 I live in the city. I see. I thought that was like a symbol, a symbolic sound of the library. I am going to open up the doors and we will be live and we'll give it a few moments to fill in. And the doors are open. Welcome. We'll get started in a moment as we let folks come in. I have placed in the chat. Thanks to tonight's library news and tonight's author. And links to our partner at heyday books. And as Jean speaks and other resources come up, I'll try to keep up and add those to the document. And if you know what native land you're joining us from, you can let us know. And if you don't, you can use that handy map that I just put in the chat box. How's everyone tonight? It will be time to saw hand go up and down super quick. We will have time for questions Q&A is try to put your questions in the Q&A function. And I will get those to Jean. And, or you can use the chat. I think it's going to be a, not a huge group, but a nice, a nice, nice sized intimate group. So Q&A, use the Q&A function. And the chat. It's the river of consciousness in zoomland. All right, the clock has struck. It is seven o'clock. Welcome. Thank you for joining us on a rainy Tuesday night in our beautiful Bay Area San Francisco, a lonely territory. And I want to thank Jean Slater, and I want to thank Hay Day Books for joining us. It's a month of Hay Day books for us. And we've had some amazing authors and we have more to come. The San Francisco Public Library acknowledges that we occupy the unceded ancestral homeland of the raw, mutitially tribal people who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco Peninsula. We recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homeland as uninvited guests, we affirm their sovereign rights and first peoples as first peoples, and wish to pay our respects to the ancestors, elders, of the raw, mutish community. And that link that I put in the chat box for library events and links has a great reading resource list to mostly Bay Area resources, but some nationwide on first peoples culture and land rights. Tomorrow night, 7pm, same time, same place and zoom land. We have a performance. This is going to be a good one. And it's a one time only there's no recording of this event so please come on out. And it's a partnership with the Museum of African diaspora. And we have Kevin Simmons and the poet laureate, past poet laureate, Devorah major and James Cagney and the letter Branson and they are going to be reading and singing and it's going to be something amazing to see. So I hope you can make it tomorrow evening, 7pm. And that's number 16 live in person at the main library at the Soroyan gallery. And that's located on the beautiful sixth floor and a lot of people don't make it all the way up there but it's worth it. Plus there's an amazing poster show up there right now by SF poster syndicate, which is an amazing group, and they have some great great prints. So come check out the art, come check out the book. The Brave Matters is about the controversy over escalating California's indigenous peoples. Another heyday book and Tony flat will be in conversation with Milton Reynolds at this event. This event is also streaming so if you can't make it in person or you're not yet comfortable making it in person. We get you. So we have you covered the very next day in our beautiful correct auditorium we had an event there this weekend. A lot of people showed up but it was, I missed the space it's just such a lovely theater, and we hope to get it used again so come on down, plenty of space to spread out. And again we will be streaming this as well. So we understand. It's a weird time. And then I just want to quickly highlight some events we have in December. My friend, Justin DeMond, who is the one of the co directors at the before Columbus Foundation will be discussing free jazz and black power with Lewis art Gordon. Looking forward to that. Let's see we have a film screening in honor of Jack Kershman the story of Jack Kershman. We have a panel of amazing humans talking about Dodie Bellamy's the letter of Mina Harker, which is being re released this year. And then this is one I'm totally looking forward to me this at the bar, we're having a book book group at the bar. Marie Homera will be in person discussing her new book, girly drinks, a world history of women and alcohol. And it is at the beautiful champagne room, which is part of the oasis on 11th street, 7pm December 14 one free drink ticket. Come by the book. Let's enjoy a little time together, have a drink and spend the night spend the night together a little bit. And without further ado, I'm going to introduce tonight's speaker. And again, I want to thank a day books for being, you know, just so amazing and Bay Area and and bringing all these amazing authors and and being such great partners to us at SFPL. The book freedom to discriminate uncovers realtors definitive role in segregating America and shaping modern conservative ideology, drawing on confidential documents from leaders of the real estate industry. Slater reveals how realtors systematically created and justified residential segregation. Slater has served as a senior advisor on housing for federal state and local agencies for over 40 years. He co founded and chairs CSG advisors, which has been one of the nation's leading advisors on affordable housing for decades. His projects have received numerous national awards. And in the aftermath of the financial crisis in 2009 he helped design the program by which the United States Treasury financed homes for 110,000 first time home buyers. He holds a degree from Columbia, MIT and Stanford. He was born and raised in Brooklyn, but now he's a Bay Area person. So without further ado, Mr. Jean Slater. Thank you very much. How did America become a place where every city is racially divided in almost identical ways. And we're a conservative vision of freedom as your absolute personal rights to limit the rights of others shifted the country to the right for almost 50 for more than 50 years. There are two defining features of modern America. And what I, the history I'm going to show shows how deeply