[Music] as you all know as we all know in the 20th century this country made the decision to abolish racial segregation we thought that racial segregation was wrong we realized that it was immoral we understood that it did great harm to both african-americans and whites in this country and we understood it was unconstitutional as a violation of our Constitution to separate the country by races and we began in the 1930s first with civil rights suits that desegregated law schools and then we went on to desegregate colleges and universities in the 1954 the Supreme Court ruled that segregated elementary and secondary schools were a violation of the Constitution and then the civil rights movement grew and the result of that civil rights movement in the 1960s we abolished segregation and everything from water fountains to buses to lunch counters to public facilities of all kind and yet having done that we've left untouched the biggest segregation of all which is that every metropolitan in this area in this country is segregated by race I've lived in many of them I've lived in New York and Boston and Chicago and North Carolina and Denver and Los Angeles and San Francisco I've moved there and a lot every metropolitan area that I've ever lived in had clearly defined neighborhoods where whites and only whites lived and clearly defined neighborhoods were african-americans and only african-americans lived with rare exceptions and we accept this environment of a racially segregated country even though we made these decisions in the 20th century that racial segregation was wrong immoral armed full and unconstitutional but we accept residential segregation as sort of part of the natural environment we're aware of it all the time it's not that we've tried to undo it and have failed we've never even tried it's not something that we feel obligated to do anything about we feel badly about it but we don't think it's our responsibility to desegregate neighborhoods and the reason for that is I may be not hard to understand you know it's a lot harder to desegregate neighborhoods than to desegregate water fountains if you pass a law saying that you can't have separate water fountains for blacks and whites well the next day people can drink out of any water fountain if you pass a law saying that you can't have separate sections on buses for blacks and whites the next state people can sit anywhere they want on the bus but if you pass a law saying we can't have separate neighborhoods for whites and blacks nothing much happens the next day and so it's a more difficult thing to undo once we've segregated the country by neighborhood by race and by neighborhood and so in order to rationalize to ourselves our failure to undo it we've adopted the national myth and that myth is pervasive it's pervasive across the political spectrum the liberals and conservatives hold it the blacks and whites hold it we've given a name to that myth the name of that myth is we have de facto segregation not something that was created by government like all the other segregations that we undid in the 30s 40s 50s and 60s but this is something that sort of just happened by accident it happened because people like to live with each other of the same race or it happened because private actors whether they were real estate agents or bankers were private citizens discriminated and how they sold or rented homes or it happened because African Americans happen to be poorer than whites on average and therefore they can't afford to move to middle-class communities all of these individual accidental decisions is what caused our residential segregation and because it happened by accident we tell ourselves that can only be undone by accident it's only if something happened by government by regulation by law by public policy do we have both the opportunity and the obligation to reverse it well I like you accepted this reality never thought there was much we could do about it believed in the idea of de facto segregation segregation by accident and but throughout much of my career I was studying education policy and in the course of studying education policy I came to the conclusion and it's not a hard conclusion to come to that this the major cause of the differences in average achievement between low-income african-american children and middle-class white children was not as federal policy has it because teachers have low expectations are not held accountable enough for raising their children's test scores but because of the social and economic conditions with which children come to school and I won't go into it in great lengths this evening but just to give you one example if we know that african-american children of living in urban areas like Chicago have asthma at four times the rate of middle-class children if you have asthma you're likely to come to school drowsy because you've been up at night wheezing if you have asthma you're likely to be may be sleepless or absent more often for the same reason and I reasoned and I wrote about this that you know if you have two groups of children who are equal in every respect every conceivable respect except one group has asthma at a higher rate than the other and it's going to come to school less often and have and be drowsy or when they come to school that group is going to have lower average achievement no matter how high teacher expectations are no matter how much teachers are held accountable for their achievement and now have no matter how often they're tested of course they're gonna be exceptions they're always going to be some children with asthma who will achieve at higher levels than typical children without asthma because there's a distribution of outcomes for every human characteristic but on average this makes a difference and I wrote about many of these conditions that predict a lower average achievement for children who come to school with social and economic challenges whether it's lead poisoning or the lack of high-quality early childhood education or coming from homes where the parents are less well educated and vocabulary is less sophisticated or being exposed to violence and coming to school and conditions of stress or coming to school from conditions of stress because of parental unemployment all of these conditions each one of them will predict predict lower average achievement and again as always it's not to say that some children with any of these conditions aren't going to achieve at higher levels than average children but on average each women predicts lower average achievement and I then began to realize and you know I'm a slow learner so took me a while but I began to realize you have to take these conditions and you take children will have these conditions and you concentrate them in single schools so that every single child has one or more of these disadvantages or almost every single child has one or more of these disadvantages the the challenge of overcoming them becomes nearly impossible you know if you have a couple of children in the school with these disadvantages they can get special help and special attention but if every single child in the school it's coming to school either with asthma or lead poisoning or lack of a high quality early childhood experience or stress from either violence in the neighborhood or economic conditions at home or homeless if you have every child in the classroom that in that way reinforcing their own disadvantages the the achievement gap is inevitable and we call schools as you all know that we call schools that have children with these conditions concentrated within them we call them segregated schools and so I became as a just as an education right there concerned with what we can do about segregated schools and in 2007 I read the Supreme Court decision that dealt with this issue the Supreme Court decision concerned they attempt by the school districts of Louisville Kentucky in Seattle Washington to desegregate their schools in a very trivial way both school districts Louisville and Seattle had a choice program and parents could choose which school their their adolescent children could go to and the the adolescents as well could participate in those choices and but this both school districts said that if the choices of children would the further exacerbate racial segregation those choices would not be honored in favor of the choice of a child who would help to integrate the school so if you had a school that was almost all-white high school it was almost all-white and and both there was one place left and a black and the white child both applied for it the black child be given some preference to help to desegregate the school it's a trivial program trivial program o most the adolescents don't want to go to school outside their own neighborhoods and away from their friends and the cases we have one place left in the school and both the black and white child apply for it almost non-existent but this trivial program was declared unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court and the opinion was written by Associate Justice John Roberts a Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Chief Justice Roberts reasoned that the schools in Louisville and Seattle was segregated because the neighborhoods in which they located the segregated well I agree with that that's um I thought he was right that's why schools in Seattle and Louisville was segregated in fact I happen to know that schools today are more segregated than they ever have been in the last 45 years we have more school segregation today in this country than any time in the last 45 years because the neighborhoods in which they located was segregated but