Rooted in Public Policy, Residential Segregation Remains a Persistent Problem
American residential neighborhoods remain highly segregated by race, and that is no accident. In fact, it is a result of "a state-sponsored system of segregation" set in motion by New Deal federal housing programs designed to expand but also racially partition the nation's housing stock, said Richard Rothstein, author of the 2017 book The Color of Law, a Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. As Rothstein pointed out in an interview, the discriminatory policies were not hidden. Through intentional actions of federal, state, and local governments across the country, African