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ABSTRACT: This article argues that the unconstitutional and racist policies of the federal government and of local governments have segregated housing throughout the United States and that the consequences of these policies have had an enduring negative effect, not just on African Americans, but on our whole society. African Americans have been excluded from most of the benefits of American social policy, yet they have been treated as if their lower resulting medium household wealth ($11,030 for African Americans compared to $134,230 for whites) is their own fault. In 1993 it was predicted that if housing segregation was permitted to continue, poverty, crime and drugs would become more widespread in the black community, and racial inequality would grow as would white fear and hostility toward blacks. Currently racial polarization has corrupted our politics so that interracial political alliances have become difficult to organize. Unless we make genuine efforts to end segregation, we cannot hope to move forward as a people and a nation.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions told the Senate Judiciary Committee 20 years ago that affirmative action irritated people because it could cause people to lose opportunities, "simply because of their race." This sense of grievance among whites still exists and implies that "all that stands between hard-working whites and success are undeserving minorities who are doled out benefits" by the government (Katznelson, 2017). Historian Eric Foner states that there is "a sort of exhaustion with black protest, an attitude of 'What are these people really complaining about? Look at what we've done for you' "(Wilkerson, 2016).
In fact, the most important parts of American social policy, such as the minimum wage, union rights, Social Security, and the G.I. Bill, "conferred enormous benefits on whites while excluding most Southern blacks" (Katznelson, 2017). Old-age insurance (Social Security proper) and unemployment insurance excluded farm workers and domestics-jobs heavily occupied by blacks. "65 percent of African Americans nationally and between 70 and 80 percent in the South were ineligible. The NAACP protested, calling the new American safety net 'a sieve with holes just big enough for the majority of Negroes to fall through'" (Coates, 2014, p. 10). The G.I. bill also failed African Americans by mirroring the country's racist housing policy. Title III of the bill,...