they are connected that both were inventions of nations, organized real estate industry, the realtors to sell homes by permanently dividing Americans. So I'll present this as a series of like four questions. I'll try and answer to frame this. How was segregation invented. Then what role did the Bay Area in California, particularly play a central, why did they play such a central national role in segregation. Then how did the politics of perpetuating segregation, particularly in California, but how did those politics that the effort to that shape our modern ideological divides today are modern politics. And then last, how long, how does segregation remain so powerful today, more than 50 years after fair housing was finally passed. So let me start with how segregation was invented. The myth that I promoted by the realtors, and by the realtor's I should say, you know, we now think of them as, you know, individuals selling homes, but the realtors who were created in the early 1900s as local real estate boards and then trademark the name realtors were enormously became very quickly in early 1900s, became an enormously powerful cartel. Even though there were like three or 4% of the brokers in the country or any given area came to dominate 80% of home sales through the multiple less listing service they created that allowed them to double commissions and make those stick. These were all white real estate boards very socially exclusive. And they became and were known, viewed by Congress as the most powerful lobbyists in the country by mid century. They created the appraisal Institute what's now the National Institute of home builders property management apartment management. They were sort of their functions and their associate members with the banks and the title companies and everybody else involved in the real estate industry and many of the leading realtors became the country's leading developers. So that's who the realtors were. So one of the myths that they used after they created segregation was that it was natural. It was historical it always been this way. We have a myth that got accepted by both blacks and whites and sort of like one must have always been like this. But if you go back to the early 1900s, you find that American cities were not racially divided. People lived by where they could afford rather than by their ancestry. One of my aha moments and doing this research was a quote from JB loving who was a black real estate program Los Angeles in 1904 was had the Negroes of the city have proudly refused to segregate themselves but live in many of the best neighborhoods, the best homes and the best infrastructure. It was true, not only in Los Angeles and the fastest growing city in the country, but it was true throughout the country is true in midwestern in order cities like Louisville, Washington, St. Louis, where there were hundreds of racially mixed blocks. So segregation was something new. It was an invention, like the airplane was invented, and about the same time as the airplane and realtors with lens and the power to do it took it took to create segregation you had a racially divide the country's historically rambunctious free real estate market so took power of this realtor cartel, their code of ethics that will throw out anybody who sold a home to a minority, their ability to basically destroy that the business of anybody in real estate, who didn't subscribe to the approach that they did. It took that effort to organize the country's free markets and to racially separate them. And it's an effort to transform America's courts and their suburbs or local governments. And that you'll see as a theme through this that what it took to create segregation really changed the country fundamentally for everybody, and not only those whose lives are so damaged by permanently excluding them but for all Americans. So, so I quoted that black real estate agent Los Angeles 1904, not segregated themselves willing in many areas by 1917. Another black and Los Angeles residents said, the whites have encircled us with invisible walls and they've made it impossible to move beyond those walls and Los Angeles Housing Commission now one of our clients. Back in the early 1910 said, it would be possible for Mexican Americans to find lots of places to live in Los Angeles have only every, you know, new subdivision wasn't racially restricted. And I want to turn to so these. So this was a myth that that segregation was natural and historic similarly was a myth of birds of a feather flock together, even in immigrant neighbors with people, you know came and when the same neighborhood was in the same language. People didn't, these are always mixed, and never one ethnic group dominated and people moved out, all ethnic groups moved out as quickly as they could to find better housing. That was what segregation prevented. When it came to those who it's been excluded. So this segregation a matter of not being able to forward homes. In fact, the consequence of segregation like any restricted market as it pushed up the prices that African Americans had to pay by 20 or 30% more than in some mode for the same condition housing elsewhere. So segregation, simply the result of racism, obviously racism, you know, gross segregation, but racism was just as strong of not stronger 1900 than it was 1920 or 1950 or center of the story I'm going to tell the 1960s. It took organized power of the real estate industry to transform the free markets. It was important to recognize it as something new in America something that hadn't existed and how to be created. And I'll tell the stories and my second question is, how did the Bay Area in California plays such a central role in the creation and the maintenance of segregation. When the first segregated racial restricted neighborhood in the United States, go to Berkeley, a mile from the campus to nearly near the Claremont hotel, where a subdivision was created in 1905 by Duncan McDuffie, who was the leader of firm that's now now still is Mason McDuffie, the signs you'll see it open houses all over the Bay Area. McDuffie was an ardent environmentalist. He