then Chief Justice Roberts went on to say well the neighborhoods in Louisville in Seattle is segregated because of the kind of private accidental choices that people made in the discriminatory actions and individuals took they had nothing to do with government policy it was because people liked to live with each other the same race he said and because private homeowners and real estate agents and banks discriminated and because of income differences it was accidental segregation what he called de facto segregation and he said if you have de facto segregation its prohibited for the a school district to take account of a child's race to try to desegregate the school only Chief Justice Roberts said if you have the jury segregation segregation by law public policy regulation government-sponsored government created government and forced segregation only then not only is it permissible to desegregate it's required that we do so to remedy the constitutional violation well I read this decision and I remembered reading about the case in Louisville Kentucky in the 1950s when a white homeowner in the middle-class suburb called Shively of Louisville had an african-american friend he was a Navy veteran decorated Navy veteran middle class family wanted better housing for his family he had the young daughter tried to buy a home in a middle-class suburban area no real estate agent would sell a home to him or show him a home in that neighborhood so the white homeowner bought another home for his friend and resold it to his friend in this suburb of Shively and the african-american the Navy veteran moved into the home with his family a mob surrounded the home protected by the police they threw stones through the windows they firebombed and dynamite at the house that the african-american family had moved into and when the riot was over the state of Kentucky arrested tried convicted and then jailed with a 15 year sentence the white homeowner forced sedition and you know I said to myself this doesn't sound much like de facto segregation maybe there's more to it than John Roberts thinks and you know I'm exaggerating a little bit I had known other incidents in the past of various ways in which the government contributed to racial segregation but I hadn't understood it was a complete system that created the jury system of segregation that sounds just as unconstitutional as the segregation of buses and water fountains and lunch counters and schools so I began to accumulate the evidence and that's what resulted in the I'm talking about this evening called the color of law and well I demonstrate in this book is that as I said the the racial segregation that exists in every metropolitan area in this country is not the fact though the notion of de facto segregation is an other myth it was created by racially explicit government policy government regulation designed to ensure that nowhere in this country with African Americans and whites live near one another designed to ensure that we created separate residential areas by race everywhere in the country so let me spend some time this evening talking about excuse me talking about the the major policies that the government followed in creating this residential segregation one I'll begin with is public housing now I suspect most of you think you know what public housing is it's a place where poor people live it's a lots of single mothers with children lots of young men without hope without jobs access to jobs working in the informal or underground economy uh selling drugs or loose cigarettes or not having a much hope for a better future for themselves engaging in confrontations with the police that often result in violence or riots in some cases that's what we think of as public housing in this country but that's not how public housing began public housing began in a New Deal during the Depression when the Roosevelt administration elected in 1932 the following year established the Public Works Administration one of the first New Deal agencies and it built the first civilian public housing in this country and it built the first civilian housing public housing in this country always on a segregated basis and I'm not talking about the south I'm talking about the north the Northeast the mid-atlantic states the Midwest here in Chicago else we're always on the segregated basis frequently frequently creating segregation where it hadn't previously existed because in the mid to early 20th century there were many integrated neighborhoods in urban areas in this country that may surprise you as well but if you think about it you'll realize that almost all jobs in that period of time were located in downtown industrial areas workers didn't have automobiles to get to work so if you had an industrial area where African Americans and Irish immigrants and Italian immigrants and Jews and migrants from rural areas we're all working at jobs in this industrial area without automobiles they all have to live close enough to be able to walk to work so sometimes there were street cars they took structured streetcar rides but they lived in broadly the same neighborhoods I mean I'm not just not just in the north and the south as well the South may have had Jim Crow and water fountains but didn't have Jim Crow and residences african-americans and whites lived in many of the same neighborhoods not all neighborhoods but many of the same neighborhoods some of you may have read the autobiography of Langston Hughes the the great african-american poet novelist and playwright he describes how he grew up in a downtown integrated Cleveland neighborhood we don't think of downtown Cleveland as being an integrated place but he grew up there he says his best friend was polish he dated the Jewish girl is called the central neighborhood of Cleveland but the Public Works Administration demolished integrated housing and that neighborhood in order to build two separate projects one for whites one for African Americans creating a segregated pattern in Cleveland that reinforced whatever tendencies Cleveland had before to be a segregated community and this was an integrated community that where it was built so it would not have been difficult for the Public Works Administration to build non-segregated projects where the chose to build segregated projects and did this everywhere in the country in I'd like to talk in my book and when I talk about these things about places like Cambridge Massachusetts in Berkeley California because these are thought of as being liberal places and it seems to me that if you can understand that even happened there you can understand that it probably happened everywhere Cambridge Massachusetts I don't know if any of you are familiar with that area it may be some he went to school there lots of colleges in that area of the area around MIT the central square area was in the 1930s a community it was about half black and half white integrated community the government the federal government destroyed housing in that neighborhood Noah to build segregated public housing one project for african-americans another project for whites these projects were not for poor people by the way in the this was the depression and there were many working-class families who couldn't find homes they couldn't rent apartments and so the federal government was building housing for working-class families not for poor people they had they paid the full cost of the of the housing and their rents the government wasn't putting out any money over the long term for these houses of course that to advance the construction cost but it got it back on the rents not the kind of public housing we think of today and most of it was for whites there were a few projects for African Americans but always segregated even in Atlanta there was a downtown area called the flats both African Americans and whites were living there and paths 60/40 ratio so it's a pretty integrated community but the federal government demolished housing there and built a segregated project for whites only forcing the African Americans who were living in that area to find housing elsewhere to double up with relatives and move to less adequate housing during World War Two the situation became even more extreme during World War two hundreds of thousands of workers flocked to centers of Defense production to take jobs in war industries there hadn't been a lot of jobs in the depression the it was World War two that recovered the country from the depression and provided full employment for the first time and many of the communities where workers flock to were communities that weren't previously segregated the the one I talk about in my book is a suburb of Berkeley called Richmond California of a Richmond there's a deep water port so that's where the the largest shipbuilding Center and the on the west coast was for warships Liberty ships being built there the Kaiser shipyards didn't exist before the war by the end of the war the Kaiser shipyards were employing 100,000 workers at first they will only hire whites they wouldn't hire african-americans but as the war went on they exhausted their white labor supply and if the ships were going to continue to roll into the bay they had to hire African Americans they sent recruiters throughout the south to find workers to come to Richmond to work in the in the shipyards Richmond itself was just a suburb Berkley as I say was a small town 20,000 people Noah all white there were a few african-americans living in its outskirts who were related to Pullman car porters who would were living in near the terminus of the inter Intercontinental railroad but it was basically a white community it was a population they save