Black History Month and Housing

It doesn’t matter who the president is, February is still Black History Month.

A few years ago I wanted to learn more about how we got to where we are today, especially as it concerns housing here in Minnesota.

So I read  “The Color Of Law” A Forgotten History of how our government segregated America. by Richard Rothstein. I have since read it a few times since.

The book helped me understand how and why our neighborhoods are racially segregated, and they are segregated.

Rothstein gives examples of how public housing helped segregate communities and how federal subsidies given to builders to create whites-only suburbs.

The houses in the suburbs that were built after WWll were a hot new product and were sold as housing exclusively for white people.

It is clear from reading the book that segregation wasn’t an accident but that it was by design. Rothstein outlines how cities from coast to coast became segregated through State, Federal, and local policy and zoning laws.

He shows how housing was built near jobs and how African American workers were not allowed to own the housing and had to drive long distances to work in lower-paying jobs because the best jobs were given to white people.

The FHA (Federal Housing Administration) promoted the idea that if African Americans moved into a neighborhood, property values would fall.

He makes an argument in the book for reparations. After reading it I have to agree because the racial disparities we see today have deep roots.

Please consider reading or listening to “The Color of Law”. You can get the book in almost any format from a library near you.

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