later became from many years the national president of the Sierra Club and helped create the save the Redwoods League and California Park System. McDuffie had a vision of creating subdivisions not in the way that they were usually created at the time this is just you lay out paper streets and, you know, market homes. He had a vision of creating environmentally. Beautiful subdivisions and you can see in Claremont he later did St. Francis would, and many subdivisions of high end subdivision of bear to create the highest end subdivisions with landscape planning by the likes of the homestead brothers with topographic streets and preserving the trees. So instead of doing that, this was a real estate finance problem he was solved. Part of doing that was if you build such a large subdivision with expensive costs and infrastructure. You have to know what's going to happen to that property over the five or seven years it's going to sell it's going to take to sell those lots. At this time, they simply divided locks they weren't home builders home homes got built individually or by small contractors back in the year. So, to create the subdivision used a new idea that just been used to develop outside Baltimore of covenants restrictive covenants that would impose on each owner of a lot and say there's certain things you can't do here. You can't have a house that needs to certain size or it needs to certain price when you wanted this to remain high end area, you can't have commercial development you can't build an apartment house you can't have a brothel. You can have bars. And to these, he added one more set one more covered that hadn't been used in America at this time because partly they didn't know the courts would uphold it. And the covenants that said for the next 30 years and perpetuating thereafter, no non Caucasian can ever live here except as a servant. And in selling this idea of covenants. This was a restrictions on owners. McDuffie was the first having to convince through a salesman buyers and say, let's go on Americans limit what I can do with my property. It's not the restrictions on you which matter. It's the restrictions on your neighbors, which count to help enforce these covenants McDuffie at the same time the developer chasing nipples in Kansas City, created the first homeowners associations in America so you want to know where homeowners associations they came from, they came to enforce these covenants. So you ask, why was McDuffie imposing these racial covenants for this very high end developed, you know, the most expensive house locks in the Bay Area at the time, the minority population of Bay Area was very small. It was hardly likely the first Japanese immigrants were able to buy homes there or African Americans. And this was really a form of social cache, and saying your children are always going to play with children like them. This is called this planning for permits. And this approach these restrictive covenants prove so pot and his racial covenants proved so popular. And that they within a year or two started being used in high end developments throughout California, Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, other parts of the Bay Area, McDuffie use these to build homes restricted homes for 100,000 Bay Area residents. And so much was this a part of seen as like part of the social establishment he was a, you know, progressive in the spirit of Teddy Roosevelt. And then after CC Young became Speaker of the State Assembly, and later, you know, Governor of California, definitely was appointed all these positions to reinforce. So, but racial covenants originally were intended as a way to limit what could happen on one's own property. But realtors in existing neighborhoods said, this is a great technique for selling homes here too and for increasing their value and assuring customers what will happen around them. So they began basically hiring people who went door to door with petitions, which you would sign, putting a wrist a covenant on your own home that would go into effect when 75% of the people bought such homes. And this covenant plan perfected in Pasadena became widely used in Berkeley and Oakland spread across the country so you now had both new developments, and you had existing homes covered by the same approach. And California became the epicenter for the creation of these racial covenants to quickly spent spread across the country. In the 1930s, when FHA was created by the federal government, one of the, in many ways, most brilliant and most powerful housing inventions in the history of the world, created the low down payment mortgage fixed rate fully that was standardized and couldn't get at the time. It made the cost of buying a home, no higher than it was to rent for many people, create all the vast sub divisions of 1940s and 1950s 1960s. And the founders who were the prime lobbyists for this, the shapers of it their chief underwriter became the first chief underwriter of FHA, their most active field office was in Los Angeles, was headed by a former key realtor in Los Angeles. It was the realtors in each city who did the first drafts of what became the red line maps, nobody talks about red line maps now, the time they were actually secret and ICP fast efforts, finally found some of the racist language in the underwriting that these, the red lining maps, you know weren't visible available, you know for 30 or 40 years. Finally I'm just giving a quick history of this through the lens of California kind of important to understand what happened here. Finally in 1948 the Supreme Court ruled in Shelley versus Kramer that courts couldn't enforce racial covenants. And the realtors in California sort of apocalyptically reacted by proposing a US constitutional amendment that would overturn the 14th amendment and would create apartheid in America illegally. This was zoning hadn't allowed. It couldn't be used racially because that was governing control. And so zoning became and become an adjunct to to racial covenants. It was Duncan McDuffie in Berkeley chairman of the Berkeley planning board 1916 create the first single family