 Delighted to have you here. I have to say I'm kind of amazed because the Comey hearing is going on that all of you are here And it really is a testament to our wonderful panel to the great work that Richard Rothstein did and really to all of you That you have the foresight to understand The importance of the issue that we're discussing of government sponsored segregation. There's also this taping system where you can watch Comey later on the internet You should be in good shape My name is Liz Rose. I'm the communications director for the Economic Policy Institute and we along with our event co-sponsors the Poverty and Race Research Action Council are delighted to have you here for this important panel We're here to discuss Richard Rothstein's brilliant book the color of law I'm proud to say that Richard Rothstein is a research associate here at the Economic Policy Institute And he's also a senior fellow at the Thurgood Marshall Institute of the NAACP legal defense and education fund Of course, he is the author of the celebrated new book the color of law, which is the subject of today's forum In this book Richard does what he always does which is he tells a compelling and important story In a readable and understandable way, which is unique For anyone who's not read the book, please do It's for sale here today and online and stores Before we dive into the story of government sponsored segregation. I want to briefly introduce our speakers Ted Shaw is the Julius L chambers distinguished professor of law and director For the center of civil rights of the University of North Carolina School of Law in Chapel Hill He also serves as a member of the board of our co-sponsored today the poverty and race research action council Previously Shaw was the director counsel and president of the NAACP legal defense and education fund He worked there in various capacities for 26 years Has a few battle scars Ted litigated education employment voting rights housing police misconduct Capital punishment and other civil rights cases in trial and appellate course and in the supreme court And he's still working on all of those issues today. We're honored to have you with us today We'll start our panel with remarks from rep We will start our panel with remarks from representative Gwen Moore It was elected to represent Wisconsin's fourth congressional district in 2004 Making her the first African-American elected to Congress from the state of Wisconsin As noted in the color of law Milwaukee has been plagued with chronic concentrated poverty With deep roots in government sponsored segregation Milwaukee has plenty of wonderful things to offer as well including now. Milwaukee has a powerful friend in Congress she's a member of the House Committee on financial services which has jurisdiction over many of the Issues that we're going to be discussing today banking insurance Housing industry she also serves as the ranking member of the financial services subcommittee on monetary policy and trade in 2016 Representative Moore was elected by her colleagues to serve in the leadership of the Congressional Black Caucus as caucus whip I am proud to introduce representative one more. Thank you so much Rose. Thank you Good morning everyone and I want to thank the Economic Policy Institute for inviting me to be here on this very distinguished panel don't know how I got chosen with such a Distinguished panel perhaps because I have lived and was raised in the battle zone To scholars and social critics segregation in our neighborhoods has long been viewed as a manifestation of unscrupulous real estate agents unethical mortgage lenders Exclusionary covenants outside the law unscrupulous insurance agencies Sort of a de facto segregation as our author here talks about but it's ignored the evidence that the US government And local governments did not nearly just overlook these discriminatory practices But promoted them and enforce them Um Richard Rolls-Steves I can't wait to read this book His history of government sponsored residential segregation Is is a must read the color of law documents how federal state and local governments with racially explicit intense segregated cities from San Francisco to Boston and Certainly includes my city of Milwaukee and he exposes the little-known facts about the conscious government policy to enforce Residential segregation they've purposely created these ghettos He recounts how racial and I'm skipping over lots of words here so that I can get to we can get to this panel This of course has violated our Constitution And the the public policy direction is is going the other way at currently as we see our courts striking down affirmative action and current Congress dismantling programs that take a step forward toward dismantling Our current segregated neighborhoods I Think everybody in our entire Congress ought to be required to read this book and certainly our president ought to be required to Read this book as well You know, I I can tell you well. Yeah, I know he doesn't read but Maybe you can get given the cliff note version of it I'll tell you without this book What we knew I was just telling mr. Roece We knew instinctively that this was happening in her neighborhoods But we just didn't have the the scholarly Proof in evidence You know aren't the last socialist the mayor of Milwaukee Frank Zidler who was in office of April of 1948 until April 18th of 1960 warned local officials about The creation of this inner core as he called it and and and we saw Transportation policy and zoning policy and so forth. He was a mayor that was very prescient in his Understanding about the scourge that this would create and of course now Milwaukee is one of the most segregated communities in the country poorest African-Americans poorest African-American children and Frank Zidler tried to to raise that issue way back in 1960 1962 Vel Phillips a non-octionary and I see people grinning She was the first African-American and the first woman to be elected to the common counsel And she four times introduced fair housing legislation And was the only person to vote for it and it was stricken down four times They eventually ratified a fair housing law in 1968 right after the federal government passed the Fair Housing Act You know Milwaukee was one of the first places where we had a fair housing counsel To test the steering and discrimination That was going on Legendary Ted Shaw is here today. We just talked about his battle scars And he's gonna be here to share His insights into the book and what we do going forward, you know undoing hundreds of years of discrimination And then having a majority party who wants to push us back Creates some of the greatest challenges of our times because it's not just and I don't going on I know my staff is somewhere with her head buried Because I'm going beyond I thought she carefully counted these words so that I wouldn't go on and on But the the topic is just to re-stimulating It's not just That African-Americans people of color are being discriminated against and and not giving a level playing field it has real implications for their well-being their health their economic health and Even has a nexus