about 20 thousand tiny I know how a community of 20,000 absorbs the families of 100,000 workers in the period of just four years it's inconceivable the government had to build housing for these workers and so it built segregated housing it built housing for the african-americans of temporary housing not well constructed along the railroad tracks and in the industrial area near the shipyards it was temporary because the city of Richmond announced that at the end of the war any african-americans who had come there to work would have to leave and it built housing for the white workers more stable housing in the residential areas east of the the coast it created segregation here where it hadn't previously existed there was no segregation because there wasn't a substantial african-american population in in the area in fact throughout California in the way coasts there were very few african-americans before World War two there were some who would come in the 19th century for the gold rush but aside from that and for the Pullman car porters who lived in an integrated neighborhood in Oakland because they had to live close enough to the railroad terminal to be able to walk to work but aside from that there were no african-americans and the in the San Francisco Bay Area but the government had to segregates decided to segregate that area by building separate projects for african-americans and whites and it could have been so different in fact we have what social scientists call an existence proof there was one shipyard north of San Francisco in in Marin County the Marin shipyards that grew so rapidly as the war proceeded that only single men could come to work there they couldn't accommodate families at first and they showed up so in such great numbers that the administrators of the barracks that they put up just handed out pillows and blankets as the workers came and they couldn't segregate it they couldn't it was happening so fast and they found that there were no problems as a result of having segregated barracks for white and black men so when the families came they both segregated they built integrated public housing Marin County was the only place that I know of in the country that integrated housing for war workers during the war and it worked there was no reason why it couldn't have been done it done everywhere after and and this as I say happened everywhere throughout the country everywhere where there was a defense plant the government had to build housing and they built it on a segregated basis creating segregation or reinforcing segregation where otherwise might not have grown the way it did after the war there was an enormous housing shortage not only had no housing been built during the Depression but during the war it was prohibited to use construction materials for civilian purposes the only housing that could be built was housing for defense workers for workers at these plants and you had millions of War veterans returning to the country needing housing forming families that's where the baby boom came from they were doubled up with relatives tripled up with relatives living in Quonset huts on open fields there was an enormous crisis shortage of housing and President Truman who was then president in 1949 proposed a vast expansion of the national public housing program to accommodate these returning War veterans and remember we're not talking about poor people these are people who had jobs in the post-war boom in the economic boom after the war but there was no housing available for them the government wasn't proposing to build subsidized housing for poor people was proposing to build housing for returning War veterans and conservatives in Congress wanted to defeat the expansion of public housing that President Truman had proposed for this purpose they wanted to defeat that not for racial reasons because it was segregated and they had no problem with that they didn't want to defeat it because they didn't like poor people because this wasn't for poor people it was for returning War veterans who had jobs they wanted to defeat it simply because they thought that public housing was socialistic that the government shouldn't be involved in the housing market it should be the private market that takes care of the needs of returning War veterans even though the private market wasn't taking care of their needs and so they came up with a device to defeat the the program that President Truman had proposed it's a device that is well known to observers of politics it's called a poison pill strategy a poison pill strategy is a strategy that opponents of a program in Congress employee they proposed to an amendment to a bill that they opposed and the amendment they think is an innocuous amendment that will pass but once it's passed it will make the entire bill unpalatable and the bill will go down to defeat as an aside perhaps the the most famous poison pill effort and in the recent memory was in 1964 when the Civil Rights Act was being passed and southern segregationists and other opponents of the civil rights bill thought they could defeat it by proposing that the we not only extend civil rights to African Americans but the women as well and they thought that if they could get that amendment passed when the entire bill came up for a vote that would be so ridiculous that the civil rights bill would go down to defeat and they misjudged and that's why we have non-discrimination provisions by gender in the civil rights bill they didn't succeed in defeating the final bill after they attach this amendment to it but going back to 1949 conservatives in Congress had a poison pill strategy they proposed that an amendment to the National Housing Act be added that provided that from now on all public housing had to be integrated no more discrimination in public housing segregation would be ended in public housing and they propose this amendment cynically of course assuming that they would vote for it this integration amendment northern liberals would also vote for it that would create a majority and then when the amended bill came up for a vote they would flip and vote against the amended bill they would be joined by Southern Democrats who were all in favor of segregated public housing but not integrated public housing and the tired bill will go down to defeat so liberals in Congress and campaigned against the integration amendment liberals in Congress campaigned against the integration amendment the campaign against the integration amendment was led by the leading civil rights advocate in the United States Senate Hubert Humphrey so named some of you will remember I see enough bald heads and white hair here to know that the some you will know who you birth Humphrey was he had the year before he had led a an effort at the Democratic National Convention to add the civil rights platform to the Democratic civil rights closed the Democratic platform so he was the leading civil right he campaigned against the integration amendment he persuaded all the northern liberals with rare exceptions to vote against the integration the integration men went down to defeat the full public housing bill came up before Congress as an in continuing segregated program it passed and that vote by Congress to to prohibit integration or actually to reject non-discrimination in public housing was then used as by the federal government as the justification for segregating all of its programs for the next 15 years not just public housing 1949 well to those of us with bald heads and white hair wasn't so long ago we're just talking about only only yesterday well under the 1949 housing act some of the giant towers that were familiar with your Chicago places like Robert Taylor homes or Cabrini Green the the iconic pruitt-igoe towers and saying Louis I'm sure many of you have heard of those these projects were built under the 1949 Housing Act again not for poor people but for returning War veterans who needed housing always on a segregated basis and very shortly after that a development occurred around the country which was quite surprising and nobody expected but all the white projects developed large numbers of vacancies all of the black projects have long waiting lists and this happened not just in Chicago and st. Louis but everywhere st. Louis as I mentioned the pruitt-igoe projects we call it pruitt-igoe is actually two separate projects the Pruitt projects were for african-americans that long long waiting lists the AYGO projects were for whites at-large vacancies and soon as the the vacancies increased in the situation became so untenable that the government had to open up all public housing to African Americans gradually they became predominantly African American about the same time industry left the cities and there were fewer fewer jobs to which public housing residents had access we no longer industry previously was dependent on either deepwater ports or railroad terminals but once the highways began to be built they could move out to rural areas into the suburbs and have more land and not have to have elevators and dividing up their assembly lines so they moved out of the cities people in public housing now overwhelmingly African American became poorer and poorer because there were no jobs eventually the projects came to be subsidized there were no longer covering the cost of the housing in in residence rent once they became subsidized investment in public housing decline the maintenance declined and public housing became the kind of vertical slums that we came to associate with public housing in the late 20th century that's not how public housing began but the question that I hope is arising in your mind because