zoning in America. Why, because he wanted to prevent a Negro dance hall from being built Elmwood, a little ways away from his own subdivision. So zoning was created by the realtors is they who created zoning and anyway city planning in the country as an adjunct as a support for, but not directly doing covers. So back in 1948, they proposed this constitutional and same year as apartheid in South Africa. But on the advice of their lawyers they said there are quieter ways you can do this. You can keep putting covenants on you just can't enforce them and so if you look at Westlake. The city, the largest, the largest common association in California. That was done that way they use racial steering so powerful was the racial steering mechanism and the code of ethics of the realtors and their control we never allowed. By the 1960s it wasn't a single African American movie 40,000 realtors in California 80,000 national. So powerful was this that here in the 1950s in the Bay Area, then is now one of the more liberal parts of the country out of 325,000 new single family homes. We're sold without regard to this in the Palo Alto area of 600 brokers who were surveyed. Only three would even consider showing a home minority, a home in a white area to a minority. That's how powerful segregation was in our California many ways because it had half the realtors in the country and so much real estate industry serves a national model. So let me turn, now I'm going to turn the page, both in time, but also in terms of the consequences for our American politics today. I want to talk about how the effort to perpetuate segregation to defeat the civil rights movement were then fair housing, how that shapes our ideological divides and created the conservative vision of freedom. It's come to dominate much of American politics and then we see on issue after issue from guns to abortion to campaign contributions to dealing with climate change to vaccines. Much of this came in 1963 and 1964. When the realtors faced a fair housing law in California first law with some teeth and administrative enforcement that you can call the run for that. In some states in a few states in Colorado and Massachusetts realtors have decided to go along with such laws and try and make them work. But the real estate so California real estate association headed up by their new president spike Wilson, who had been a news editor in Sacramento, had the Fresno Realty Board and president local Kiwanis. He decided to take this up as a challenge and not merely try and overturn the law or get it amended, but to put a state constitutional amendment on the ballot. Remember, they had thought 1948 of the US constitutional amendment to defend segregation. So here was the idea of a state constitutional they would go to the voters they would collect a million signatures. And this ballot initiative called proposition 14 1964 ballot said, neither the state, nor any subdivision or any political subdivision either any city or county can ever limit the absolute discretion of an owner to sell or rent property to who she wants to and to use appropriate. This proposition created a problem from the realtors point. This is the height of the civil rights move the height of support for American liberalism to hear the path, the federal civil rights law that most Californians supported. Lyndon Johnson is about to go on to crush Barry Goldwater in 1964 collection, roughly 60% of the realtors were entirely isolated in making this argument. Not not even the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce their long ally with support no business group that support the labor unions were against them. The church and all the archbishops almost all church leaders civic groups, no conservative politician not Barry Goldwater, who would oppose the federal civil rights act, no Ronald Reagan at the time would endorse the realtors for fear of being seen as racist. So how were the realtors going to wage this campaign. And the answer was to take on directly. The argument for freedom that propelled the civil rights. Martin Luther King at the March and Washington had used freedom 20 times the quality once in a speech, and he talked about freedom, quoted, you know, quoting the Gettysburg address and going back to the declaration of independence. Freedom meant the shared freedom of all Americans, a freedom that had been denied in many ways but this was reclaiming that freedom it meant, as said, the Declaration of Independence, you know the rights to life living through happens. Government is created to secure these rights, but that was the role of government. So, Spike Wilson, Miss real true and brilliant propagandist was he created an opposite idea for you. He began by writing a full page newspaper app called the property on his bill of rights that he claimed with a, and was putting newspapers direct California national. And it had a picture of a patriot from 1776, 76, you know, those tricorner hats or Liberty Bell, so the realtors for the new quality. And it laid out and said, these are the rights of property or which revolution was fought. This is why America was created to make this idea palatable. The realtors had to do a couple of things and these had powerful influences on American policies, the things they had to solve for in winning a campaign appealing to the vast majority of voters in 1964 liberal moderate state and Pat Brown liberal two term governor who had defeated Richard Nixon for reelection, making fair housing is highest priority. So, what the realtors did was they, was they use became the first language of color one, they said, we're in favor of the same rights for everybody, the rights of all owners, right to discriminate. The right to discriminate property is we're defending those things. Am I anti Negro spike Wilson asked at a meeting of the department of association Los Angeles, by God I am not I am their greatest champion who said we are the defenders of equal rights, unlike the civil rights that nobody cared about the need interests of special groups, because here was the key. They took a single narrow right, a right nobody