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24 J. Affordable Hous. & Cmty. Dev. L. 205 (2015-2016)
From Ferguson to Baltimore: The Fruits of Government-Sponsored Segregation

handle is hein.journals/jrlaff24 and id is 223 raw text is: From Ferguson to Baltimore: The Fruits of Government-Sponsored Segregation Richard Rothstein In Baltimore in 1910, a black Yale law school graduate purchased a home in a previously all-white neighborhood. The Baltimore city govern- ment reacted by adopting a residential segregation ordinance, restricting African Americans to designated blocks. Explaining the policy, Balti- more's mayor proclaimed, Blacks should be quarantined in isolated slums in order to reduce the incidence of civil disturbance, to prevent the spread of communicable disease into the nearby White neighbor- hoods, and to protect property values among the White majority. Thus began a century of federal, state, and local policies to quarantine Baltimore's black population in isolated slums-policies that continue to the present day, as federal housing subsidy policies still disproportion- ately direct low-income black families to segregated neighborhoods and away from middle class suburbs. Whenever young black men riot in response to police brutality or mur- der, as they have done in Baltimore this week [April 18-May 3, 20151, we're tempted to think we can address the problem by improving police quality-training officers not to use excessive force, implementing com- munity policing, encouraging police to be more sensitive, prohibiting ra- cial profiling, and so on. These are all good, necessary, and important things to do. But such proposals ignore the obvious reality that the pro- tests are not really (or primarily) about policing. In 1968, following hundreds of similar riots nationwide, a commission appointed by President Lyndon Johnson concluded that [olur nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white-separate and un- equal and that [slegregation and poverty have created in the racial ghetto a destructive environment totally unknown to most white Ameri- cans. The Kerner Commission (headed by Illinois Governor Otto Kerner) added that [wihat white Americans have never fully understood-but what the Negro can never forget-is that white society is deeply impli- cated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions main- tain it, and white society condones it. In the last fifty years, the two societies have become even more un- equal. Although a relatively small black middle class has been permitted Richard Rothstein (rrothstein@epi.org) is a research associate of the Economic Pol- icy Institute. Reprinted with permission from Richard Rothstein, From Ferguson to Baltimore: The Fruits of Government-Sponsored Segregation, Working Economics (Economic Policy Institute blog), April 29, 2015; www.epi.org/blog. 205

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