Test captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2008 some democrats were perfectly willing to have integration in the north as long as they could preserve segregation in the south, going back to the time of slavery, never a dispute whether it could be prohibited in the north, we had border state problems in missouri and kansas, but the north was free to integrate as long as is the south could preserve segregation. That doesnt explain the housing issue. The other reason i think is that well i guess its not really an answer to your question why they did it, why its so hard to think about this problem, and that is we desegregated formally every area of American Life but when we desegregate busses the next day africanamericans can sit anywhere on the bus, desegregated lunch counters and the next day africanamericans could sit down at the lunch counters. We desegregated schools and the next day, but we desegregate neighborhoods what happens . How do we put our heads around what were going to do. The next day africanamericans can move to affluent suburbs so its difficult to think about this problem and i think that as a result weve avoided it and come up with a myth to protect us from thinking about it and the myth is it all happened by private action and we call it de facto and therefore if it happened by accident, it can only be done by accident, we dont have to worry about it. It allows the state and citizenry to evade responsibility. Right. One of the things i find powerful about this narrative it is this common idea where racism is basically linked to a conservative south and everything bad sort of flows out of that. What does it mean you have a situation in which not just an administration thats praised by liberals but when folks want to critique president barack obama they would compare him to roosevelt. This is, you know, seen as the liberal standard at a high point of 20th century progressivism. What does it mean that was the exact point where a lot of this policy that ultimately deprived africanamericans of wealth actually began . What does that tell us about the possibilities in terms of any sort of i guess ridding ourselves, the phantoms of White Supremacy and racism, that is so pervasive across . Well, i dont know that i would go that far. The new deal was the First Administration that was actively involved in the American Economy, so there was no opportunity to implement these policies beforehand. Its not that previous administrations were less racist, although some were and some werent. The Wilson Administration was explicitly racist. The harding and coolidge and hoover administrations a little less so. None of them were involved in the American Economy. It was the new deal that first got involved in the American Economy and involved in housing. The first civilian housing was built in the new deal. No civilian housing before that. So i dont know that this happened because the Roosevelt Administration was more racist than others. In fact, it was relatively progressive i hate to say this it was relatively progressive on race because it built some housing for africanamericans. The likelihood the previous administrations would have built only housing for white families. So i dont know, i i want to push you on that a little bit. Please. If we follow the implication of your work much of the inequality we seen between africanamerican people and whites can be traced to this progressive action. Absolutely. Thats because inequality can only be created by the government if it was involved in the economy, if it wasnt it couldnt create this inequality. It was the opportunity to be involved in the economy that gave the opportunity to segregate. What does this call us to do now . Well, you know, as you heard, i gave a lot of lectures as i was doing this research and wrote articles and people always ask me that question and i didnt want to answer it. Finally i got pestered enough i threw a chapter in the book about remedies, but i dont think that we can really creatively think about remedies until we disabuse ourselves of this myth of private causation because so long as we have this consensus, its across the political spectrum, its conservatives and liberals alike, who use this term de facto segregation, im sure most of this room thinks of it as de facto see gregation i will give you a radical answer because i think there is no political consensus that would support it. The example before of levet town, if we understood the history was state sponsored segregation, it was unconstitutional, violation of the 14th amendment, i argue in the book the 13th amendment, we might do the following Congress Might 15 of the metropolitan area of new york is africanamerican. Congress might adopt a program where the federal government buys up the next 15 of homes in levet town for 400,000 and resells them to qualified africanamericans for 100,000. That would be a constitutionally justifiable remedy in terms of light of the history that i just described. But i guess i just did say it in public. I was going to say i would never say that in public but i just did. It cant be that kind of thing cant be debated unless we understand the history. What we should be doing now is trying to do everything we can and you are a star in this area, to make people familiar with the history. I mean your article about chicago, the case for reparations did this. A writer for the New York Times magazine now, nicole hanna jones, has been writing about it, we need to talk about this and make this a part of our National Conversation so that we can