with the criminal justice system when you see the desperate measures that people take Just to have a place to live and enough money To to keep afloat My staff is checking about my availability. We do have votes today despite the Comey hearing And so I will stick around as long as I can as I'm excited Thank you Well, thank you very much congresswoman. It's really a privilege to be here with you and work with you on these issues When I started thinking about doing this research I Talked with Larry Michelle the president of EPI about it. Neither of us was really sure how this would relate to EPI's Mission of exploring and countering the enormous economic inequality that exists in this country and the more I got into it The more I began to think that residential segregation of African-Americans is really very much a contributor and a cause of not only Inequality between African-Americans and whites but inequality of all people in this country because it contributes to a Difference and an acceptance of of hierarchy that otherwise wouldn't exist if weren't for the residential segregation of African-Americans in this country, of course, we wouldn't have the kind of violence that we've seen in between police and young men In segregated neighborhoods over the last few years But we also wouldn't for example have the enormous wealth gap and I'll talk about this a bit between whites and African-Americans which derives directly from residential segregation We know for example that African-Americans who live in segregated neighborhoods are much less upwardly mobile Than African-Americans with the same incomes who live outside segregated neighborhoods. So segregation itself blocks mobility and creates this enormous dispersion of income and wealth that we have in this country which contributes heavily to it well So residential segregation Characterizes every metropolitan area in this country and The theme of my work over the last few years and this book is that we Are hobbled on our ability to deal with it because we all think and this is a Belief that's shared across the political spectrum as the comics woman said that this segregation is de facto That's the term we use and it's shared across the political spectrum de facto segregation as the Supreme Court says something that was The result of personal prejudice on people maybe decisions of wanting where you want to live with people of the same race or maybe the actions of private Real estate agents or banks Millions and millions of individual decisions that contribute to residential segregation and if we believe that as we all do that We have de facto segregation It's very hard if it was created by millions and millions of individual decisions How you could organize millions and millions of individual decisions to undo it but if and The Supreme Court has this theory if it's not de facto if in fact we have de jure segregation There's a segregation that was created in violation of the 5th the 13th and the 14th amendments of the Constitution By the federal and state governments Then it's a different story entirely not only can we imagine if the government created it that the government could uncreate it But we can also understand that we have an obligation to address it because it was created if residential patterns in this country Were created in violation of constitutional rights Then it's not just that we have an opportunity to undo it We have an obligation to undo it if we're going to live in a constitutional democracy one of the things I say in the book is Letting by guns be by guns is not a constitutional principle So that's the theme and Let me describe I've spoken about this so much lately It's been an honor and a privilege to do so. I had no idea that the book would get this kind of attention So maybe some of you have heard this already. So let me talk about it if that's the case. I'm gonna talk about it a little bit differently Today than I have before here at the Economic Policy Institute. You all know that Economists spend all of their free time thinking about and reading great literature So I'm gonna talk about this and About three great figures in American literature and try to bring it together in that way So the first one I want to talk about is Langston Hughes. Oh, yeah Langston Hughes wrote an autobiography called the Big C and In that autobiography he describes how he grew up part of his growing up was in Cleveland, Ohio In an integrated neighborhood. He talks about how his best friend was Polish. He dated a Jewish girl that neighborhood was mixed African-American white Poles Italians Irish Jews all living together in that Cleveland neighborhood and there were many many neighborhoods in this country In metropolitan areas all over the country, which were much more integrated in the early 20th century than they are today We don't know this kind of thing today But in the early 20th century, we did have integrated neighborhoods even in the south and the reason we hadn't integrated neighborhoods is because Working-class families didn't have automobiles. They had to be able to walk to work or take very short the Bus rides to work And so they had to live in the same general neighborhoods as the factories or the places where they worked many neighborhoods therefore integrated In that way and Langston Hughes grew up in one of them in Cleveland, Ohio Cleveland, Ohio doesn't have integrated neighborhoods like that today But he grew up in one in 1933 the As a response to the Depression the New Deal began a program of the Public Works Administration to build housing build public housing for Families who had lost their homes in the Depression and For living in substandard conditions and the Public Works Administration Demolished that neighborhood where Langston Hughes spent his high school years and in it Created two separate public housing projects one for African Americans one for whites creating a segregated pattern there that had never been known before and This went on throughout the country even in the south the first Effort of the Public Works Administration in this was in Atlanta where there was a neighborhood called the flats Close to downtown Atlanta where is now downtown Atlanta that neighborhood was half black half white in Atlanta an integrated neighborhood I'm not saying that every other home was black and every other home was white but In a broad neighborhood, they were both Africans and Americans living together The Public Works Administration again demolished that neighborhood built a project for whites only most public housing in those days was built for whites lower class lower middle-class whites and working-class whites and The African Americans who lived in that neighborhood were pushed out To a place farther distant from the white neighborhood that was created by the federal government at this time during World War two there were Hundreds of thousands of workers who flocked to centers of defense production in that book I described one of them Richmond, California Places that had never had an African-American population before so there was no segregation Yet when the federal government had to build housing to house the workers in