The Color of Law recounted how government at all levels created segregation. Just Action describes how we can begin to undo it.
Just Action
How to Challenge Segregation Enacted Under the Color of Law
“Now what? It’s asked by many when facing brutal truths of racial discrimination and segregation. Just Action answers, offering hope. It defies the darkness of segregation’s legacy by provoking our imaginations and providing examples of efforts that confront its impacts. This book will change minds, inspire public will and revive communities.”
— Rev. Natosha Reid Rice, Vice President, Habitat for Humanity International; Chair, The Redress Movement; and Minister for Public Life, All Saints Episcopal Church (Atlanta)
In his best-selling book The Color of Law, Richard Rothstein demolished the de facto segregation myth that black and white Americans live separately by choice, providing “the most forceful argument ever published on how federal, state, and local governments gave rise to the reinforced neighborhood segregation” (William Julius Wilson). This landmark work — through its nearly one million copies sold — has helped to define the fractious age in which we live.
The Color of Law’s unrefuted account has become conventional wisdom. But how can we begin to undo segregation’s damage? “It’s rare for a writer to feel obligated to be so clear on solutions to the problems outlined in a previous book,” writes E. J. Dionne, yet Richard Rothstein — aware that twenty-first-century segregation continues to promote entrenched inequality — has done just that, teaming with housing policy expert Leah Rothstein to write Just Action, a blueprint for concerned citizens and community leaders.
As recent headlines informed us, twenty million Americans participated in racial justice demonstrations in 2020. Although many displayed “Black Lives Matter” window and lawn signs, few considered what could be done to redress inequality in their own communities. Page by page, Just Action offers programs that activists and their supporters can undertake in their own communities to address historical inequities, providing bona fide answers, based on decades of study and experience, in a nation awash with memes and internet theories.
Often forced to respond to social and political outrage, banks, real estate agencies, and developers, among other institutions, have apologized for past actions. But their pledges — some of them real, others thoroughly hollow — to improve cannot compensate for existing damage. Just Action shows how community groups can press firms that imposed segregation to finally take responsibility for reversing the harm, creating victories that might finally challenge residential segregation and help remedy America’s profoundly unconstitutional past.
Praise for Just Action
Just Action is just the book we need right now. Wise in its insistence on residential segregation as the country’s number-one racial problem, optimistic in its lighting of an achievable path forward, it will enhance and focus the country’s quest for racial justice.
— Nicholas Lemann, staff writer at The New Yorker and former dean of the Columbia School of Journalism
Every strategy for social change is grounded in an analysis of what’s wrong with the way things are. With The Color of Law, Richard Rothstein helped us re-imagine what’s wrong with segregated housing and wealth inequality. In Just Action, he and Leah Rothstein use their deep knowledge of history and policy to present the many things people are doing to build more equitable communities. This is an essential resource for everyone committed to building an economy that works for all of us.
— Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II, author of White Poverty and co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for a Moral Revival
The Color of Law won an extraordinary readership by exploding myths about racial segregation. It was the product of policy decisions at every level of government. Now, Richard Rothstein has teamed up with Leah Rothstein to show how governments and individuals can undo the harm. Just Action is visionary, practical and essential.
— E. J. Dionne Jr., author of Our Divided Political Heart and co-author of 100% Democracy
The Color of Law was a masterclass on how public policy has been used as a tool of anti-blackness to withhold economic freedom from far too many. Its sequel, Just Action, reminds us that if we aspire to freedom, believe in equality and love justice, we must choose to use public policy as a tool to advance those goals so America can deliver on that great promise.
— Tanisha M. Sullivan, Esq., President of the NAACP Boston Branch and New England State Conference
Just Action is the perfect example that redressing the impacts of segregation is not an overly ambitious goal, but a reality.
— John P. Comer, National Organizing Director of The Redress Movement
The Color of Law exposed stark truths about how we became separate and unequal. Just Action is as profound: it contains plain, concrete actions we can take to be agents of change in the neighborhoods where we live, moving our nation closer to the ideals upon which it was founded. Just Action is the book America needs for this moment.
— Lisa Rice, president of the National Fair Housing Alliance
Communities across the U. S. are struggling to counteract the segregation we’ve inherited while also providing desperately needed housing. We want to make change but aren’t sure where to start or how to move forward. Just Action is an excellent, much-needed resource, providing a breadth of solutions to help us move from acknowledging the problems to fixing them.
