Housing segregation didn’t happen by accident, author argues

Leah Rothstein is full of remedies for housing segregation, many of which she includes in her new book, Just Action. The housing policy expert and former community organizer co-authored the book with her father, Richard Rothstein, who wrote The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America.

The sequel, which publishes June 1, arrives as housing policies and racism are sparking debate and protest. Rothstein will speak at SMU’s Owen Arts Center at 6 p.m., Thursday, March 23. We talked to Oakland-based Rothstein about Just Action, housing policy, segregation and affordable housing. The interview has been edited for brevity.

Q: What do you say to the person who asks, “Didn’t the Fair Housing Act of 1968 provide remedies to housing segregation and discrimination?”

A: The Fair Housing Act of 1968 said we can no longer discriminate by race in the sale or rental of housing. It did nothing to address the harms that were done by past discrimination.

Q: What responsibility do local governments have for federal policies that were racist and segregated people and contributed to a net wealth gap for whites and Blacks? A white family has eight times the wealth of a Black family, according to Federal Reserve studies.

A: We all have a responsibility to do something about this unconstitutional past. It was government. It was private actors. It was individuals who implemented and made all of these policies happen. We, as citizens, as residents of this country, now have an obligation to do something about it. Local governments are included. And that means way more than just asking the developer if they would be so kind to contribute to a repair fund.

A lot of jurisdictions implement policies like inclusionary zoning that require developers to set aside a certain percentage of units … as affordable.

Q: As you’ve looked at strategies that lead to remedies, how important are the grassroots organizers?

A: We don’t have the federal political will to implement these large interventions and policy changes that we need on the federal level. So we have to take it on locally. There’s a lot that we can change locally. To do that, we need local groups working on these issues, organizing, pressuring their governments, pressuring local businesses to contribute to remedies.

Q: Do you use the word “reparations” or “remedies?

A: We use “remedies” and “redress” and “repair.” We stay away from the word “reparation” for several reasons. One is oftentimes, when a community adopts a policy that’s considered a reparation, it’s then considered that the repair is done. We don’t think any one policy can truly repair all of the harm that’s been done to truly account for all of the costs of past discrimination and slavery and Jim Crow to provide true reparations.

Q: The government-sponsored Home Owners’ Loan Corp., created in the 1930s, had redlined maps where property was devalued as loan risky. Red splotched much of the map of West Dallas and carried descriptions like “contains the lower grade of population.” An area south of downtown Los Angeles was “fit for a slum clearance project” and had Blacks, Mexicans, Japanese and “low class Italians,” the maps said. What did you make of these maps?

A: To see it so explicitly stated in government manuals, and government policies, was shocking and also shocking that we have since forgotten that it was so explicitly created.

What little I learned about segregation history was the term “de facto segregation,” this idea that it was personal choice, or private actors, or just sort of a naturally occurring phenomenon that we separated ourselves by race into separated neighborhoods and communities.

And it never was that, and it was clearly not a naturally occurring phenomenon when it happened. … It wasn’t created by accident. It was purposeful action that created it. We can see that purposeful action can challenge it.

Author event

Leah Rothstein will speak at 6 p.m. at the Owen Arts Center (6101 Bishop Blvd., University Park) at Southern Methodist University on Thursday, March 23. The event is free, but register at https://bit.ly/3YUFwKP. The event is being sponsored by the LatinoArtsProject.org, which is also exhibiting “Yanga Rediscovered: The First Liberator of the Americas” at the Owen Arts Center.