order to keep the assembly lines Or in the case of Richmond the shipyards working. They built segregated public housing creating a Segregated pattern in these communities where there had not been one before of course in some places there was a Segregation prior to the government's intervention I'm not suggesting that the federal government was the only cause of segregation certainly in places like Chicago and Detroit which had large African-American populations as a result of War production in World War one who were already segregated neighborhoods, but the federal government reinforced that pattern Expanded it and in places where it didn't exist created it Langston use Wallace Stegner Wallace Stegner great Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist wrote sort of or the biographical novel Called Big Rock Candy Mountain in the late 1930s and as a result of the fame that he he hadn't one yet Want to pull it surprise Stanford University recruited him to Come to Palo Alto to teach literature teach writing at Stanford In those days professors weren't paid the kinds of outrageous Salaries that they get today So they were you know lower-middle class people There was a big housing shortage at the end of World War two because the federal government had prohibited the use of civilian materials of construction materials to be used for civilian Purposes it was all directed to the war effort So he couldn't find housing. There were many many other Working-class lower-middle-class families who couldn't find housing in the Palo Alto area. So Wallace Stegner Formed and joined a cooperative of 400 families. Well, it started with 150 families the goal was to get 400 families together to buy a large ranch outside the Stanford campus and Build on that ranch of 400 homes for lower-middle-class working-class families the members of the cooperative were not only College professors, but school teachers who weren't paid that much differently than college professors you know mailman Construction workers, you know lower-middle-class working-class families of all kinds They went to the the cooperative went to the Federal Housing Administration To get the Federal Housing Administration to guarantee a construction loan so that they could begin to build these houses because obviously they didn't have yet have Money to purchase the houses So they wanted a construction loan and the Federal Housing Administration refused to give them the loan for construction of this development because of the 150 initial members of this cooperative three were African-American and the Federal Housing Administration had a policy of not Guaranteeing bank loans for the construction of subdivisions in the country at that time Unless the subdivisions excluded African-Americans It wasn't just the the neighborhood that Wallace Stegner tried to build in it was neighborhoods all across the country eventually the cooperative that Stegner was a Member of the Board of Directors of had to sell the land to a private developer They couldn't go ahead with their project the private developer did get FHA guarantees to build a subdivision it's Called Lidera still there today and of course the the developer Didn't sell any homes to African-Americans and the project was able to go forward this went on all across the country the entire suburbanization of the country Was financed and subsidized by the Federal Housing Administration on a whites-only basis I write extensively in the book about one probably the most famous one well-known one is Levittown Just east of New York City 17,000 homes Built by the Levitt family in the late 1940s Levitt could never have assembled the capital needed to Construct 17,000 homes for which he had no buyers, but So we went to the FHA to get bank guarantees. He submitted specifications of the houses he was going to build The design the kinds of restructure construction materials He was going to use the layout of the streets all of this had to be approved by the Federal Housing Administration and a commitment not to sell homes to African-Americans and With that commitment the Federal Housing Administration guaranteed his construction loans and required an additional commitment of Levitt that every home in the development have a clause in its deed prohibiting the buyers from reselling to an African-American and as I say this went on All across the country in Levittown in the east and Lidera In the West and in every metropolitan area in between um federal housing public housing was I say built like in Cleveland like in Atlanta across the country on a segregated basis as the civilian housing shortage started to ease in The mid-1950s some of it starting in the late 1940s we had this phenomenon all across the country of Projects built for whites with large numbers of vacancies as whites were Subsidized by the FHA to move out of central cities and into white only single-family homes in the suburbs African-American projects had long waiting lists and Eventually the contrast between white public housing projects. I shouldn't call them white housing public housing projects projects designated for whites With large vacancies and projects designated for African-Americans with long waiting lists The the situation became so conspicuous that eventually public housing authorities across the country opened up the projects designated for whites to African-Americans at the same time Industry left central cities African-Americans living in those projects became poorer and poorer They were no longer projects for middle-class families. They began to be subsidized Public housing. Let me say it before that was not subsidized the whites who moved out of public housing into these Suburbs that were created by the federal housing administration paid less in their monthly Mortgage carrying and charges and they were paying for rent in public housing but as whites left subsidized by the federal government and as the projects became increasingly African-American and Jobs left central cities people became poorer and poorer and we get the kind of public housing that we are familiar with today while the state there James Farrell James Farrell this I didn't write in my book about my book the other two I did James Farrell I remember reading novels of James Farrell and Studs Lonig and trilogy. I don't know if any of you I'm sure the economists have all read this in their spare time But some of the others may not know James Farrell, but a great another great American novelist who wrote about an Irish lower-middle class boy in Chicago and the south side of Chicago struggling to decide whether he was going to become a thug or responsible citizen and getting advice from his parish priest about how to behave and How to fall in love What James Farrell didn't write about though is that the parish priest Who figure so importantly in the Studs Lonig and trilogy went door-to-door along with the rabbi of the Beth Jacob temple in the same neighborhood and The executive director of the neighborhood Association went door-to-door throughout that community getting people to sign a commitment never to sell a home to an African-American and With with the provision that if they did