of the rose in mind when I read this history of public housing is why did all these vacancies develop in the white projects and not in the black projects these were returning War veterans blacks and whites they all had jobs in the postwar boom the the African Americans might not have had the better jobs White's monopolized those but they all couldn't afford rent to pay the rent why all these vacancies and in the white projects and not the black projects and the reason for that is another federal program which was even more powerful in creating segregated communities and that was a program that was run by the Federal Housing Administration and it was a program that was designed to segregate the entire white population into single-family homes and the suburbs it's actually a program that the federal government began as a propaganda campaign and right at the end of World War one after the Russian Revolution when some geniuses and the Woodrow Wilson administration decided that the way to prevent white workers from becoming Bolsheviks was to get them into single-family homes and the suburbs and become property owners but this was a federal program why are you laughing and they actually the the Department of Commerce in the 1920s actually sent community organizers some of you I know I met some of you have community organizing experience Department of Commerce actually sent community organizers to white neighborhoods in urban areas and told them that the way to avoid racial strife was to move to the suburbs after I published the book I came across a poster that the Federal Housing Administration had produced and it was a poster the picture was of an african-american man being led away in handcuffs by police and the headline was escaped crime moved to the suburbs this was a federal government propaganda campaign but it didn't have much effect because the working-class families no matter how much they wanted to believe the government propaganda didn't have the money to afford single-family homes in the suburbs until the Federal Housing Administration began a massive subsidy program to suburban eyes the white population and they did this by recruiting a cadre of mass production builders of giant suburbs everywhere the most famous of these and I know you've heard of it is Levittown Eastern New York City 17,000 homes some of you may have heard the remember hearing a song that Pete Seeger used to sing that was written by Malvina Reynolds about the little boxes on a hillside made of ticky tacky and they all look the same this was another giant subdivision built south of San Francisco of Los Angeles which became the symbol of suburbanization in the 1950s had giant suburbs at lakewood newer mcdonnell douglas plant and panorama city in the san fernando valley all of these were giant suburbs this was not how single-family homes were originally created before the FHA recruited these builders if a family wanted to own a home in the suburbs they had to buy some land and find a builder to construct it and maybe there was a builder occasionally who was really a risk-taker and was willing to build three or four or five homes in the same location and hope to sell them nobody could build 15,000 homes in one place like 17,000 homes like Leavitt did or 15,000 like the one south of San Francisco the only way left could assemble the capital to build 15,000 17,000 homes in one place was by going to the Federal Housing Administration submitting his plans for the subdivision which included what kinds of materials he was going to use what the architectural design of the homes was what the layout of the streets were and make a commitment to the Federal Housing Administration he would never sell a home to an African American and the Federal Housing Administration required him required him to place a clause in the deed of every home in Levittown prohibiting resale to African Americans or rental to African Americans this was a federal requirement it was a federal policy to segregate the white population into all-white suburbs outside urban areas and suburbs were built in this way all across the country there were inexpensive homes the Levittown and the others that I mentioned the Levittown itself was 750 square feet homes was very small modest homes for workers my uncle white was a returning War veteran he was able to buy a home in a Levittown with an FHA a VA mortgage he his job was stocking vegetables in the supermarket that's the kind of people who are able to move into these homes african-americans could easily have afforded to live in those homes they sold their small homes as I say they sold for about eight or nine thousand dollars a piece in those days and inflation adjusted today's money that's about a hundred thousand dollars little less any working-class family can afford to buy a home for a hundred thousand dollars with an FHA or a VA mortgage four veterans are required no downpayment these were easily affordable to African Americans as well as to whites but by federal policy african-americans had to remain renting and either public housing or in the private market in cities and whites were to become homeowners and single-family homes in the suburbs what are the consequences of this today well those homes that were sold in in hundreds and hundreds of these suburbs around the country to whites only by federal policy gained over the next 30 40 50 years value they now sell for three hundred four hundred five hundred thousand dollars those 100 thousand dollar homes the white families who bought those homes gained over the next generation or two equity wealth equal to the difference between one hundred thousand dollars in the present market value of their homes three hundred four hundred five hundred thousand dollars in wealth in this country most middle-class working-class families gain what wealth they have from the equity in their homes they they use their paychecks to live on they don't save money that's not where wealth comes from wealth comes from home equity in this country so as a result of this federal policy to segregate metropolitan areas we now have a situation where African American incomes our sixty percent of white incomes not close but not that far either of the sick the difference is largely also attributable to federal policy in the labor market which I'm not I'm going to talk about here but I do talk about some in the book they they're a ver American incomes the sixty percent of white incomes African American wealth is ten percent of white wealth and that enormous difference between a sixty percent income ratio and the ten percent wealth ratio is entirely attributable to unconstitutional federal housing policy those practice in the twentieth century and that wealth gap controls much of the inequality that we have in this country today it's the reason that well we're the de facto theory says that African Americans just can't afford to move into middle-class communities well it's true they can't they all have money for down payments but that's a federal creation an unconstitutional federal creation the wealth gap that creates and perpetuates the segregation is responsible for the concentration of the most disadvantaged young people in this country and why we have riots like Ferguson and Milwaukee and st. Paul and other places that we've seen in recent years and hundreds of them earlier in the the 20th century it's the reason why as I said at the very beginning we have an achievement gap in schools because of this federal housing policy now in the in the book I described many many other federal state local policies that came together to create the system of state-sponsored segregation of unconstitutional residential segregation and there's really nothing in my book that hasn't been written about before it's all been documented I didn't have to do much original research I didn't spend years and archives finding things that nobody knew about this was all well known only fifty years ago the subtitle of the book is a forgotten history of how our government segregated America and everybody who moved into one of these suburbs knew that they were racially exclusive african-americans knew they were prohibited from buying homes in these suburbs I wrote in the book about the family a an african-american family uh some of them were returning War veterans they formed the trucking company they were businessmen they delivered construction materials to sites they had a contract with Levitt to deliver construction materials to Levittown but they weren't permitted to buy homes in Levittown even though their incomes were probably superior from this business to many of the working-class white families who were permitted to move into it the many many other policies of the federal government that state local governments follow the here in Chicago one that I write about in the book is the University of Chicago the University of Chicago under the presidency of Robert Hutchins who was a well-known educator and saying if you know of anything education know that Robert Hutchins was a leader in reforming high schools in this country very highly respected but he was president the University of Chicago from the late 1930s to the early 1950s during his presidency he mean to maintain the staff of lawyers working for the office of the president in the University of Chicago whose job it was to sue African Americans who moved into homes in the neighborhood around of this the University of Chicago to get them evicted now you may say well the University of Chicago is a private institution that's de facto segregation right it's not the jure segregation well it's the jure segregation for two reasons one is and the courts