had ever talked about in 200 years the right of an owner to say, why don't want the highest price from my home I want to control the price of why sell it to a right that realtors themselves and violated with racial covenants for 50 years. They made this right they took this right and elevated as a single absolute right and they said this is the witness test of American freedom. If government takes away this right. It's taking away your freedom. This is a last chance to defend American freedom. So what they were doing was they were defining freedom as a zero sum instead of Martin Luther King's idea of shared freedom. That requires that government balancing those rights of freedom speech and through the press it always had to be balanced. Instead of that notion of said, you know, freedom belongs to you personally as your individual property, just like private property with the analog of, you know, your own home. This is your freedom. And what government is doing is taking away that freedom to give special rights to others. This freedom is these traditional rights. But the right not to be discriminated against the right to buy a home in the first place. That was some special privilege, not rights. We hear this language now. You know, with all the voting rights laws that being passed around the restrictions on voting rights around the country. Survey showed, you know, 80% of Republicans now view voting not as a fundamental right, but as a privilege to be limited to those who deserve it. That was the, that was the rhetoric of the realtors. So they only talked about this one narrow right. And you can see this same idea, taking a single narrow right, calling it freedom itself could, and then would be used on issue after issue would be used on abortion would be done guns. And in fact, part of the power, what's made conservatives successful was not having an adventitious alliance of groups concerned about all these disparate causes, but using the same rhetoric of individual freedom, the heart of this key to this was was calling and they said, discrimination is a matter of the discriminators to choose discrimination is a matter of individual conscience and the dictates of your conscience. So they likened it to freedom of religion, what racial discrimination had to do with freedom of religion, you know, can be hard to picture. But this is how they portrayed it, because freedom of religion could be seen as something sacred. And this idea again, and it's taking away something. So, so what the realtors argued and could argue in the campaign was that you didn't need to be prejudiced support for opposition 14 far from it. You had to simply believe in American freedom and defending the rights of other people to enjoy their freedom. And billboards across Los Angeles, Los Angeles freeways. The motto was freedom of choice, freedom to choose this language of freedom of choice. It was so successful. In the 1964 ballot, the same ballot or it was 60% of the vote. 65% of the voters supported 75% of the white. Union voters within the core support of the Democratic Party in effect, splitting the FDR traditional Democratic coalition. Why did this message become so important to American politics. First, here we are at the very low point of conservative America, Goldwater has been radically defeated, not only did the only 140% of the surveys exit surveys asked, how many of his voters voted for him because he was a conservative. And the answer was a quarter, rest sorted in because he was Republican Party. And so that's like 10% of the voters I self identify this conservative election. And here at this very low point in conservatism. Here was a message is the realtor's creative could win 75% of the white folks in California could be in anywhere. So the notion of homeowner rights, then got adopted by Ronald Reagan 1966 number hadn't endorsed property 14. He's now running for government. In the middle of the campaign state Supreme Court rules that unconstitution Reagan adopts a populist language and starts using the realtor's language almost word for word, through the campaign and he says, an individual wants to discriminate against the Negro or others and selling or renting his house and it's his right to do so. This is the same language this is, you know, discrimination since like freedom of evolution claims, you know, doesn't have a racist bone in his body, but this is the language on my rights. He was even floundering the campaign trying to find a way to take the general rhetoric the same rhetoric is as Goldwater reviews. This gave him a concrete way by identifying with ordinary people, and of appealing to the white, you know, union voters have been a second reason this was so important was conservatives at the time were split between social conservatives, often Catholic in favor of, you know, Sunday closing laws and school prayer, so forth, wanting government to impose traditions on people and libertarians with individual freedom no restriction from government. What the realtor has done with this language of individual freedom is they had linked these two. They used libertarian language of absolute individual freedom to enforce traditional social conformity, what might seem its office. This combination provided a way to link on issue after issue, and you hear it today. The, the conservative. It said to voters that what government liberal government is doing is take issues weren't merely policy issues. There were issues of freedom of your basic freedom that was being taken away to give to other people. So it was important. Was it used racial neutral rhetoric. So here we are 1964. In the creation of a new Republican Party. The idea of today's modern Republican Party really goes back to Charles Wallace Collins, a Southern banking lawyer arts aggregations will 1948 after President Truman appointed a committee on civil rights. He said, the handwriting is on the law for itself if we wanted to defend Jim Crow. Southern Democrats have to leave the Democratic Party and join an alliance with more than those northern Republicans who will agree to protect local control of racial issues in return