The they could be sued and the African-American be evicted and the sale Reversed this was called a restrictive covenant eventually the Supreme Court in 1948 about 20 years after This covenant was created on the south side of Chicago in the Studs Lonig and his neighborhood The Supreme Court said that this was a violation of the 14th amendment for state courts to evict African-Americans who bought homes in neighborhoods that had been White previously But one of the themes of my book and it does doesn't just apply to this it applies to all of the The examples I'm talking about the Supreme Court said in 1948 that it was unconstitutional for Studs Lonig and his priest to Organize this and enforce this kind of covenant, but it didn't become unconstitutional in 1948 I'm not a lawyer Ted Ted will correct me if I've if he wants to but it didn't become unconstitutional in 1948 The Supreme Court belatedly recognized that was unconstitutional, but it was unconstitutional all along Just as nobody thinks that it was Constitutional to segregate schools before 1954 all brown did was the court recognized that it was wrong and permitting it to go on before but it was always unconstitutional well, there's another aspect to though of these this event that took place in Studs Lonig and his neighborhood and that is that St. Anselm Church and Congregation Beth Jacob the Institutions that organized the restrictive covenants across that Southside neighborhood were getting tax exemptions from the internal revenue service now many years later in In the 1980s, there was a well-known case some of you were older may remember it, but the the internal revenue service decided belatedly to withdraw the tax exempt status of Bob Jones University because Bob Jones University Prohibited students from interracial dating and the internal revenue service decided that this was Inconsistent with the internal revenue code which permitted tax exemptions only for Non-profit organizations which contributed to the public good and it went to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court upheld the IRS's withdrawal of tax exemption from Bob Jones University very landmark case Now don't get me wrong. I'm all in favor of interracial dating It's a great thing. Cheryl casher. They just written the book praising it is a way forward in terms of making progress in this way, but Interracial dating is trivial compared to the actions of non-profit institutions Across the country which maintained their tax exemptions In order to preserve and perpetuate and create segregation The example I use in the book is the University of Chicago the president of the University of Chicago a well-known great liberal educator maintained an office in the office of the presidency of the University of Chicago a legal office whose job it was to sue Sellers of homes to African Americans the environs of the University of Chicago and Evict any African Americans who happened to buy homes in those environs in the 1930s 40s 1930s and 40s This was not Secret this was an open activity of the University of Chicago yet the University of Chicago Never had its tax exemption challenged for being an institution in Chicago that perpetuated Segregation so this is another aspect of the jury segregation of government action the the granting of tax exemptions to Institutions that perpetuated segregation along these lines well there are many many of them I could talk for several hours days, maybe about all of the the forms of federal state and local action that contributed to residential segregation Well, I want to conclude by saying and I is that This history is important because as I began so long as we believe that Residential segregation is an accident The result of private actions, it's very hard not only to think of ways to reverse it but to think of ways that we would be permitted to reverse it under the doctrines that the Supreme Court has laid out which require that only the jury segregation Can be explicitly remedied, but if we understand this history And if we understand that the residential patterns in every metropolitan area are the result of government action Then it gives us a way forward. So, you know, I was on Terry grosses a program once and she asked me if I if doing this Book made me depressed or angry and I said actually no it makes me hopeful because if we can begin to understand the way in which Residential segregation was an official policy of this government that gives us a way forward to begin to think of how we might reverse it And I try to avoid getting too much detail about how we might reverse that I have lots of ideas about policy But no policy to reverse residential segregation is going to move forward unless we can change the national consensus about how it happened So, thank you very much and I started to sit, but I want to be able to see everyone So I'll stand with you Well, good morning. Good morning. It's a great honor to be here today and I want to commend Richard for this this work. I was Thinking although I'm not sure that This works I'm not even sure if it's an analogy, but I was thinking about Something I say to my wife often, which was or is rather If you weren't my wife, I'd wish you were And if Richard hadn't written this book, I'd wish I did So I'm I'm so happy to be here and also with Congresswoman Moore We were exchanging a few words about battle scars, but She's earned hers and wears them with pride. So I'm glad to be here with her today And it is extraordinary to be here when we know that there's something else going on that the rest of the world It's watching right now in Washington and this room is so full. In fact, it's it's over full So that that's encouraging in many ways I Do want to acknowledge Phil Tagler and who heads up the Poverty and Race Research Action Council You heard that I'm on the board there have been for a long time and Phil leads the work there with great passion and integrity So In the almost 40 years that I've been Practicing law and teaching it These issues that Richard has written about Are issues that are at the heart and the core of The cases that I and others have Litigated the work we've done the advocacy that we do and I want to say a few words About this it fills out Some of what Richard has talked about but I also want to acknowledge that I thought that I knew Pretty much most of what there is to know And I know a great deal of it. I will say in modestly But there are things that I've learned in reading Richard's book so he has Dug much more deeply on some of these issues than I Think has been done before and there have been other books as he acknowledges written About these issues I think about Massey and Denton Many years ago now and I think in the 80s right American apartheid which is another book that I would recommend to you, but he also points back to the work of Dr. Kenneth Clark and And Others You know, there are works that were written in the 1920s and 30s about what was going on then and I Sometimes refer to these works, but this is an instant classic And so I encourage you to read it if you haven't read it When I drive through cities and towns and Communities across the country I do it