later agreed on this that in order to pursue those suits the courts had to enforce these covenants that were attached the deans in every home prohibiting sale or occupancy by african-americans but more importantly than not the University of Chicago's a tax-exempt institution and this was an open policy I'm not suggesting that any any time a nonprofit organization with the tax exemption from the Internal Revenue Service does something wrong it then becomes a violation of the Constitution but when a University of Chicago or churches throughout the Chicago area and everywhere every metropolitan area next country were active openly in segregating the neighborhoods and they're surrounding their institutions the IRS was violating the Fifth Amendment when the extended tax exemptions were filing in the Internal Revenue Code as well with an extended tax exemptions to the University of Chicago or to any of the churches or other nonprofit institutions that took action explicitly openly I'm not talking about secret action openly that was known to the IRS known to anybody who looked to segregate their neighborhoods it went from the top to the bottom I'll give you the most trivial example I found to you and you can fill in the the the spaces in between or you can read my book to fill out the spaces in between but I was looking through an african-american newspaper in a town called Culver City which is a suburb of Los Angeles you may have heard of it because it's where movies are made these days but there's a white suburb of Los Angeles you won't know about this kind of thing in Chicago but during World War two cities on the East Coast and the West Coast like Culver City had air raid wardens who had to go door the door in the evenings to tell people to close their curtains or the clothes they had blackout curtains or dim their lights to avoid giving guidance to either Japanese bombers on the west coast or German bombers on the East Coast and the city attorney of Culver City according for this newspaper article convened a meeting of all the air raid wardens in culver city and he gave the air raid wardens in Culver City blank form exclusion agreements so that they might as well be efficient when they were going toward the door that tell people to turn off their lights they might as well make sure that they signed agreements enforceable by law on the law of agreeing never to sell a home to an african-american oh never to rent to an african-american in their community that was the lowest level of government activity this was not the facto segregation this was a government system from top to bottom that was designed to create segregation in this country now you know as I said earlier I I you know I used to specialize in education policy I really don't know anything about housing this was not my field I got into this because I was concerned about that Supreme Court decision that prohibit us from desegregating schools but because I knew a lot of education policy I it was natural for me in the course of writing this book to look at how the textbooks in every high school and middle school in this country teach this history the American history textbooks and I found as you might imagine every one of them lies about this they sort of a scientific way of describing it the most commonly used American history textbook that I looked at least two or three years ago and I looked at this it was the most commonly used ones called the Americans it's 1200 pages that the kids have to carry around their backpacks in those 1200 pages there's one paragraph devoted to the subhead is discrimination in the north within that paragraph there's one sentence devoted to housing in the sentence reads as follows in the North African Americans found themselves forced into segregated neighborhoods that's it you know I I said earlier today that you know I write books as you know that's why I'm here I write articles I know that publishers spend a lot of money hiring copy editors to look out for passive voice sentences this is one they missed the African Americans you know they woke up one day that looked at the window and they said hey we're in a segregated neighborhood look at that this is a crime because if the next generation doesn't know this history learn this history any better than our generations have they are going to be in this poor position to remedy it as we've been so every one of you I know you're from a number of different communities here [Music] some of your even educators every one of you has contacts with the local school or your children go there or your grandchildren go there or you know teachers or principals or superintendents or school board members and this is one way that every one of us can get involved at the very beginning to redress this crime to teach this history accurately because unless we understand this history this is unlike most history this is not purely of academic interest the foundation of our legal preservation of segregation depends on the misunderstanding of the history it depends on this myth of de facto segregation so unless we can persuade an effective section of the American public the educating the American public the influential American public that the government created segregation the segregation as I said earlier neighborhoods around this country are is as unconstitutional as a segregation of water fountains unless we can understand that history we're not going to be permitted to and take the aggressive policies that are needed to address it because if it happened by accident it's not going to unhappen by accident if it happened by explicit government policy explicit government policy can undo it and it's not difficult to think of the policies that can undo it I devote a chapter in the book to it but that's not my main purpose but the policies are not hard to imagine and they wouldn't be hard to implement had we had if we had political support for it so I urge you to begin at this least to help me and to join with many others like me and in trying to make this history known so we can develop the political foundation for desegregating this country which we're obligated to do under our Constitution and we're obligated to a citizens if we want to call ourselves a democracy and a constitutional democracy of course understanding itself won't be enough no civil rights victory has ever been one simply by people having the understanding of the importance of doing it we need a more vigorous civil rights movement that's going to undertake the same kinds of actions that pass civil rights movements undertook around this issue whether its marches or demonstrations or civil disobedience but the history is the first step and so I urge you as I say to communicate this history the people you know to learn it yourself so you will be motivated to join that civil rights movement when it becomes strong enough to create reform so thank you very much and we'll take some questions [Applause] [Music] well there are really two questions that you have there I'm going to separate them a bit I said several times that there were many many policies that the federal government followed to create segregation one of them was the construction of Highways to separate black from white neighborhoods here in Chicago I'm sure you've all heard that the Dan Ryan and the the Dan Ryan not by accident separates what were when the Dan Ryan was built white from black communities and that was on purpose that was something was explicitly done the mayors and city planners highway planners were not bashful about saying that that was their purpose in designing these routes so that's that and so what I don't know specifically about Austin in in the question you're asking for my oxen Texas yeah well I don't know specifically and now the population of Austin has dropped dramatically it's like 6% of the population yeah yeah well like I said I don't know specifically I've had Austin but that was commonplace the many cities had city plans which designated black from white neighbor black and white neighborhoods explicitly in the city plans well the and various policies the highway system being one of them were used to reinforce that plan in the south and this is something that didn't happen in Chicago because we didn't have here in Chicago of official school segregation but in cities like Austin and Raleigh and Houston and Atlanta many many cities in the south the school boards and the cities worked together to implement the racial city plan by placing schools remember we had segregated schools there so they play schools in a way that would force families to move out of integrated neighborhoods and into segregated ones so as I said in the early 20th century we had lots of integrated neighborhoods but school boards placed schools for african-americans in the area that was designated for African Americans and they play schools for whites in the area that was designated for whites so families wanted their children to be educated they had to move into segregated communities and that was a major tool that was used in many southern cities to create segregation that hadn't previously existed to ask question more about education policy at the start you spoke about the connection between living conditions the achievement gap and also some of the issues with desegregation programs I guess my question has two parts do you think that desegregation programs and schools are logistical ium possible and if so do you think that funding I could do anything to help watts in that gap okay well there are certainly programs that we can do to try to accomplish some desegregation of schools without addressing residential segregation in borderline