The Segregation Myth: Richard Rothstein Debunks an American Lie | NowThis

[Music] we've left untouched the biggest segregation of all that overwhelms everything else and hangs over our entire society and that is that every metropolitan area in this country is residentially segregated i've lived in many of them there are clearly defined areas and everyone that i've lived in that are all white or mostly white or all african-american and mostly african-american and all of us accept this as part of the natural environment it's not we think it's a good thing we know we say it's too bad but we think it's sort of natural normal something we accept it's not that we've tried to do anything about it and have failed we've never even tried 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 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 or private citizens discriminated in 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 de facto segregation is an other myth there is no basis to it whatsoever the racial segregation in every metropolitan area in this country was created by explicit racially explicit government policy designed to create racial boundaries designed to ensure that african-americans and whites could not live near one another with policies that are so powerful that they still determine the racial landscape that we see in cities all over the country just like we have the myth of de facto segregation we also think we know what public housing is it's a place where poor people live where lots of mothers with children single parents with children lots of young men without access to jobs in the formal economy acting out engaging in oppositional behavior that attracts attention to the police and a cycle of violence that we've seen in so many places that's what we think of as public housing but that's not how public housing began in this country public housing began in this country as a program for middle class working class families during the depression poor people were not permitted into public housing when public housing was first created there was a housing shortage and public housing was created for people who could afford to pay the full rent in housing and they did in public housing but for whom there was no housing available everywhere the public works administration and the other federal agencies that succeeded it created segregated public housing separate projects for african-americans and whites in cities all across the country frequently segregating neighborhoods that hadn't previously been segregated that were integrated during world war ii the uh actions of the government intensified to create segregation they intensified because throughout the country hundreds of thousands of workers flocked to centers of defense production of war production to take jobs that hadn't existed during the depression and the migration of workers into centers of defense production overwhelmed frequently the communities where they were working federal government had to build housing for these workers if wanted the ships to be produced for the african americans they built the housing on temporary housing because the explicit goal of the housing was that african americans after world war ii would leave and go back to the south so they built temporary housing for the african americans along the railroad tracks near the shipyards and they built more stable housing for the white migrants in the white residential areas very soon after that without in the mid 1950s a development occurred everywhere in the country which was systematic similar uh and widespread and that was that suddenly all the white projects began to develop large numbers of vacancies all the black projects began to develop long waiting lists and soon the situation became so untenable so conspicuous you couldn't have projects in the same city some of which were virtually empty and the other of which had long waiting lists the federal government and local housing agencies opened up all projects to african americans and then at about the same time industry left the cities fewer and fewer jobs became available to now increasingly and soon almost all african american population in the public housing the population could no longer afford to pay the full cost of its rent so the government had to begin subsidizing public housing maintenance declined in the projects prior to this maintenance workers lived in the projects they were paid good salaries and lived in the projects upkeep declined the projects became vertical slums that we came to associate with public housing today another federal program that was perhaps even more powerful in creating racial segregation and that was a program of the federal housing administration designed to move white families out of urban areas into single-family homes in the suburbs at a racially explicit basis we created a white noose around every urban area with federally subsidized single-family home subdivisions these were giant subdivisions in many cases the most famous of them i'm sure you've heard of it as levittown east of new york city 17 000 homes in one place what bank would be crazy enough to lend a developer the money to build 17 000 homes or 15 000 homes in one place for which he had no buyers we were in a suburban country at that time people thought the whole idea was lunacy who's going to want to live in a single family home and they can live in the city instead any of these developers the only way they could get the capital to build these giant subdivisions was by going to the federal housing administration submitting their plans for the development for approval of the construction materials they were going to use the architectural design the layout of the streets in the subdivision and an explicit commitment not to sell a home to an african-american required by the federal housing administration the federal housing administration even required as a condition of these guarantees developers like levitt to place a clause in the deed of every home prohibiting resale to african americans or rental to african americans these deeds still exist in these homes today they're no longer enforced no longer forcible but they're still there what was the consequence of this well those homes in those days uh in all of these suburbs they sold for ten thousand dollars or less eight thousand nine thousand dollars apiece in today's money that's uh less than a hundred thousand dollars probably ninety thousand dollars african-americans who were prohibited prohibited not they didn't want to not because they didn't like living among whites they were prohibited from moving into these suburbs and they could easily afford to do so any working class family can afford to buy a home for 90 000 roughly twice national median income those homes and developments like that now sell for 300 400 500 000 and more the white families over the next couple of generations uh gained you can do the arithmetic 200 300 400 half a million dollars in equity they use that equity to send their children to college to take care of medical emergencies to take care of economic downturns most importantly to bequeath it to their children who then had down payments for their own homes african americans who accumulated none of that wealth as a result of this federal subsidy had none of those abilities today nationwide african american incomes are on average about 60 percent of white incomes african-american wealth today is 10 of white wealth that enormous disparity between a 60 income ratio and a 10 wealth ratio is entirely attributable to unconstitutional federal housing policy practiced in the mid 20th century that has never been remedied it's a constitutional violation of course it determines the ongoing racial inequalities we have today [Music] you

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Keywords: NowThis, NowThisNews, Now This News, NowThis News, Now This Media, NowThis Media, Current Events, news, US news, current events today, richard rothstein, the color of law, segregation, modern segregation, modern day segregation, housing segregation, school segregation, modern school segregation, the segregation myth, redlining, housing discrimination, red lining, richard rothstein the color of law, de facto segregation, de jure segregation, segregation 2020, black lives matter

Id: 2roWLzrqOjQ

Length: 8min 36sec (516 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 26 2020