with much more consciousness. I think Then many Americans do many Americans drive through communities and See the racial segregation Actually a drive by them often and through them, but see the racial segregation that exists and they think that That segregation is accidental that poverty is accidental that this is as Richard points to the consequence of individual choices so-called Societal discrimination if anything and So-called de facto segregation. I have long thought there's no such thing as de facto segregation in America and I've long said that if you Look Underneath the segregation that exists in communities across the country It is almost a consequence of years and years and decades and decades of governmental actions on the state local and federal level that have That that work actually with the actions of private individuals that have created the segregation that we see today. That's what Richard is written about here. That's the story that he tells and great death and so You know when we talk about public housing segregation We talk about the suburbanization process of America in a post-war war two years You know think about the discourse in this country about who is Worthy and who isn't you know whose poverty reflects the consequence of character or lack thereof and The desire to work hard You know that discourse you've seen it you hear it all the time. It's still very much alive And the reality is is that With all due respect, I mean Richard goes out of his way to say that he tries to write this book in a way that doesn't contribute to the polarization of discourse when it comes to race, but with all due respect to Many white Americans the Wealth that has been amassed Throughout our history has often been amassed In part I'm not saying people don't don't work hard some people do some don't but But it's been amassed in part With the assistance of Governmental programs even if people aren't aware of that. I suspect that many of the people who moved into Levitown Long Island or people who moved into if any of you are familiar with New York City Stuyvesant town or Park chest as it was Parkchester now is heavily black and brown but those two Developments were metropolitan life insurance Company developments for many of the white folks moved in there. They didn't think about these issues Some of them did some of them knew consciously they didn't want to live where black folks lived But many of them were just looking for a place to live and post-World War two were looking for housing in post-depression America But the reality is that those places were segregated by policy and practice That's the story that Richard is telling I grew up in Mostly in the Bronx in a public housing project and so the issue of public housing is Very near and dear to me in many ways because again the discourse about public housing these days Is one that says? These are terrible places that the people who live there are living off the backs of The rest of us the backs of America that We ought to require we ought to have the right and the ability to require them to do certain things because they are living off the backs of the rest of us and the rest of us are working hard for what we have and Judicial policy has followed that in some respects Nobody needs to tell me for example about the harm or the harms of Drug usage illegal drug usage. I mean I've seen it first-hand as any many of us have in fact look realities is that America has an insatiable appetite for drugs and although the The story goes that black folks use drugs and higher proportions and white people. It simply isn't true But what I'm getting at is that when the Supreme Court decided a few years ago that if someone Is living in public housing and a member of their family or someone who lives in that apartment with them Whether they know it or not Uses drugs and that is discovered. They can be kicked out as a consequence of that and What I've wondered is how is it that the rest of America? Doesn't get treated in the same way What do I mean by that people say well, I'm not living in public housing off the backs of the public but You if you own a house as I now do and I've owned several by now You know, we get a mortgage interest deduction that's the federal government subsidizing our housing and People don't get kicked out of their houses if their children are found to use drugs And so we have all kinds of policies that wage war on poor people But particularly black and brown poor people that are the consequences or are connected to this history Segregation and discrimination so It's very important to be conscious of how we collectively live Couple of things before I stop I've said already I don't think there's such a thing as de facto segregation I think about the Kansas City school case That I worked on many years ago Jenkins versus Missouri took up a good part of our lives Those of us who worked on that case we reconstructed how Kansas City, Missouri and that metropolitan area came to look at We did it does all of the things that Richard has written about the Policies and practices that you will find in his book the court was simply unwilling or unable to To take that and to deal with it It simply was unable as I say or unwilling and so we find violations of law discrimination and the courts haven't been able to To deal with it or willing to deal with it And so our jurisprudence is one that is anemic when it comes to these issues And so I've been frustrated about that our law is a law that for the most part Countances accepts and even supports racial segregation and inequality The terminology de facto segregation and the distinction between de facto and de jure segregation is Consequence of that last thing Richard says he's not a lawyer He said something very interesting and he wrote it in his book. He's written about how The constitution it was always unconstitutional to segregate. He said here today that most Americans I think you framed it this way Richard Never thought that school segregation was constitutional Actually, I think they did and Many of them continue to think That is constitutional But the point he's making is One that reminds me of a dear friend and mentor who's now departed a Leon Higginbotham Was a judge on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Higginbotham, I remember saying about Plessy v. Ferguson that Plessy was wrong the day it was decided I understood what he meant. I think that's what Richard is saying the Constitution in In large part is aspirational and it continues to be aspirational but it's aspirations sometimes And often have been at odds with our practices so Plessy was never right It wasn't even intellectually honest when it was decided nor has Nor have been our practices of segregation and discrimination in this country because we say we aspire to something different So this book is a great contribution I think to our country And it is an eye-opener for those who already weren't as we say these days woke When it comes to these issues and I'm so glad that Richard has written it and I'm Grateful that I've been invited to share a few thoughts on it here today Thank you so much everybody so we are now