areas between black and white neighborhoods we could redraw attendance boundaries for example so that African Americans and whites that's not a problem I think here in Evanston as I understand but certainly in Chicago and in other big cities on the borderline areas we could redraw school attendance zones so that the schools became integrated but most african-american and white children in this country live too far distant from borderline areas for that to be a reasonable program to accomplish much desegregation so the question is should we improve spend more money to improve schools and segregated neighborhoods for african-american children of course we should but we should be careful we're not advocating I hope separate but equal schools and some of the the advocacy of that kind of reform which I support we need to improve conditions in in low-income communities it's certainly not something I would ever oppose we should support it but it shouldn't be seen as a substitute for D segregating those communities you know the the this has been a debate that has gone on for 60 years in this country Oh to what extent should we be trying to revitalize is the term the common term today should we try to revitalize the ghetto neighborhoods low-income neighborhoods have concentrated disadvantage and what extent should we help people move out of those neighborhoods where there's no opportunity and too high opportunity neighborhoods and inevitably what the policymakers decide is oil it's too politically difficult to have mobility programs that help move people out so we'll just try to revitalize the communities it's a separate but equal strategy of course it never works once you once you embark on that that kind of program there's not enough political support to pour money into a low-income communities because those people don't have enough political power to vote and so you know we started in in model cities in the 1960s and then since then we've had enterprise zones and empowerment zones it's one thing after another to try to bring more jobs and more opportunity to low-income communities it always fails the only program that can succeed but we have to decide to do it is to desegregate the country create the kind of country that we say we believe in and where people have equal opportunity my name is Gayle Schechter for nearly a quarter of century until a couple of years ago I really appreciated all that you said and when people would accuse me or my organization of social engineering and trying to promote fair and affordable housing we would say it was social engineering that got us here but my my comment is that with this rate oh and I also if you want to read a book about the history of the Chicago freedom movement which was all about fair housing there's a book that came out I wrote this at the chapter on the North Shore it's called the Chicago freedom movement civil rights in the North so the comment I wanted to make is that today the issue of racial segregation has morphed into an issue of affordable housing because with the with the segregation by race also produced segregation by wealth and it also created a situation which was also kind of engineered which is the concept of home rule and school funding is through the property tax and that increased the amount of segregation by income as well as race and so when people looking to address racial segregation they might be considered consider advocating for affordable housing as a way to break I agree with you I don't that wasn't the question but I agree but but you did remind me of something I want to say this now I mentioned earlier that none of the sister I described was new it's all been written before I did very little archival research but the the core book the key book about how this happened in Chicago was written 2530 years ago by Arnold Hirsch and it's called the making of the second ghetto and professor Hirsch died yesterday and we should remember him and read his book you don't have to read mine read his I could evening thank you for writing this book I really enjoyed it it doesn't have a you know it paints a clearer picture of what exactly the government has done and continues to do and the concept of you know de jure segregation versus de facto I think that it's just right on point so I just want to thank you for your comments and your research I think it's a very well-done book my question is you know I'm a housing professional so I work in I know about the Hohokam housing tax credit program the tax cut and Jobs Act that was just passed December 2017 it has a provision that reduces the mortgage interest deduction which in your book you correlated entitlement program and you compare that to section 8 program where you know there's always a waiting list and if you don't get there first it runs out but the mortgage interest deduction it basically helps homeowners to finance their properties and to continue this you know wealth gap that you just described I want a prediction as to how you think this new law will that if at all because now you understand the deduction and you can choose if you itemize or not and you know for a lot of people in the debt $750,000 you know threshold it may make more sense to to deduct and I think it had senses in an sense renting as opposed to you know previously it was housing the other thing is another new development out of that same tax reform is Opportunity Zones and the deadline is coming at the end of this quarter for the governor's to select which areas are now going to be opportunity zones and this could be you know this could be another tool right that is abused or used correctly to revitalize a lot of neighborhoods that are distressed and I want your insight on those two things well I'm not sure I agree with you by the way that the mortgage interest deduction reform in the current tax bill is going to have much impact it was designed it was a politically designed tool that was designed to effect places with very very high property values not typical middle-class homes not typical middle-class suburbs so what it did was it capped them at $10,000 which applies in effects you know people in New York City pay $10,000 in property taxes and people in California may pay but very few people in Illinois pay $10,000 in property taxes that they do very few I said no I mean I mean living I'm talking in one of those areas where it's possible but but very few people do and limiting the deduction to $10,000 is not going to do much because this $10,000 can still be deducted so it's not going to do do that much to take away the incentive for the mortgage interest deduction you mentioned the section 8 program and that's a I think many of you are familiar with that it's a subsidy program a program where the government gives families a amount of money that will help them rent apartments while paying no more than 30% of their income in rent and the the mortgage the the section 8 program is designed so that the amount of the subsidy that the government gives them is based on the average rent in the area of their local Housing Authority and this program reinforces segregation it doesn't have to be racially explicit the way the programs I described earlier were because once we've created these these structures programs like section 8 reinforce segregation they reinforce segregation for a number of reasons one is if you think about it if your subsidy is based on the average rent in a housing authority area that subsidy is going to be too low to rent in the higher opportunity neighborhoods and the middle-class neighborhoods where rents are higher and it's actually going to be too high to rent and segregated low income neighborhoods landlords in those neighborhoods can exploit the program by charging more than the market with otherwise require so the result is that people use their section 8 vouchers to move to already segregated low income neighborhoods a family with a section 8 voucher is more likely to live in a low opportunity segregated low high poverty community then a family of equal low income who lives in a less segregated community so reinforces segregation another program just like that is the low income housing tax credit which is a subsidy that the Treasury Department gives the developers to construct low income housing and it's used to reinforce segregation because developers of low-income housing which much would much rather build their housing in already low income neighborhoods they'd rather do it because the land is cheaper they're mostly because they don't have to go through 50 community meetings explaining what they're doing and defending what they're doing and you know they put up a building it might be a very nice building it might be justified on the basis of what we're talking about before it's going to revitalize the neighborhood but you know they can put up a sign in the window and potential renters come by they can rent the vacancies easily we could very easily design redesign that program so that the the tax credits were given to developers who committed to build in high opportunity communities where the residents would have access to jobs and transportation and schools where achievement was high so there are many things we could do if we want to desegregate we just need the political will to do it were there any lawsuits about the discriminatory clauses yes there were a small number there was one Supreme Court case in 1948 which prohibited courts local courts from enforcing these deeds clauses that prohibited sale or rental to African Americans that didn't stop them but there was a Supreme Court case along those lines but mostly the civil rights legal community from the 