for the federal government not regulating business. This went to the Dixie Pratt rebellion. This sector party now became possible in 1964. After Goldwater did well in some southern states and strong from the Republican Party. This would be an entirely new Republican Party over 1964 and that's 65 80% of Republicans in Congress voted through civil rights act and for the voting. Higher percentage. This is a new Republican Party, and it needed, but it needed a rhetoric that could be used both in the North and the South could work in California could work in Pennsylvania as well as in Alabama. And here was this racially neutral rhetoric of freedom. This then became so much to defining rhetoric of the Republican Party on issue after issue. And it now it naturally natural dynamics of that party push it further and further to those who endorse it is the only meaning of American free. So let me in the last two couple of minutes, just talk about why this is so important term segregation today. So the realtors fought hard. Even our proposition 14 years to financial against fear housing around the country using the same arguments and assume things same methods. Federal fear has finally passed in 1968 over the realtors objections sort of when Johnson outfoxed them with congressional leaders, and then Martin Luther King was assassinated in the days after the assassination of the president like that. But it was tremendously weakened by the shadow of proposition 14 by politicians with both parties knowing about this populist, you know, the role that the real truth. That's picking fair housing ever since. And so it's not been enforced in strong ways. And in fact, in terms of, you know, people using licenses. And the real truth is officially the force of endorsed fair housing, but the individual level you can see stories like news day one divided about how it persisted in individual. But at a deeper level, the legacy with the real is created the homeowners association. The suburbs, especially created to be racially exclusive of single families owning all those powerful institutions were created, it would have taken the power of government to overcome and to break those down. And if you ask why in America today, African Americans who make 2012 make $60,000 a year live in neighbors with a median income is $12,000. If you ask why that exists. It's because this rhetoric of freedom has so shaped the ability to enforce fair housing and to overcome the obstacles that were put in place back in the 1960s. So why don't I stop there and take questions about any of these, you know, diverse areas but the point that I really want to make to sum up is that. I think that the story of modern American modern history is really a story of how we deal with fairly intractable divides, social economic geographic political ideological. Those divides were created as a way first to segregate houses and then to defend neighborhoods and then to defend that segregation. And the stories are directly linked together. So red lentil segregation, far from being at the periphery of the creation of modern America really was at its center. Thank you, Jean. Thank you, Jean. So folks we can take q&a you can put it in the chat or you can use the q&a function. Looks like we have one question in chat and that's from Mr William. It seems like not much has changed what if anything can be done. Well, certainly there are things that can be done at all sorts of levels. There's a lot of non discrimination that level. I think if fair housing is enforced, this is partly a matter of state choices as well as federal, the fair housing is enforced. So the brokers lose their licenses. You know, for discriminating. If appraisers lose their appraisal licenses under articles in the last year or so in the Washington Post and the New York Times showing the level of discrimination by appraisers and depending on who's who's at the house. Before that when they, they think the client is when they're doing you crazy. If banks, who turn have historically in the last 10 years, turned down African Americans in the same credit scores is twice the right is twice the rate is as white. If you had, if there were serious consequences, that would make a difference in individuals at the institutional level. You know, there's a second part of the fair housing law one part is for non discrimination. The other part is called furthering fair housing. And it sets a program which says the federal government giving money to local governments around the country has to condition that money on whether it's helping break down the barriers to segregation. And after Mr Nixon was elected after he promised and got the nomination after promising to strong term and that he wouldn't enforce her housing. That after that happened George Romney the first secretary of HUD started with open communities to seriously take this affirmative for furthering their housing. And Mr Nixon secretary and undermine and Nixon said, according to realtors read it the same language of freedom choice said, well segregation is result of millions of free choices by, you know, both blacks and whites. So this language of choice, Ronald Reagan appointed as his first teacher in general who had been his chief lawyer, the chief lawyer for the California real estate Association proposition 14 million French. And he had to dismantle these. Donald Trump, and summer of 2020. Actually that's only 15 months ago, had gone on a whole thing of eliminating the Obama rules on affirmatively fair housing fair housing saying we're going to save suburban house house wise for minorities and low income. So there were things that can be done. But I think the point that I'm trying to make from this history is what really matters is fair housing has been used as a whipping boy for this argument about individual freedom and freedom of choice. And so you had Mario Rubio in 2015 of the Republican Center is sponsoring the bill that Trump later cited in regulations called the freedom of choice at, and it supported freedom called freedom of choice being the freedom to zone, the freedom to exclude. One thing I want to