On November 9, 2017, I attended the Leon S. Peters Ethics Lecture Series. At this particular lecture, Richard Rothstein came to speak about his book The Color of Law. In his book, Rothstein depicts how segregation in America is at the fault of government policies. The author is a fellow at the Thurgood Marshall Institute of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, as well as the Haas Institute at UC Berkeley. Along with these accomplishments, Rothstein is also a research associate of the Economic Policy Institute. Over the course of his life, he has dedicated his studies to researching US history to find the underlying causes of segregation in America. He began his lecture by informing the audience that the United States has used de facto discrimination to explain the reasons for segregation. De facto segregation means that racial segregation occurs through “fact” rather than through legal …show more content…
Rothstein explained that this is not the case, and that this theory is more of a cover-up reason. In the nine years Rothstein spent writing this book, he was able to find numerous examples of the government using the de facto theory to allow segregation to occur. For example, in Louisville, KY, the state arrested a white family for selling a home to a black family in a predominantly white neighborhood. The state acted unconstitutionally in using police protection to prosecute the white family, all in attempts to keep the neighborhood predominantly white. Another example he provided during his lecture, was of President Roosevelt’s New Deal. More often than not, majority of people consider the New Deal as being the string of federal programs, which were geared towards assisting everyone after the Great Depression. Yet, Rothstein showed how the New Deal was also actually a tool used to further segregation. The New Deal brought with it the Public Housing