The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
📚 Why We Recommend ItPicture this: you’re walking through a city, and suddenly stumble upon an invisible line. On one side, tree-lined streets, top-rated schools, and safe parks; on the other, crumbling homes, scarce resources, and forgotten corners. You might chalk it up to random chance, but The Color of Law reveals a starker truth: that line was drawn with a pen, on government documents, by people in suits.
Richard Rothstein is a tenacious detective, sifting through dusty archives to unearth stories buried deep. In the 1930s, federal mapmakers took red pencils and marked Black neighborhoods as "unworthy of loans"; local officials refused to build Black schools near white communities while using tax dollars to pave roads to white suburbs; even firefighters were once ordered to "only protect homes in white blocks." These aren’t ancient myths—they’re codes written into the DNA of our cities, still shaping lives today.
This book doesn’t shout, but its whispers are more haunting than any scream. When you read about a mother denied a safe apartment because of a "color 禁区" (color restriction), forced to raise her kids in a leaky shack; when you discover a toxic factory sitting right on the edge of a neighborhood once labeled "Black" by government planners—you’ll suddenly see how the pretty words about "equal opportunity" hide a web of deliberate injustice.
A New York Times bestseller and one of Bill Gates’ "eye-opening reads," it’s less a book than a mirror. It reflects the "natural" gaps in every city, exposing their hidden origins. If you’ve ever wondered "why some places never thrive," if you’ve asked "where fairness went," open these pages—you’ll find the stolen answers, tucked between the lines.
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