going to open it up to questions from the audience and I'd love to urge people to just ask questions and not make Statements and if you are going to make a statement keep it short So either Margaret or I will hand you a microphone and you can ask questions to either or both speakers My name is Richard Dean Winfield. I'm Considering running for Congress in the 10th district in Georgia and I'm struggling to formulate a positive policy That will permanently solve our national failure to provide An enforcement of the inalienable right to Decent affordable housing. I wanted to pick your both of your brains on what you would regard to be the positive way to go forward To eliminate homelessness and to provide everyone with decent affordable housing Well, you know as I said, I think the first Requirement is for people to understand how it happened because there's not going to be I wish you the best in your race for Congress But I don't think there's going to be support for the kinds of policies that are really needed until we understand how it happened But there are certainly ways that we can move forward Incrementally it won't solve the problem. It won't Come to the utopia you described but we can move forward in some ways, you know Ted mentioned the mortgage interest deduction a colleague of his Jack Boger wrote an article 25 years ago in which he suggested that Suburbs that Refuse to take steps to desegregate whether by repealing exclusionary zoning ordinances that prohibit the construction of Single-family homes on modest lot sizes or townhouses or other Housing for moderate-income families that suburbs that refuse to take steps to desegregate Should have their more the mortgage interest reductions of their residents put nesco until they Begin to take those steps. That would be a pretty radical thing to do and there won't be Support for it as I say in the unless we have a better understanding so far as lower-income families We have to you know as the biggest the the biggest program that we have in this country today to support housing is as Ted said The mortgage interest deduction that's worth far more than anything we do for low-income people But there are two programs we do to support the needs of low-income Families housing needs and both of them reinforce segregation today and that's unconscionable One is a program that I think you've probably heard of the section 8 housing voucher program It's a program that provides subsidies for Families to rent apartments in With and pay only about a third of their income in rent and the subsidies are calculated on a Metropolitan or area-wide basis In most parts of the country and I should say that Phil Tegler. I don't know where he is here Is he here? knows much more about this than I do. Oh, there you are knows much more about this than I do but the In most parts of the country landlords are permitted to discriminate against section 8 housing voucher holders That is they're permitted to reject the perspective tenant if they're using a voucher to pay their rent to help pay their rent and That kind of discrimination should be prohibited because of course the landlords who who reject Section 8 voucher holders tend to be More often in middle-class neighborhoods and the landlords who accept them are an already segregated low-income neighborhoods The second problem is that if you think about it if you calculate the subsidy on an area-wide basis That subsidy is not going to be enough to rent an apartment in a more expensive middle-class neighborhood And there's going to be too much to rent an apartment in a lower-income neighborhood And in fact the landlords and low-income neighborhoods exploit the program by charging more than the market requires at the very end of the Obama administration HUD developed a rule that would permit the Local housing agencies to adjust of their vouchers that they were worth more in High opportunity in middle-class neighborhoods and worth less in already segregated neighborhoods That rule was adopted, but the Trump administration has instructed housing agencies not to apply it on the grounds that they were not going to provide money in the Trump budget to Provide the higher amounts, but that I would go further. I would since the section a housing voucher program is a It's not an entitlement only about a quarter of the eligible families get it I would simply give a priority to families who who were Interested in willing and wanting to use those vouchers in higher opportunity neighborhoods where their children can Thrive so that would be a program the second the second big program that the federal government runs is run out of the Treasury Department It has the same problem as the The section a voucher program. It's called the low-income housing tax credit It's a credit that's given to developers to build housing for lower-income families and the developers More often than not it's not always the case But the predominance of low-income housing tax credit developments are built in already segregated neighborhoods because that's where land is cheaper And that's where there's no community opposition And that's where the the for rent signs are more visible to people who might want it and again We could place a higher priority on building those developments in high opportunity neighborhoods and though those two reforms which are not radical would go far to Beginning to take steps to desegregate metropolitan areas well, I You know, I think we probably want to get to more questions, but I appreciate the You know the the question that you're asking and I wish you also the best in in your Campaign I will say that I think that We have to talk about living wages as part of this discussion So people have to be able to earn enough to be able to afford housing and then we have to talk about affordable housing practices and policies in our communities that are Are enforced and that are real because what we're seeing is a continued segregation of Economic classes in this country and it's getting worse and not better I think we have to talk about the connection between schools and housing And we have to do this at a time when There are those many in this country right now who are hell bent on the destruction of anything that is part of the public sector including Public education or starting with public education and all these things are connected if we're going to talk about putting people in a position where They are not trapped in concentrated poverty so the kinds of programs and practices and policies and HUD needs to be stronger not weaker And the federal government's policies have to be stronger and not weaker But all these programs I think have to be not only revisited but Strengthened and we need a renewal of a commitment Last on this there there are people who now are thinking about this we're coming up on the 50th anniversary next year of the assassinations of Martin Luther King and and Bobby Kennedy and In 1968 you remember the last thing that King was working toward was a Really a Poor people's campaign And housing was part of that We have to Revisit those issues because it's not like we've solved them And they're getting worse and not