begin to conceive remedies that people think of i havent thought of once we begin to have a conversation about it. We cant have the conversation about it so long as we have this myth. Let me add this one thing, simple thing, one of the things i report if the book is i examined all the most commonly used High School Textbooks in America Today and every single one of them lies about this history. They lie about it. And thats a very simple thing to fix. If we dont the next generation is going to be in no better position to do something about it than ours has been. The most widely used American History textbook, 1,000 pages, kids carry it around in backpacks has one paragraph in the entire 1,000 page book devoted to segregation in the north. Within that paragraph it says one sentence devoted to hose housing and reads as follows, in the north africanamericans found themselves into segregated housing. Thats it. Passive voice, no discussion of who did the forcing, how it happened, woke up, looked out the window and said here we are in a segregated neighborhood. So long as were teaching our young people that, theres very little hope of having a serious conversation about remedies and i think youve said in your articles the first step has to be understanding this history before we can begin seriously to talk about remedying it. Agreed. I am being instructed to throw it to the audience. I believe were going to take questions from the audience. Now i dont have a mic, but thats okay. We will share. You guys can share. Raise your hand. Yes. I was wondering if you could comment on housing segregation being resolved partially due to the fact that when many gis returning from the war they got the gi bill and i think they also got money for a mortgage, that i understood while africanamericans also received that gi bill, they usually a, couldnt find a bank that would give them a loan or couldnt find a school that would take them . How does that compare to the disparity and asset accumulation versus what you just laid out . In the book i talk about, you know, i have been writing about this as ive said for a number of years, and i got an email from somebody who told me her family story, so i talked to various members of her family and told the story in the book. An africanamerican veteran of world war ii, very ambitious and talented, he bought a truck, a surplus army trucks and reconditioned them to be able to haul sheetrock and other construction materials, he got a contract with levet. He was a veteran. Got a contract with levet, but he wasnt permitted to buy a home there. He was better off financially than many of the people who purchased homes in levettown, the white people, they were working class men, returning from the war. So the g. I. Bill was available in theory to africanamericans, but if the subdivisions of the federal government was creating wouldnt sell homes to them, the availability of the g. I. Bill didnt do much good. Thank you. I love your book. Ive bought so many copies. I live locally in this neighborhood, and im increasing i grew up in washington on Dupont Circle and one side of the circle was mixed and the other side of the circle was mixed. By the time i graduated from college that had changed and all Dupont Circle had gentry fide. I couldnt afford as a College Student to live there. My current question, what is the impact of zoning . For example, i live in this neighborhood and i have a perfectly acceptable ground floor flat that i could afford to rent to a family that could go to janney school, live downstairs in a one bedroom with a big living room, dining room, kitchen, beautiful garden, but i cant do it because of zoning. I would like to do that. I would like to encourage my neighbors to do that. Instead of building this god awful, pardon my french, homeless shelter with cubicles for people to live in where they have no access to fresh food, they have no access to jobs, suppose they could go to giant, take their kids from here to across town, the amount of money they could buy and help people in this neighborhood and other neighborhoods be to redo their basements to provide Inclusive Housing and get people on the right track to independence instead of continuing slavery by putting people in boxes in the Police Parking lot. All right. Im going to talk about [ inaudible ]. Let me talk about zoning more generally. The term ill use is exclusionary zoning, zoning that prohibits i dont knows the particulars of your neighborhood and im not going to try to find out in the next two seconds, but many, many white neighborhoods, white suburbs in this country have exclusionary Zoning Ordinances that prohibit im not talking about poor people prohibit the construction of Single Family homes on normal lot sizes or prohibit the construction of townhouses or attractive apartment units. Those Zoning Ordinances, this goes to your question, im finished with your neighborhood and i will talk generally about zoning, those zoning yorordinan date back to the prenew deal era and they were specific isracial motivated. In 1917, the Supreme Court ruled that cities could not establish racial zones, they couldnt say that africanamericans could live here and whiteses could live there. The way in which these yord nances were written, the Supreme Court prohibited in 1917, indicated how integrated the neighborhoods in the urban areas were because the typical ordinances prohibited africanamericans from moving on to a block which are a majority white. Integrated block, majority white, africanamericans couldnt move on, majority black, whites