leave people with in this is partly I've analyzed all the ways that these these two opposite meanings of freedom. I mean, Americans across the political spectrum agree, you know, freedom is our highest as the great paradox of freedom, we all agree freedoms are highest value, but it's being used in two opposite ways and that's, it isn't that Ronald Reagan had a slightly different meaning other than Jimmy Carter or Joe Biden. It's this meaning was deliberately created to undermine and to limit civil rights. That was its purpose. And liberals and progressives have largely left the rhetoric of freedom behind and let it be dominated by conservatives who in their campaigns called themselves the only freedom if you want to change that. And part of my book is for looking at what are the all the elements of that package how it was designed and how you can oppose it. You want to change that you need to do two different words you need to say, that's not freedom as we need that's exclusive freedom that's the freedom to exclude that's freedom for some people, as opposed to inclusive freedom, freedom for everybody freedom that shared freedom from the country as a whole. But I think it means changing the language and the understanding of our politics. If their housing is going to be enforced and so the nation is going to be dismantled. Other questions. Fair game here, I can go on forever so try try make what should today's San Francisco realtors association or other realtors associations do, if anything, to make amends for this legacy of discrimination. You know, that's a very good question. On the letterhead of the California Association of Real Truths it says, you know, acknowledging the past in order to build a more equitable future. And in all their rhetoric and in all their official statements. And, you know, they've their supportive and fair house. As I said at an individual level, in terms of more money for training more money for enforcement could go along with, but I sort of wrestled with that issue. You know, what can be done. So in some ways my book is the story of the real estate industries while there are issues, you know, I've seen both color of law, it's really a case of that government, and what government done but as I try and show through FHA, it was the realtors who shaped the government. They called FHA their, their, their agency in the federal government. So that's what realtors can do. Here's a somewhat crazy idea because it doesn't involve the political issues of reparations which probably can be handled better by providing like additional down payment assistance for people who've lived in areas that were red line. I think it's probably easiest way to deal with the legal issues of that and their efforts and build America better program and bill in Congress that survives the address some of this is the real estate industry itself. You know, when you talk about reparations, people's reaction. Well, that was done by other people, you know, 50 years ago, you know, whatever wasn't the I don't benefit, you know, I didn't do that. The real estate industry and the realtors are kind of unique, because the real estate commissions that got increased from two and a half to 5% and 6% itself was done by the same real estate boards. The real estate board is the most largest and most powerful country in the same era, and as part of the same approach by the same people who created segregation this isn't, and this is something all realtors members of real estate board still beneficial. So, if realtors wanted to do something with that, you could say the average home price in the country, the real estate cell is like $50,000. You could take for the next five years, a 10th of 1% of the commission that they're making the extra commission that they're making double commissions on the amount above that sale price, and put it in a fund. The realtors would provide that to be used by state and local agencies for downpayment assistance to those who've been discriminated. That's something that was the good question next. I have a question from our YouTube viewer. What do you think would be one good way. That's kind of the same questions one big good way to give them reparations. I think that's really the same. Yeah, I think there's, there's the question of federal policy in which you really ought to think. Rather than calling it reparations which sounds like something new for something that, you know, in the past, I think from a federal program point of view, it's important to recognize that the programs that were created FHA be so discriminated I mean only 2% of Americans could get loans. And why was that because they had rules had redlining maps, we won't lend an area where minorities live, and will require racial covenants on the new suburbs, where we will make loans. I think one should view these federal programs or downpayment assistance provided with them as a continuation of the same federal home ownership program just continued and simply now addressing the unmet needs that were denied before. So I think that's one way to think about that issue. Now, there is one, for the next question, there was one thing which I didn't talk about which may be interesting and important to people. Because I said, these racial covenants originally were against all non Caucasians. What did non Caucasians mean. It didn't simply mean African Americans or Japanese or kind of. It meant in the 1910s 1920s and 1930s 40s. It often meant Jews and Italians and Greeks meant the whole way of European immigrants, who then gradually especially during World War two became viewed as white and acceptable. Who was Caucasian, who was allowed in was decided by the local real estate board with the local real estate board that control like in the Oakland Tribune, which ads could be placed from which streets and be called restricted or restricted wasn't nothing about individual choice. If there's anything that becomes clear from my story. It's that segregation was not a matter of individual choice segregation was the creation of an organized system and all its tools. Sorry, that was a detour. I don't see any