Did segregation in America ever really end?

The United States is still reckoning with its history of racism. For a century after slavery ended, US businesses, banks, schools, and neighborhoods were segregated by race. It took a series of Supreme Court cases and acts of Congress to legally ban discrimination based on race, but discrimination isn’t just a switch that can be turned from “on” to “off.”  The legacy of these unfair laws still affect Black Americans today. One example of this is is a method of housing discrimination called “redlining”. It refers to the practice of banks and federal agencies denying loans for homes in neighborhoods deemed too “high risk”, which was often code for “not white.” This made it harder for Black Americans to buy homes, which made it harder to accrue generational wealth. As a result, Black Americans are more likely to live in neighborhoods with lower property values.  And in a country where public schools are funded by property taxes, this is a difficult cycle to break. In effect, the United States is still segregated, but unofficially. Richard Rothstein has been studying this disparity for a long time. He wrote about it in his book The Color of Law. On this episode of UnTextbooked, producer Jonathan Dabel interviews Mr. Rothstein about the lasting effects of redlining on Black Americans. Book: The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America Guest: Richard Rothstein, PhD, Distinguished Fellow of the Economic Policy Institute and a Senior Fellow (emeritus) at the Thurgood Marshall Institute of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Producer: Jonathan Dabel Music: Silas Bohen and Coleman Hamilton Editors: Bethany Denton and Jeff Emtman

Om Podcasten

UnTextbooked is brought to you by teen change-makers who are looking for answers to big questions. Have you ever wondered if protests really can save lives, why assimilation required Native American kids to attend boarding schools, how Black-led organizations for mutual aid began, how the fear of communism led the United States to plan the overthrows of many leaders in Latin America, or why Brazilian cars run on sugar? Or maybe you've questioned when Asian Americans will stop being seen as "perpetual foreigners," how African heritage influences Black activism, or what resilience looks like for Iranian women?  Your textbooks probably didn't teach you how American Jews were an integral part of the Civil Rights Movement, if history’s greatest leaders were generalists or specialists, how a Black teenager and his young lawyer changed America’s criminal justice system, or if either the US or the USSR won the Cold War. Did you know some of the forgotten BIPOC women of history were spying in aid of the French Resistance, that there's more to being a leader than going down with your battleship, or that there is a long history of gender expression in Native American cultures that goes beyond the male/female binary? Listen in as we interview famous authors and historians who have the answers.  Context is the key to understanding topics like British imperialism, segregation, racism, criminal justice, identifying as non-binary and so much more. These intergenerational conversations bring the full power of history to you with the depth and vividness that most textbooks lack. Real history, to help you find answers to your big questions. UnTextbooked makes history unboring forever.