[**Free Download**] The Color of Law: A Forgotte

Widely heralded as a “masterful” (<em>Washington Post</em>) and “essential” (<em>Slate</em>) history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein’s <em>The Color of Law</em> offers “the most forceful argument ever published on how federal, state, and local governments gave rise to and reinforced neighborhood segregation” (William Julius Wilson). <br /><br />Exploding the myth of de facto segregation arising from private prejudice or the unintended consequences of economic forces, Rothstein describes how the American government systematically imposed residential segregation: with undisguised racial zoning; public housing that purposefully segregated previously mixed communities; subsidies for builders to create whites-only suburbs; tax exemptions for institutions that enforced segregation; and support for violent resistance to African Americans in white neighborhoods. <br /><br />A groundbreaking, “virtually indispensable” study that has already transformed our understanding of