— Karen Parolek, President of Opticos Design, Inc., Architects of the Missing Middle Housing Movement
Just Action not only continues the exposure of the unfair policies and racial discrimination that plagues our housing industry but also gives us a ‘call to action’ and lays the foundation for ways to rectify the injustices.
— RZA, actor, producer, and member of the Wu Tang Clan
This important book is an urgent call to action to finally end the neighborhood segregation that was so insightfully documented in The Color of Law. It demands that we open a conversation on what we can do. As our country confronts its racial reckoning, Just Action will be an important source from which clergy, civic, and community leaders can draw strategic wisdom.
— Rabbi Jonah Pesner, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism
All too often, our cities are segregated and our suburbs are exclusionary. The bad news is that this is the result of a century of malicious policy. The good news is that policy can change. Just Action provides an engaging, practical guide for effectuating that change.
— M. Nolan Gray, Research Director, California YIMBY (Yes in My Backyard), and author of Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It
Just Action is a brilliant blueprint for how to finally successfully address racial segregation. It rightly recognizes that solutions are not going to come from the Supreme Court or Congress. It persuasively explains that action must come at the local level and it outlines dozens of inventive strategies local groups can pursue to redress segregation in their own communities. This is an essential book for all supporters of racial justice.
— Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean, University of California, Berkeley School of Law
The Rothstein father-daughter duo reminds ordinary people of their capacity to make extraordinary changes when they work together to take ‘just action’ to redress structural inequities, like residential segregation. The detailed vignettes between the pages of Just Action illustrate what it looks like to build relationships that can — in time — lay the groundwork for a more equitable, multiracial democracy.
— Karla McKanders, Director, Thurgood Marshall Institute of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund
The Color of Law brilliantly demonstrated the brutal decisions that separated us. Just Action answers the question, “What can we now do to change?” While federal policies are mired in polarization, this very hopeful new book raises a myriad of ethical choices and suggests concrete policy decisions that can transform our lives, our country, and our sense of community.
— Jim Wallis, Inaugural Chair in Faith and Justice at the McCourt School of Public Policy and Founding Director of the Center on Faith and Justice at Georgetown University and author of God’s Politics: Why The Right Gets It Wrong, and the Left Doesn’t Get It
Just Action is the perfect antidote to feelings of powerlessness — it’s a menu of steps we can all take to undo the harms of segregation, with engaging stories of people taking action in communities all across the country.
— Philip Tegeler, Executive Director of the Poverty & Race Research Action Council (PRRAC)
Just Action is an essential guide into the policies and practices that have sustained residential segregation. By following strategies detailed in this book, we can work to dismantle the barriers hindering progress and create a more inclusive and equitable society, one neighborhood at a time.
— Debra Gore-Mann, President & CEO, The Greenlining Institute
The Color of Law awakened, Just Action compels. Book clubs, classrooms, and dinner tables were jolted by irrefutable evidence in The Color of Law that government created segregation. Now, we must head to community centers, town halls, and to our elected officials to act. Just Action is a must-read to guide that path forward.
— Sarah Brundage, president of the National Association of Affordable Housing Lenders
Kudos to the Rothsteins for teaching and leading us to a better and more equitable America. Just Action enlightens homeownership leaders, community advocates, and socially conscious executives and paves a path for us to follow. Let’s make a difference together.
— Marcia Griffin, CEO and Founder, HomeFree-USA
We wrote a popular high school lesson based on The Color of Law. Students are surprised to learn of systemic causes of racial housing segregation, having been led to believe that individual families are to blame. They invariably ask, ‘What can we do to remedy this injustice?’ Just Action helps them answer that question. It’s ideal for high school social studies classrooms, service-learning programs, and libraries.
— Deborah Menkart, co-director, Zinn Education Project
National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC) members … should read this valuable book that provides a toolbox for them to create integrated and vibrant neighborhoods.
— Josh Silver, Senior Fellow and former Vice President of Research and Policy, National Community Reinvestment Coalition
Just Action opens conversations about how to remedy the inequities in homeownership that persist because of historic abuses by local, state, and federal government actions.
