Some years ago, I lived for a time in Oak Park, Illinois. For decades Oak Park has been filled with rich white liberals, living just across the street from a City of Chicago neighborhood, Austin, that is filled with poor black people. Yet, for some reason the citizens of Oak Park simply can’t fathom, people from Austin almost never move to Oak Park. Who can say why? Well, Richard Rothstein can. His book, The Color of Law, shows all the ways in which the officials of Oak Park, and innumerable other government functionaries across the nation, have aggressively worked for decades to keep black people in inferior, segregated housing. Rothstein’s service is to precisely set out why this happened, how it was done, and what exactly the effects today are.
Rothstein doesn’t actually mention Oak Park, but it is the perfect example of many of the racist behaviors he documents. To this day, the quaint-sounding “Village” funds (behind a screen of third parties, whose pictures are not shown on their website) the boringly named Oak Park Regional Housing Center. The OPRHC advertises all over Chicago that it will help those moving to Oak Park find rental apartments. Since Oak Park has very few rentals (due to deliberate zoning to prevent them), this is a seemingly valuable service. Thus, when I needed to move to Oak Park, I took advantage of it, setting up an appointment, as required, with an “advisor.”
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