to get financing was they often paid
more than white people would in areas less desirable. Additionally, they
frequently bought using a contract for deed, meaning the house was theirs only
after all payments were made. These contracts for deed were frequently at high
interest rates, and one missed payment meant the loss of everything they’d
invested in the house. Because they paid higher prices for the homes and higher
interest rates, they frequently subdivided the homes and deferred maintenance.
The neighborhoods looked bad. Whites feared blacks’ moving in or even near
their neighborhoods (when, had black families had the same access to mortgages
whites did, their neighborhoods would have looked just as good). Realtors took
advantage of white fears. They started moving black families into white
neighborhoods and going door to door spreading fear among the white residents
that their neighborhood was about to be “taken over.” Whites sold at a loss.
Racial prejudice was a lose-lose proposition. Whites lost money on their homes.
Blacks paid more for their homes, both initially and in interest, than whites.
Unscrupulous Realtors made out like bandits.
Mr.
Rothstein makes the point that the IRS was involved in housing discrimination
by not revoking the tax-exempt status of churches and other tax-exempt
organizations for advocating for, financing, and participating in lawsuits
designed to maintain segregation.
Cities
that had integrated middle class neighborhoods in the 1920s, among them Austin,
Texas and Raleigh, North Carolina, were effectively segregated by cities’
building segregated schools far enough away from these neighborhoods to require
a move so children could easily go to school.
Mr. Rothstein
goes into the history of black labor during the Depression and World War II.
Government programs often refused to hire black workers. When they did hire
them, black workers were given the worst jobs and paid less than white workers.
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is a good example (and for a good look at
what went on with the TVA, see the 1960 film Wild River). Black workers were housed in shacks and paid less. The
same thing went on in defense plants during World War II. During and after the war,
most labor unions would not accept black workers as members, so again, black
workers remained in the worst and lowest paid jobs. Government housing built to
house defense workers was almost always segregated, and black workers were left
to fend for themselves.
He even
points out how the Interstate Highway system was used to remove black
residences from areas near downtowns across the country.
And to
demonstrate this is not all in the past, he even ties in how government
agencies knew or should have known about “reverse redlining,” or the practice
of getting black homeowners—especially elderly black homeowners--to sign up for
subprime mortgages in the runup to the crash of 2008, pointing out that the
most egregious lender, Countrywide, was regulated by the Federal Reserve Board
until 2007, and that the Federal Reserve knew or should have known what
Countrywide was up to.
And
now, as many people want to live near downtown areas, gentrification threatens
the homes of those who live in formerly low-rent areas.
Mr.
Rothstein makes an excellent argument that black people have been kept poor not
because they did not have the same abilities as white people, but because they
were denied access to the same opportunities—good jobs, union representation,
government financing for homes, etc. that white people took for granted.
Cumulatively this has left them far behind economically, and their economic status
is a direct result of government policy.
I would
recommend this book to anyone who thinks poor black people should “pull
themselves up by their bootstraps” and that their poverty is their own fault. I
almost guarantee you won’t finish the book with that same belief.
I have
a few criticisms of the book. It needed a lot more editing, and it is not
chronological. You might be reading one paragraph about the 1960s and the next
paragraph you’ll find yourself in the 1920s. My concept of history is linear, and
I find it jolting to have to “time travel” to keep what I’m reading in context.
As for editing, one example is a photo on page 138 supposedly taken in
Levittown, Pennsylvania in 1954 that contains a 1957 Ford. But I suppose that’s
a minor complaint. My biggest criticism
of the book is there are no concrete solutions proposed.
I’d
like to hear from you. That’s what the comment section is for, after all. Our
government discriminated against its own citizens for many years, leaving them far
behind financially. What do you think should be done to make up for this
discrimination?
© 2017 Larry Roth