400 Years Of Racism Book Discussion: The Color of Law

Our 400 Years of Racism reading & discussion series continues in 2022. Programs in this series are free and open to all.

Order a copy of The Color of Law on Folio's Bookshop >>

Widely heralded as a "masterful" () and "essential" () history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein's offers "the most forceful argument ever published on how federal, state, and local governments gave rise to and reinforced neighborhood segregation" (William Julius Wilson). Exploding the myth of de facto segregation arising from private prejudice or the unintended consequences of economic forces, Rothstein describes how the American government systematically imposed residential segregation: with undisguised racial zoning; public housing that purposefully segregated previously mixed communities; subsidies for builders to create whites-only suburbs; tax exemptions for institutions that enforced segregation; and support for violent resistance to African Americans in white neighborhoods. A groundbreaking, "virtually indispensable" study that has already transformed ou…