A Powerful, Disturbing History of Residential Segregation in America - The New York Times

Growing up in Levittown the first Black person I saw was at Jones Beach.  As I got interested in the news - reading the New York Times which we got every morning, the struggle against segregation was in the south.  I never asked "why is there no one Black in our town?"  When we moved to Massapequa when I was 13 it was the same.  Italians,Irish, Jewish but nobody Black.



What I didn't know was that the FHA (Federal Housing Administration) refused to insure mortgages in neighborhoods that were not all white.  That our Levittown contract to purchase included the provision that we would sell only to Caucasians.

Richard Rothsetein demonstrates the federal government - which financed the entire post-war suburban housing boom - actively segregated the country.  Richard Rothstein demonstrates decisively that the segregation of America's towns and cities is not just the result of private preferred but rather the result of conscious government policy. gwc

A Powerful, Disturbing History of Residential Segregation in America - The New York Times

by David Oshinsky

THE COLOR OF LAW
A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
By Richard Rothstein
Illustrated. 345 pp. Liveright Publishing. $27.95.

In the summer of 1950, with Americans reeling from the news of North Korea’s invasion of South Korea and Senator Joseph McCarthy’s ever expanding “Red hunt” in Washington, Time magazine ran a disarmingly cheerful cover story about the nation’s housing boom, titled: “For Sale: A New Way of Life.” Featuring the builder William Levitt, who had recently transformed some Long Island potato fields into a sprawling complex of starter homes — two bedrooms, one bath and an extension attic for $7,990 — it spoke reverentially of the development’s parks and playgrounds and many rules. “Fences are not allowed,” Time noted. “The plot of grass around each house must be cut at least once a week,” and laundry couldn’t be hung outside “on weekends and holidays.”

One rule, however, was conveniently absent from the piece. Homeowners in Levittown were forbidden to rent or sell to persons “other than members of the Caucasian race.” Asked about this so-called “racial covenant,” Levitt blamed society at large. “As a Jew, I have no room in my mind or heart for racial prejudice,” he said. “But I have come to know that if we sell one house to a Negro family, then 90 or 95 percent of our white customers will not buy into the community. This is their attitude, not ours. As a company, our position is simply this: We can solve a housing problem, or we can try to solve a racial problem, but we cannot combine the two.”

At first glance, Levittown stands as a prime example of de facto segregation, which results from private activity, as opposed to de jure segregation, which derives from government policy or law. Levitt, after all, appeared to be an independent businessman responding to the prejudices of the home buyers he hoped to attract. In truth, it wasn’t that simple. As Richard Rothstein contends in “The Color of Law,” a powerful and disturbing history of residential segregation in America, the government at all levels and in all branches abetted this injustice. “We have created a caste system in this country, with African-Americans kept exploited and geographically separate by racially explicit government policies,” he writes. “Although most of these policies are now off the books, they have never been remedied and their effects endure.”

Levittown reflected this dynamic. Popular with World War II veterans and their families, its 17,500 houses required no down payment. The federal government guaranteed low-interest bank loans for Levitt to build them, and low-interest mortgages for veterans to buy them. The government also made clear that developers receiving these incentives must sell to whites only. 

It didn’t stop there. In the 1950s, following a Supreme Court decision that restricted the scope of racial covenants, an African-American veteran bought a house in a second Levitt development outside Philadelphia. A white mob formed, the house was pelted with rocks and crosses were burned on the lawn. Amazingly, the black family held out for several years before moving back to a segregated neighborhood. Rothstein sees this incident, and dozens like it, as an insidious form of de jure segregation — the failure of racially biased police and public officials to protect African-Americans from unlawful intimidation.

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One of the great strengths of Rothstein’s account is the sheer weight of evidence he marshals. A research associate at the Economic Policy Institute, he quite simply demolishes the notion that government played a minor role in creating the racial ghettos that plague our suburbs and inner cities. Going back to the late 19th century, he uncovers a policy of de jure segregation in virtually every presidential administration, incl