1930s on focused on school desegregation and it was a very poorly resourced civil rights legal community NACP which eventually the lawyers eventually became the NAACP Legal Defense Fund it was a nickels and dimes operation actually more nickels operation than a nickel and dimes operation it survived on on contributions from very poor people and they they were engrossed in the school desegregation fights and never really focused on housing segregation partly because housing segregation so there snuck up on them you know started in a New Deal you know in the course of my research I read leathers that Thurgood Marshall the lead litigator in the annex if he wrote to President Truman protesting these restrictive covenants in Levittown but it never really got when in 1954 the NAACP won Brown versus Board of Education to desegregate schools and the day after the Supreme Court handed down that decision a Thurgood Marshall and the other leaders in the NCP held a press conference and they said okay we've won school desegregation now we're going to turn our attention to housing but of course there was massive resistance to school desegregation and the lawyers were consumed for the next 20 years trying to defend Brown versus Board of Education and by the time they began to think about housing the structures that I described were already completely in place to explicitly address that and part of that work is if you have particular suggestions in terms of resources for educators families and children to access more accurate that has fairly controlled interpretation of history I thank you for asking that question this frustrates me greatly that we don't have well we don't have a curriculum that I can hand out to teach this history but I am working with several groups who say they want to develop such a curriculum and if you send me an email when it's developed I'll send you a copy and that's true of everybody here but I I you know the group I'm sure facing history they're talking about developing such a curriculum rethinking schools maybe you're familiar with that they are also talking about developing a curriculum but you know that this history that I've described in my book it's only been out for you know ten months now and I wish well I wish I could take a while but and why are we tolerating that I guess I mean good neighborhood but for the people that are struggling to for the over price today you know I always hear about this you've done great work in this book can you feed a new form of a lawsuit as step one to bring because we're all participating in discrimination and it's mostly and this is why I watch a book last summer for that very reason so just you know help me what are you gonna do for the next step to create some new great loss I don't know well I'm not a lawyer this is just a history book I've written so I'm not gonna do anything as a lawyer to do these things but you know III can't think the only way I disagree with you on is this lawsuits cannot be the first step lawsuits always ride on a civil rights wave on a mobilization on activism on public awareness and also the you know this is it's complicated because the unconstitutional actions that created the structures which still exists today so they're still unconstitutional racial boundaries but they were because the the policies themselves were followed so long ago that nobody would have standing to sue today so litigation there's still many opportunities for lawsuits I'm not saying there aren't but it's not going to be the major route because nobody can come to court and say that well you know I don't have wealth today because my grandfather was prohibited from buying a house in the white suburb that the the way our legal system works that you don't have standing to sue in that kind of situation the way lawyers are going to get involved in this is if we start enacting policies like the school desegregation plan and Louisville and Seattle or we start let's say the most important policy we could probably enact is a prohibition on zoning ordinances in high opportunity communities and wealthy communities that prohibited the construction of you know townhouses or apartments or even single family homes on small lot sizes if we understood this history we understand that those zoning ordinances are unconstitutional they're designed to preserve a and unconstitutionally created exclusivity so we could pass a law like that and then somebody would challenge it and it would go to court and civil rights lawyers would have to defend that policy so it would be the reverse they would be defending a policy of desegregation they wouldn't be initiating a lawsuit to try to change it so I'm not saying that lawyers wouldn't be involved but the first step is to get those kinds of policies enacted so that we'll have something to defend and that requires political mobilization support with I call the new civil rights movement to make that happen I look at four areas that segregation banking housing education and what criminal justice system and if the government started the segregation of african-americans from white then I should not the government be the one to end it why is it taking so long to look and see that they this is not the right thing to do why it has to start from the ground up instead of the government recognizing that this is not the right way case the government is just like it is for the government they are people the government is not just an isolated group it's run by leaders on their policies in the United States between one group the Democrats and one group the Republican and they carry out those policies true budget budgetary constraint so therefore it's very difficult for African Americans and as an african-american woman I have faced discrimination and I'm just wondering if you think that desegregation was not a result of discrimination against African Americans and the perception that they have towards us cuz we just really I for myself I'm really tired of just not having equal opportunity even though I'm educated even though I have the same skills as other people in employment in my previous job I have to train the person who who was qualified that they said I wasn't qualified to get the job but I have to turn around and train the qualified so I think this is a complex process rather it's not an easy step to say okay we can just try to desegregate our communities because of the heart of discrimination is a perception that towards black people I read it and the internet I were told to go back to Africa so that mean even those who were born in this country not considered Americans so it's it's a very complex issues that we have faced and I just feel like blacks just need opportunities and we spend a lot of time with trying to break down the structures and the walls and it's like hitting against a mountain like big war so I feel that we should focus more and opportunities equal opportunities and then that should give us a better chance of moving forward that we have equal access to the banking system equal access to housing and how we're gonna do it I don't have well okay well okay it wasn't the question was a but let me just respond the in a short way I agree that this is not going to start with the government the government only takes action when it's forced to do so by a change in public opinion and that's why I say we need a new civil rights movement I'm actually hopeful writing this book made me hopeful you may say that may surprise you but it made me hopeful because I came to understand that if it happened by accident there was nothing we could do about it but if we understood that it came about by government policy then we can understand that government policy can undo it and there are many many policies that we could follow but first it has to be of a mobilization of the public that understands the need to make these changes so far as your comp well maybe I'll stop there and it wasn't a question so I don't need to ramble on I do not believe it was you know but I wonder if well there are one of the disturbing trends in this country today statement I states the override local jurisdictions that try to increase equity whether by affordable housing or in other ways as well so I agree that's a problem and it's a political problem that we need to address i Ono have any more say about the that's as we begin to focus on these issues we've got to focus on that at the state level and ensure that local communities are permitted to demand affordable housing but does they say we need at a national level we need a prohibition on zoning laws that prohibit that from happening and it can be done first at state levels you know states can prohibit those kinds of ordinances which exist in wealthy suburbs everywhere in the country and sort of lock in the segregated patterns that we have and States can change those my question is that the first part of your speech was talking about was like the civil rights movement right we we did that civil rights movement we passed laws to be able to get non segregated buses and also non segregated water fountains and then after that we it also led to segregated housing so I guess my question is sure we can pass policies to be able to on surrogate housing and things like that things might be that simple on paper but at the same time do you think it's a question of like our federal government just being an oppressive institution and also just like the policies that they tried to pass just end up becoming racialized against like people of color more specifically black folk or is it just like we're not this question of our federal government not doing anything well we shouldn't minimize the