This book is more painful to read than Germinal or the pornographic The Rehnquist Choice. But everyone should try. The book first describes how white Americans historically kept their residential neighborhoods white since about 1920. Initially by simply murdering African-Americans trying to move in. Then with widespread restrictive deed covenants. More recently, with loan institution redlining, and low-income public housing under-funding and ripoffs. Most recently, with pervasive real estate agent ruses, misdirection, and discouragement. This history needed telling clearly and succinctly. Subsequently, the book defines "apartheid" rigorously and identifies it in sixteen urban areas in the country, urban areas containing a substantial percentage of all African-Americans. The book then looks at the living conditions of the most isolated, homeless and hopeless, drug-and-violence-obsessed African-Americans, and identifies apartheid as a cause, if not the cause, of these conditions. lt;br /gt; lt;br /gt;John Deans book says that Nixon in the early 1970s required his three Supreme Court appointees, the most important of whom was later-Chief-Justice William Rehnquist, to be "right" on the race-residential question and, essentially, to look with disfavor on federal efforts to enforce the Fair Housing Act with respect to single-family homes. Consequently, American residential neighborhoods -- already less integrated in 1970 than in 1920 -- are less integrated now than in 1970. Between 1920 and 1970 the racial prejudice of individuals probably could be blamed. In the thirty-five years since Rehnquist commenced to "put his stamp" on the United States Supreme Court, its been the institutionalized insanity of our electoral system and its deformed progenies, based on money and gerrymandering undisturbed by Court rulings, that get the credit.
I am sorry, but when I was reading this, It did not catch my attention, but rather put me to sleep. I am a college professor, and my students have written better papers than this. Have fun reading it if you want to fall a sleep. If you cant sleep, pick up this book
This remains, without question, one of the most excellent and insightful assessments of race in America. Whether you are a US citizen or an international visitor to the US this book is fundmental to understanding the hidden dimensions of ongoing racial division. Read it and pass it on in the hope that people will recognise the irrefutable evidence of racial segregation offered by Massey and Denton.
