How American Cities Were Segregated by Government Policy at All Levels

In 2020 a number of BikePGH staff members read the book, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by historian and author Richard Rothstein.

While many people are aware of the pernicious private choices and decisions—individual prejudice, white flight, real estate steering, and bank redlining—that de facto segregated cities and towns throughout the United States, Rothstein goes into intricate detail of how segregation was very much the result of intentional de jure racist public policy at all levels of government. 

These policies included federal, state, and local housing policy, racial zoning, failure to regulate blockbusting by real estate agents, slum clearance through federal and state highway construction and Urban Renewal projects, state-sponsored violence, and policies that made it incredibly difficult for Black families to accumulate wealth through home equity.

Many of these policies worked together in concert to segregate our communities. The result of these de jure segregation policies – poverty, policing, lack of access, and poor health and education outcomes are still very evident in every U.S. city today.

These concepts that are explored in depth in Rothstein’s book were recently brought to life in the form of a short film, ‘Segregated by Design’ which you can watch for free on that website. Not only should this history be remembered, but it should also be remedied.