civil rights victories that we achieved in the 20th century this is a very different country now and that was then and we shouldn't minimize any of that progress we have well the the biggest progress may be in the growth of an African American middle class today this is pretty substantially integrated into mainstream American society I you know I said I told you before I probably shouldn't keep saying this but I'm an old man and in 1965 in Chicago I had a job in which I was a researcher working for the Chicago Urban League and my job was to count and identify every job in the corporate sector of Chicago in any corporation we identified on a team of researchers identified four thousand policymaking jobs and the private sector in Chicago not a single one was held by an african-american in 1965 not a single one the only african-americans with executive positions in the private sector in Chicago at that time were working at banks and insurance companies that were serving african-american segregated neighborhoods today any corporation in Chicago that didn't have many black executives not just one would be subject to a lawsuit and would be subject to a probiem in public rejection so in 1970 10% of young african-americans had college degrees as if you the survey of the african-american population 25 to 29 year olds in 1970 10% had college degrees and as I say those who had college degrees were working mostly in service industries that serve the black population whether they were doctors or dentists or lawyers or bank executives small bank executives today 24% of African Americans have college degrees and or more and are working not only in institutions that serve African Americans but are in them in major corporations and medical professions and a threat so we made an enormous progress I don't want to minimize that but as I said we've left unaddressed the biggest segregation of all and I'm hopeful that we do have a new civil rights movement that can emerge you know the black lives matter movement is the beginnings of something very hopeful a I said the this afternoon you know that in the late 1990s President Clinton's decided to have a national conversation on race and after he talked to himself for a week or two he dropped the idea well we're now having a more accurate and passionate national discussion about race and I think at any time in previous time in American history it's not just the black lives matter movement I urge all of you to if you haven't already done so to go online and look on time is New York Times website and Google the speech that Mayor Mitch Landrieu or the mayor of New Orleans gave when he removed the statue of Robert Ely in in New Orleans two or three years ago it was inconceivable that a white elected southern politician would make a speech that so accurately and passionately describe the legacies of slavery and Jim Crow that still affect this country today and that's an enormous ly positive development so and you know I I know I don't like to boast about my book but you know it's had a stunning reception I wrote this book yeah I've written books before I assumed I write the book you know I put it aside and move on to my next project I've done nothing but go around the country speaking about this topic so there's an enormous receptivity to this information so I think we need to build on it and you know I've suggested some ways we can build on it but and really you know let me say this it's up to you it's not up to me I'm not going to be around when we accomplish all these policies but you will be and I'm counting on you then make it happen mrs. Rothstein I want to thank you for your presentation having to live in Everson all my life and in Chicago which is considered one of the most segregated cities in America recently we have here in Evanston several organizations the community partners for affordable housing and the Housing Opportunity Development Corporation where you could leave your home or set aside to this organization that will remain affordable for 99 years here in Evansville so far we only have about twelve houses and I'm encouraging all the white people here this evening if you children don't want to come there's didn't live like mine said they'll never come back here I am thinking about leaving my house to one of these organizations so Lisa don't keep it so there are affordable things going on and they are personal I have no confidence in the government the current one or hood that they will ever do anything to eliminate these current policies but we as a community and yours your book that's reaching a large audience will encourage us and inspire us to do more locally to make our communities be more I agree that your book is very powerful and will have a major impact on them on the country I've heard you talked before about the term social engineering well I I know what you're referring to but you know ben Carson the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development said that the we shouldn't engage in integration programs because that's a form of social engineering and it has it's gonna have unintended consequences a harmful and and you know I wrote a long article responding to him saying that this is an attempt to undo social engineering not to engage in social engineering you know I not surprisingly my book well I actually I was surprised I hadn't thought I should have realized that but my book has had a great reception among conservatives because it's a criticism of the government but so they think it's great you know here's this here's this you know left-wing or writing a criticism of the government and then they say well you know you're right everything you say is right this is what the government did but two wrongs don't make a right so the government created it but the government shouldn't undo it and that's such a silly argument that it's easy to rebuke and only the government has the power to do this but it's not guy I agree with the people of making statements about this the government is not a separate entity it's us and what we force the government to do is what the government will do and but only the government has the power once we force it to do it to desegregate this country and the policies it could follow are easy and simple and many of them not costly the you know for example the though I described a minute ago about a section 8 program or the low-income housing tax program that wouldn't cost a cent to simply use those programs to desegregate rather than to segregate it wouldn't cost a cent to to prohibit exclusionary zoning ordinances some of the most important policies that we could follow would be cost-free now that'd be expensive problem programs - we are the subsidized african-americans to buy homes and suburbs that they cannot now afford because of unconstitutional federal policy and that would be expensive but most of the pensive this morning are you still local in my what do you still live in the area oh no no no I listen the Poor People's Campaign me for many years ago sure to unite people across the country to challenge the evils of systemic racism poverty the war economy ecological devastation and the nation's distorted morality sadly and launching in Evanston tomorrow night at Grace Lutheran Church at 1430 South Boulevard and Wesley in southwest Evanston that part from here at 7 o'clock so it's you know open to all it's for all people so we're hoping this is gonna be the next movement to really address thank you I wish I could okay question over here I think the Cook County voters yesterday policy change I think the voters in Cook County yesterday backed into important policy change in that we we elected a reformer to head our tax assessment system and I'm wondering if you're familiar with that raised and familiar if this has been done in the rest of the country because we are very hopeful and it happened and for a variety of reasons but a concrete reason was this major research that came out this past week or month on the discrimination in neighborhoods of color on their on their on the tax system and I was wondering if you have any success stories we've begun this but I want you to meet with friends Katie I'm sorry I didn't wasn't a question I didn't get the the final question what was it you are familiar with other counties or taxing districts that have had success in shortening their assessment cycles and looking at their assessment system for homes no I'm not in in my book I devote a section to describing how many communities including Chicago had a discriminatory assessment system a racially discriminatory assessment system in which homes in black communities were assessed to the higher ratio to market value than homes and white communities in the early 1970s in Chicago the the community with the lowest assessed values relative to market values was Bridgeport and the community with the highest what's so funny about that and the community with the highest assessed values relative to market value was West Lawndale so and this and Chicago wasn't the only place but you know it's a very complicated thing and very time-consuming thing actually Zillow and that kind of thing makes it a little bit easier today but in order to identify this discriminatory practice you've got to look at the sale prices of every home and its assessed value and compare it and it's a very time-consuming process and so I don't there have been some studies done of it in Chicago you know in Chicago of the ProPublica recently published a study of it in Chicago demonstrating that the policy still exists and perhaps that contributed to the election result yesterday but it's exists in other cities as well [Applause] [Music]
