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Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Color of Law, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
De Jure vs. De Facto Segregation
Segregation and the Preservation of Racial Caste
Racism, Profit, and Political Gain
Separation of Powers, Legal Activism, and Minority Rights
Summary
Analysis
Rothstein notes that John Roberts, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, wrongly declared segregation “a product not of state action but of private choices.” Roberts said that this meant segregation had no “constitutional implications,” but Rothstein arguest that the fact that segregation is de jure means that it clearly should have these implications. Rothstein chalks America’s inaction on segregation up to the nation’s “comfortable delusion” that segregation is de facto, which is “the easiest” course of action. Certainly, de facto racist views have worsened segregation and discrimination, but the government’s job is to resist this racism, rather doing what it has too often done so far: “endors[ing] and reinforce[ing] it.”
Roberts’s decision clearly outlines the mistaken, “delusion[al]” thinking that Rothstein’s book is dedicated to correcting. There are two explanations for why Roberts might have so egregiously misinterpreted history in his Supreme Court decision: perhaps he was simply ignorant about the true origins of American segregation, or perhaps he has a vested interest in sustaining the residential segregation of American cities. While the former explanation, the “comfortable delusion,” is perhaps easier to accept, the rest of Rothstein’s book has given good reason to believe that private racist prejudices frequently find their way into official legal decisions, and so the second explanation cannot be ruled out.
Themes
Rothstein revisits the themes of his chapters to show all the numerous ways that government has worsened segregation. It has used public housing to segregate rather than integrate cities. It has promoted “exclusionary zoning laws” that led to white flight. It has supported builders, lenders, and tax-exempt organizations in their successful discrimination against African American people. It has encouraged white mob violence and segregated schools. It has destroyed integrated and African American neighborhoods to build highways for suburbanites. It has discriminated against African American people in the labor market, and it has given white people and homeowners tax advantages over black people and renters. It continues contributing to segregation through housing assistance programs that force African American people into ghettos. While “undoing the effects of de jure segregation will be incomparably difficult,” the first step is understanding what has happened and “accept[ing] responsibility” for addressing and remedying all dimensions of the problem.
Rothstein has structured his book to clearly present the evidence rather than tell a single, cleanly-packaged narrative through time. By focusing on a different aspect or technique of discrimination in each chapter, he shows how American residential segregation is not the direct result of any single factor, but rather the result of several layers of racist and exclusionary practices, implemented by every kind of actor involved in the process of building, maintaining, and apportioning quality housing: private citizens and corporations, local and state governments, federal executive agencies, and courts and lawmakers themselves. The total effect of this system is to consistently deprive African American people of equal social, economic, political, and educational opportunities and maintain their status as second-class citizens, which stretches back to slavery in an unbroken line. Reversing each of segregation’s various causes individually does little to affect the existing whole, and even undoing them all will leave the United States segregated. The only real solution is for the federal government to affirmatively integrate American cities and take positive action to promote the legal equality promised in the Constitution. Since the government has failed over and over to meet this charge, Rothstein notes in conclusion, it is largely citizens’ responsibility to keep it accountable through activism.
Themes
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