couldnt move on to it and the city of baltimore was the first one to do it, had enormous difficulty enforcing it because it ran into problems there was one block, for example, where there was an africanamerican church, maybe it was the reverse, an africanamerican church and the minister moved out of his to have repairs done and couldnt move back in because the majority white nature of the block made it illegal to live in his own church. The Supreme Court ruled that unconstitutional not because the Supreme Court was an integrationist but the Supreme Court for those of you that know some American History in that time from the beginning of the 20th century through the mid 1930s, the Supreme Court thought its main role in life was to protect Property Rights. And the Zoning Ordinances interfered with the Property Rights of a homeowner to sell to whomever he wanted. That was the basis of the Supreme Court decision. City leaders who wanteded to segregate their communities were panicked by this decision. How are they going to do it without these ordinances. In 1920 when harding was elected president , his secretary of commerce was a fellow named Herbert Hoover established the committee on zoning and it was made up of prominent segregationist, planners, who in the cities they came from had designed racially tess sig nated zones but understand the Supreme Court now prohibited it came up with the idea of Economic Zones as a way of keeping out africanamericans. They published a pamphlet on zoning distributed telling them how to zone and exclude lowincome families. They sdants they wanted to exclude africanamericans, and they were also concerned about irish and italian immigrants but it was an economic zoning thing. Its similar to weve had a recent discussion in this country about President Trumps muslim ban where the court have said that the ban on its face seemed nondiscriminatory but President Trump and his campaign made so many discriminatory statements we understand what this is really about. The same is true of the zoning, the zoning pamphlets and laws adopted. In 1926 the Supreme Court upheld the right of cities in suburbs to impose this kind of zoning. It was the only time in 40 years, 35 years of the Supreme Court in the 20th century, that they upheld a policy that interfered in the Property Rights, interfered with the right of a homeowner to do what youre talking about or the right of the developer to build a Single Family home on a small lot size. The only time was when they upheld the right of citieses to zone out lowincome families. The lower court judge said its obvious this is designed to exclude colored and immigrant families and thats unconstitutional according to the 1917 decision but the Supreme Court ignored the lower courts finding of fact and it upheld zoning. Since then weve had the economic zoning across the country. Racially motivated initially, im not saying that every suburb that has adopted a Zoning Ordinance was not economically an elitist than discriminatory, but theres a big aspect of racial motivation behind these zoning laws and its contributed a great deal to maintaining the segregation that we have in this country in suburbs around the country. Hi. So my question back to your thoughts about remedies. I know philadelphia has a policy and im not sure if its still active today but where theyre tearing down those big Public Housing units and then Public Housing authority is buying delipidated property the and building duplexes or Single Family homes in the heart, in the core of the city and then i guess its like a lease to buy program where lowincome families can buy those homes that the Public Housing authority has built. Do you think thats a valid and a replicateble model for other cities . Me again . Sure. When do you get a chance . I didnt write the book. Well, these policies going on around the country and typically what happens in them some families do get to participate in these rental loan programs, rent to own programs, but the vast majority of families who are displaced dont because the density is much lower and so they wind up going somewhere else. Where do they go . Well they go to the only places that will accept them and these are new segregated communities in suburbs. So many people wonder, when we first started being aware of this as a country again, after Michael Brown was killed by a policeman in ferguson, missouri, how did a suburb like ferguson become majority black . I thought black communities were in cities not suburbs. It happened not because of that particular rent to own program because a lot of programs like that where neighborhoods get either gentry fide in the case of st. Louis they demolished a large swaths of the Africanamerican Community that had been created in the central city by the policies that i described before in order so they demolished these areas to build the gateway arch. Its like half of mcdonalds sign on the Mississippi River to introduce you to the west coast or western states, so they demolished these areas and where were the people going to go . They got vouchers instead of Public Housing they got vouchers, typically known as section 8 vouchers, and the section 8 Voucher Program is one in which the Housing Authority with federal money gives family a subsidy so that they can spend no more than 30 of their income on a market rental at the average rent in the community. Well, thats a fine system, except that theres a curious exception to the fair housing act, that is that landlords are permitted to discriminate against section 8 housing vouchers and no