more questions but let's give the folks a little time to get shy sometimes. I want to talk for a minute about the theme I said early on, which is the situation is reshape the country for everybody. Obviously, there are the people in the groups who it's tremendously damaged and limited their lives limited educational opportunities, economic opportunities, the opportunities to build household wealth. I mean, the time when everyone's remitted from buying homes and FHA to be a program, the real cost of the house was like a fifth of what it is today. So the result of denying household wealth comes directly out of that and there was amazing study by the federal I'll just keep chatting until you promptly another question. There was an amazing study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago 2017. They went back to these redlining boundaries. They didn't make any loans and so forth. And they looked at every one of those boundaries in every 350 metropolitan areas in the country. Every one of the boundaries that was just along the street, it wasn't a river or railroad track because they were somewhat arbitrary at the time, right? They decided this area would be yellow or green and this would be allowed in the bank loan. And they found that at some time in the 1930s there was hardly any difference on three blocks on either side or six blocks on either side of these boundaries because they were arbitrary. Very little difference in home ownership condition or price of houses or occupancy or overcrowding. They went back in 2017 and looked at exactly the same down. And what did they find? There were enormous differences, differences between these two sides of like quadruple. This is an analog for what's happened over all these years with the effects of segregation then compounded over time. And what we're dealing with, just like you have compound interest, you know, on loans or in savings accounts, this is the compounding effect of all of those decisions. I would imagine like, you know, the health disparities and, you know, all of that is, is part of this all wrapped up. Right, there was one study from Duke University in Chicago that showed that even just in the 1950s 1950s and 1960s. The wealth deprivation from not being able to get to buy homes and get mortgages for after the money was $3 billion. Just to give you, that's one city, one decade, give you a flavor of how much impact this had on people's lives and on and people's lives today. Let's take one last question here and that's maybe you know this. Do you know when St. Francis would in San Francisco eliminated its racial covenants. Well, all the way. Well, at one level, where St. Francis would started in 1912 it was sort of McDuffie second great project and the one to one all sorts of national awards is like the best subdivision in America by the way. The mayor of Berkeley in 1935, at the same time the University of California Berkeley gave Duncan McDuffie a degree, an honorary degree for his contribution to residential. Mayor Berkeley said the neighborhoods he's created are a testament to the progressive character of America's people that'll give you a flavor of the public support for this. So racial covenants Supreme Court in 1948 said courts can't enforce them. So they basically existed. There were then efforts and then legislation California to remove them. So, to the extent. So they actually still exist or so the court and deeds that probably expired by now, but they no longer, they can't be enforced by courts that key decision was the US Supreme Court in 1948. And that's what prompted the realtors to try and overturn the US constitutional and, you know, 14th Amendment. One more question came. Okay, sure. What penalties might the realtors be liable for or can government affect some justice on them. Well, I think. I think the issues are about what happens today. I don't think there are penalties. I mean I've suggested, you know, with the realtors themselves could voluntarily. And first of all, it was the government who the realtors were in league with and supported and helped shape who did all these things have supported that. So the question is what can be done about actions by real estate or not only real realtors are members of real estate or through other real estate growth. But what can be done in the area of racial steering. And as I say, turn, if you look to Long Island divided a story on news day. It uses Long Island's microcosm, but it's an excellent study in 2019, which hired racial testers black and white couples and saw the differences in treatment what homes they were shown what neighborhoods the assumptions the roommate, if people lost their licenses because of that, that would, I think, have a big difference at that individual. That's not the total issue and people buy homes by looking on Zillow and checking school scores there's lots of other stuff that goes on, but at the level of what can be done to deal with discrimination now that can help. Thank you Jean and then there's just some appreciation and thank you for your deep thoughtful presentation making this situation so clear. And yeah, thank you for your insight on this history. Thank you very much. Yeah, let me, let me throw in the chat one more time the link for tonight's event which has links. Here's the book freedom to discriminate. It's really the history. In many ways it's the history of how this happened, and it connects segregation to its impact on American politics and how and how it shaped that rhetoric of the idea of freedom. It links these two, as I said defining features of America together and sees that segregation shape the lives of all Americans, and it does so today in every issue that we're doing. And you can get Jean's book at your favorite library or your favorite local bookstore and or you can purchase straight from Hay Day's website as well. All right friends and thank you to Hay Day. Thank you, Jean Slater for being here tonight and providing us such an amazing conversation and library community as always. Thank you for joining us as well. Okay, thank you. Sleep well. Okay, we'll see you here tomorrow.