better. So I'm glad you're committed to this and I hope whether you want to lose I'm sure you'll remain committed to it So I'll stop there I'd like to thank you Mr. Rothstein for your work And in bringing this history to light I Want to know if when you're exploring this did you look at the psychology at the root of this racism hate in humanity And thinking of the work of Francis Cress-Welcing if you're familiar with her the late Francis Cress-Welcing and How that would apply to this and also If we look at what you found and go along the continuum It seems like this is a part of a process that is a genocidal process Could you discuss that to some extent how all these different issues that mr. Shaw brought up and you tie them all together We're looking at a problem that is really huge and given the way that America works if we don't address a psychology of America, how can we resolve any of these things? Well the answer to your question is no I haven't and this book is a very limited book. I as I said I did not claim I would never claim that Public policy was the only cause of Residential segregation nor would I claim that there would not be residential segregation in the absence of public policy for the reasons that you describe certainly there there is a a lot of Direct way of saying a lot of racial prejudice in this country today and a lot of it has been exposed Since the last election campaign, I don't think it's Ted and I were talking about this before I don't think it's increased I just think it's come out into the open so there's no doubt that that will exist but the only purpose you know I make I have in this book and I On a broader issue. I certainly agree with you the only purpose of this book is to show that the residential patterns that we have is unconstitutional the Constit our constitutional theory does not require that for something to be a constitutional violation There can be no other motives or no other participants besides government action There was certainly many of them and many of the neighborhoods, you know So I said before in place of like Chicago in Detroit. We already had segregation before the federal government stepped in but what our constitutional Norms require is that if the government was a significant cause of This segregation then we have an obligation to remedy it and that's the very narrow Point I'm trying to make and I'm not excluding the need for attitudinal change and In as well Hi, I'm Luanne McNabb with the National Council of Teachers of English So thank you for the nod to great lit and you're talking of public education My question was did you address the segregation in relation to residential segregation of schools? particularly I think recently Alabama had a district where it was whites only school because of the way the neighborhood was and how do we address and You know change that and also with a new possible federal policy a federal funding going to private religious schools They can expel children of color Someone should ask Ted some questions, too You know Ted and I had a conversation he might remember this, you know, maybe five or six years ago and I was starting to write this book and we were talking about the long struggle of the NAACP legal defense fund to desegregate schools and You know, I I've looked into it the they began in 1933 with a very gradual of strategy of first attacking segregation in law schools because they figured that if Judges could understand nothing else. They might be able to understand that you needed a good legal education in order to practice law and then they went on to eventually 20 years later getting to Brown versus Board of Education and I said to Ted I said, you know it's understand the the legal defense fund had no alternative but to pursue school segregation because first of all they had a big grant to do it in 1933 and they were a struggling organization that whose contributions were measured in pennies not dollars from people across the country and secondly because as I mentioned the in 1933 when they started this campaign for school desegregation the federal policies that The I described hadn't yet Come into force and certainly hadn't floured so the federal government's role hadn't been so great at that time So it's understandable. I said to Ted, you know If there had been a legal strategy to attack residential segregation Rather than putting the world's focus on school segregation They probably would have accomplished more for schools and school desegregation They did by trying to attack it directly because the reason that most schools in this country is segregated today It's because the neighborhoods in which they located the segregated and that's not to say and again, I want to nod to Phil Tegeler, it's not to say that there aren't many good programs that on the margins try to attack this with magnet schools and with adjustments of attendance boundaries and In contiguous areas, but most of the most disadvantaged African-American children in this country live too far distant From truly middle-class suburbs. Yeah, you can integrate some, you know in a ring suburbs But leave too far distant from truly middle-class white neighborhoods For school desegregation to happen in any other way except through residential segregation desegregation so the two are inextricably bound together and Again, we have to focus on the underlying cause which is residential segregation. I guess only in the the interests of of Historical accuracy it was the NAACP in the early 1930s that was beginning the struggle to desegregate Schools or heading that way the legal defense fund itself wasn't created until 1940 But grew out of the NAACP and I spent a lot of time and I still spent a lot of time explaining to people that they're two separate organizations and people say well, why is the NAACP initials in the In the name of the legal defense fund and I said well, you're born you get your mom and your daddy's last name You grow up you get you become independent. You're not your mama and you're not your daddy Even if you have the same last name, but the The the struggle did focus on education For a number of reasons initially and actually started strategically for the legal defense fund and teacher salaries For strategic reasons that we can talk about But then grew to a frontal attack on segregation in elementary and secondary education after the attack on higher education segregation, so I just wanted to To clarify that Richard Collenberg with the Sentry Foundation and congratulations Richard on this book. It's I've read it I think it's fabulous and Ted, you know, I Have been a big fan of yours your work for many years as we know each other well Richard and it's always good to see So one of the things that I found fascinating in the book was the way in which The segregate segregationists basically, you know altered their strategies And so there were the explicit race-based Zoning regulations struck down by the Supreme Court in 1917 and then they quickly switched to exclusionary zoning where you know You have to have the you have to have a single family home or or a certain lot size And so which should exist today and so I'm wondering if