— John Gamboa, Executive Director, National Alliance to Close the Wealth Gap
After reading The Color of Law, the number one question asked by our real estate agents and community members was ‘What can we do to counteract the harm that was done?’ With Just Action, we now have numerous tangible ways in which every one of us — neighbors, lenders, government officials, real estate agents — can create more equitable communities and neighborhoods.
— Amanda Lankerd, CEO, Battle Creek Area Association of Realtors
Just Action is the ‘starters guide’ to a new civil rights movement. With clarity and foresight, the Rothsteins offer the blueprint to combat housing discrimination that has robbed communities of generational wealth. Just Action should be required reading for current and future leaders who aim to restore balance and eliminate the wealth gap.
— Raymond Doswell, Executive Director, Greenwood Rising (Tulsa, Oklahoma)
A useful framework … Historian Richard Rothstein, whose book The Color of Law exposed how federal, state, and local laws have perpetuated segregation, teams with his daughter, community organizer and housing-policy expert Leah Rothstein, to argue forcefully that residential segregation underlies the nation’s social problems … Although the authors acknowledge that not every reader will become an activist, anyone can support efforts to redress segregation. A thoughtful, pragmatic manual for reform.
— Kirkus Reviews
[An] impassioned guide to ending residential segregation in America. Blending the research behind Richard’s bestseller The Color of Law with Leah’s experience as an affordable housing consultant and union organizer in the San Francisco Bay Area, the authors assesses the many causes of segregation … Throughout, inspiring stories of people uniting to preserve their communities and redress segregation are interwoven with nitty-gritty policy details. It’s a comprehensive and inspiring guide to solving a pressing social problem.
— Publishers Weekly
A new book, Just Action, offers policy ideas for reducing residential segregation, much of which is the legacy of subsidized mortgages that were designed to exclude Black Americans. Today, write the authors, Richard and Leah Rothstein, “Placing ‘Black Lives Matter’ signs is not enough.”
— David Leonhardt, The New York Times
About the Authors
Leah Rothstein’s expertise in the full range of housing policy stems from more than two decades as a community and union organizer and a consultant to housing developers, cities and counties, redevelopment agencies, and private firms. She specializes in community development and affordable housing policy, practice, and finance.
Since Just Action's release, Leah has traveled the country, speaking to community groups, real estate associations, congregations, civil rights organizations, universities, housing professionals, bankers, and many others about how we can all take just actions to redress segregation. She has delivered the keynote address at numerous national and regional housing, human rights, economic development, and real estate conferences. She continues to advise local governments and community organizations on strategies to promote fair housing and challenge segregation.
Leah has worked on public policy and community change, from the grassroots to the halls of government. She led research on reforming community corrections policy and practice to be focused on rehabilitation, not punishment. She has been a consultant on community development and affordable housing policy, practice, and finance. Her policy work is informed by her years as a community and labor organizer.
Leah received a Bachelor Degree, with honors, in American Studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz and a Master of Public Policy from the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley.
She lives in Oakland, California with her partner, Skye. To resist the isolation of single-family housing, they have created a co-housing compound with friends.
Richard Rothstein, the author of The Color of Law (2017) and co-author with his daughter, Leah Rothstein, of Just Action, has written many books and articles on educational policy and racial inequality. Until his attempt at retirement in 2018, most of his work over the previous 30 years was done under the auspices of the Economic Policy Institute, with a break from 1999 to 2002 when he wrote “Lessons,” the education column of the New York Times.
His work in the 1990s and 2000s on the racial achievement gap in schools led him to conclude that the biggest problem facing American education was the segregation of its schools, that left classrooms overwhelmed by the social and economic challenges faced by low-income, disproportionately African American, children. Recognizing that schools are segregated mostly because the neighborhoods in which they are located are segregated, he decided to investigate how those neighborhoods came to be segregated, and this led him to explain it in The Color of Law.
Previous books include Grading Education: Getting accountability right (2008); Class and Schools: Using social, economic, and educational policy to close the black-white achievement gap (2004); and The Way We Were?: The myths and realities of America's student achievement (1998). He co-authored All Else Equal: Are public and private schools different? (2003); and The Charter School Dust Up: Examining the evidence on enrollment and achievement (2005). Many of his other publications can be found at: https://www.epi.org/people/richard-rothstein/
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