Current Reading -- November 2022
ForumAmerican History
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1rocketjk
I finished The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein.
The Color of Law is another frustrating, infuriating and absolutely crucial study of racism in America. Richard Rothstein's central thesis is that most Americans (or at least most white Americans) believe that the widespread segregation of American cities and suburbs happened relatively naturally, the result of racism, yes, and of the economic forces that that racism produced, but not due to any overt official program of separation and exclusion, at least in the Northern states. Rothstein calls this the theory of de facto segregation. But as Rothstein proves convincingly and forcefully in his book's 240 information-packed pages, what we have had in America is and has been, in fact, de jure segregation, a condition created and maintained by over a century of overt governmental policies. These policies range from the widespread creation of public suburban housing developments like Levitown purposefully designed with strict "whites only" rules, the allowance and encouragement of redlining policies that kept white and African Americans apart and destroyed neighborhoods in the process, the refusal to offer government loans and mortgages to African Americans, the staunch refusal of law enforcement agencies to protect African American families trying to move into white suburbs from violence, the purposefully designing of urban spurs of the Interstate Highway System to destroy middle class African American neighborhoods and push black Americans further away from white suburbs. And that's a very short list of the occurrences and policies that Rothstein covers.
It was all done on purpose, not by accident. So the idea, says Rothstein, that these conditions can be gradually done away with as public policy and peoples' attitudes become more compassionate over time is false. The harms that have been done are deeper, more solidly cemented into our jurisprudence and governmental behaviors since Reconstruction and are countrywide, than can allow for gradual evolutionary changes. Many of the policies that Rothstein proposes in the book's final chapter to begin to address the profound societal harms that have been done over the decades would take enormous political and cultural will, conditions that Rothstein acknowledges are not likely to arise any time soon in America. He also sets forth a few less comprehensive and more doable that might be put into play, but not, he says, until Americans come to jettison the belief in de facto segregation that serve the purpose of letting so many of us off the hook on an individual basis.
I add The Color of Law to what now becomes a quartet of relatively recent books on the subject of systemic cultural racism in America that I consider essential reading for every American. The other three are The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, Caste by Isabel Wilkerson and The Sum of Us by Heather McGhee.
The Color of Law is another frustrating, infuriating and absolutely crucial study of racism in America. Richard Rothstein's central thesis is that most Americans (or at least most white Americans) believe that the widespread segregation of American cities and suburbs happened relatively naturally, the result of racism, yes, and of the economic forces that that racism produced, but not due to any overt official program of separation and exclusion, at least in the Northern states. Rothstein calls this the theory of de facto segregation. But as Rothstein proves convincingly and forcefully in his book's 240 information-packed pages, what we have had in America is and has been, in fact, de jure segregation, a condition created and maintained by over a century of overt governmental policies. These policies range from the widespread creation of public suburban housing developments like Levitown purposefully designed with strict "whites only" rules, the allowance and encouragement of redlining policies that kept white and African Americans apart and destroyed neighborhoods in the process, the refusal to offer government loans and mortgages to African Americans, the staunch refusal of law enforcement agencies to protect African American families trying to move into white suburbs from violence, the purposefully designing of urban spurs of the Interstate Highway System to destroy middle class African American neighborhoods and push black Americans further away from white suburbs. And that's a very short list of the occurrences and policies that Rothstein covers.
It was all done on purpose, not by accident. So the idea, says Rothstein, that these conditions can be gradually done away with as public policy and peoples' attitudes become more compassionate over time is false. The harms that have been done are deeper, more solidly cemented into our jurisprudence and governmental behaviors since Reconstruction and are countrywide, than can allow for gradual evolutionary changes. Many of the policies that Rothstein proposes in the book's final chapter to begin to address the profound societal harms that have been done over the decades would take enormous political and cultural will, conditions that Rothstein acknowledges are not likely to arise any time soon in America. He also sets forth a few less comprehensive and more doable that might be put into play, but not, he says, until Americans come to jettison the belief in de facto segregation that serve the purpose of letting so many of us off the hook on an individual basis.
I add The Color of Law to what now becomes a quartet of relatively recent books on the subject of systemic cultural racism in America that I consider essential reading for every American. The other three are The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, Caste by Isabel Wilkerson and The Sum of Us by Heather McGhee.
2rocketjk
I read the short book, Dorothea Lange: Migrant Mother by Sarah Hermanson Meister. This book was published within The Museum of Modern Art in New York's One on One series. Each book in the series is a "sustained meditation" on a single work in the MOMA collection. In this case, we have 42 pages of text and images describing one of the most iconic photographs in American history, one which came to represent in many ways to most Americans the hardships and inequalities of Dust Bowl life. Meister provides a thumbnail biography of Lange, who led a fascinating life, and then a history of how Lange came to take her famous photo and the life the image took on, the many adaptations and uses to which it was put over the years.