you can talk about some practical strategies for going after Exclusionary zoning you you mentioned Jack Bogers idea and also What political coalitions might come together around this I've been intrigued by the idea that you know, you have libertarians on the right who also don't like Exclusionaries, I mean they don't like zoning at all, but what what path forward do you see for for us? That's a very interesting question You know one of the things that has surprised me about this book and I shouldn't have been surprised It was foolish for me not to think about this, but the thing that's most surprising about this book is the Claim it's received from libertarians and conservatives They love the fact that I'm criticizing Roosevelt administration and the new deal for its segregationist policies they gave a talk a while ago a couple weeks ago at the Cato Institute and You know their reaction was yeah, this is terrible what you're describing But they said two wrongs don't make a right And even though the government Created these problems. It's not the government's problem province to solve it, which you know, I think is You know, it's like I said letting by guns be by guns is not a constitutional policy I guess one cliche to respond to another but You're right about the zoning and I think And about the coalitions because they are opposed to all kinds of zoning and there is a possible coalition around that The libertarian certainly I am not sure the conservatives will go along with it once they realize that it would result in desegregation of white suburbs in 19 Actually, I've written been writing about this for a while I don't remember actually if I wrote about this in the book or not But you know in 1968 Richard Nixon was elected president and he appointed as the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development George Romney who was He was always the father of somebody you may be familiar with George Romney had but so he's a liberal Republican and And They don't exist anymore so I don't know where the coalition comes from but he was liberal Republican and he took office and he said that the federal government has created a white noose around African-american neighborhoods and cities and it's the federal government's obligation to untie that noose and He proposed a program and began to implement a program which he called open communities in which you know the federal government gives lots of money to to Jurisdictions around the country for all kinds of things you know for sewers and for open space and for sidewalks water projects and What Romney proposed was that the federal government should? withhold funding for all of these projects from suburbs that didn't repeal their exclusionary zoning ordinances among other things except low and moderate-income housing subsidized housing And he had a lot of support among Republicans his biggest support it was Spiro Agnew the vice president because Spiro Agnew had been the county executive of Baltimore County and had been dealing with all of the problems in Baltimore that Could not be solved in segregated communities and Spiro Agnew said you know We can't solve these problems in the inner city Have they have to be solved in the suburbs the problems of inner city Baltimore have to be solved in the suburbs He was a big supporter of George Romney's but the political advisors of to Nixon Realized that there would be a white backlash to Romney's policies and it was politically not good for president's reelection campaign so they got Nixon to Get Romney to cancel the open communities project and he was forced out of the secretary of HUD and we've had nothing so Fourth right since in terms of a federal desegregation policy But that was a coalition that existed then now. I don't know where all those liberal Republicans are now We don't but perhaps they they can be awakened Again on on such a program led by the libertarians Ted did you want to comment on that or no? I think we get another question in My name is Langston Thomas, and I'm a college student I go to Grinnell College in Iowa, but I'm from Rockville, Maryland So the book that you've written you talk about how the goal of it the main aim is to kind of open people's eyes to how Housing discrimination is really rooted in the government and I applaud that aim and You also mentioned a lot of books where other people have written Kind of along the same lines trying to open people's eyes to the realities of how the government truly fuels segregation and racism in the US and I guess the methodology behind that is kind of an opening people's eyes Eventually people will come to this understanding that will eventually lead to policy change Yet many of you guys have stated that things have not only not changed, but have even gotten worse so with that you also mentioned that you were hopeful and Happy about the product of your book and happy with opening the eyes of people despite the fact that history shows that That methodology hasn't really produced results. So my question is are you and this is to the entire panel Are you guys truly happy with producing a book that only supposedly opens people's eyes? And if you are truly happy with that, what are some next steps that will actually move past this idea of dialogue and moving people to actually Produce the change you want Well, you know the next steps are up to you not me So I should throw that question back at you I can all I can do is is what you described And it's your generation that's going to have to take this knowledge and do something with it I will say that I am Concerned with people who claim that we've made no progress we have a very mixed Bag of recent history. It's not that we haven't made any progress. In fact, I see the author of one of the books that Ted was talking about before sitting back there Ted Lohan who be more than anybody else is Responsible for the removal of Confederate monuments that's going on around the country In fact, if anybody who thinks we haven't made any progress should read the speech that mayor Mitch Landrieu gave of New Orleans when the Statue of Robert E. Lee was removed from New Orleans. So, you know, we have a mixed bag It's not like we're not not making any progress the racism that's been exposed in the last Year or more as I say it's been exposed. It's not like it's new I think it's We've sort of burst a boil and a lot of this coming out into the open as a result of the recent political campaign, but I Think there's reason for hope and I do believe that Knowledge is power but knowledge alone doesn't do it so You do it I've done my part I'm an old man. You guys got to take a dog down Ted. Do you want to comment on that? Amen? All right, that was that was such a great question that I actually think we should end there first of all I want to thank our panelists Richard Rothstein and Ted Shaw and And Representative Gwynne Moore Thank you all for coming this program is going to be posted at www.epi.org Slash events if you missed anything and you want to watch it again for those of you in the room You are welcome to bring your books up and Richard Rothstein will sign them. Thank you all for coming Thank you so much