In 1966, a housing discrimination bill in favor of President Lyndon Johnson was relinquished by the United States Senate. Subsequently, after two years, civil rights advocates tried to pass the same discrimination bill. Following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr, the U.S. Senate permitted a Fair Housing Act which prohibited private discrimination in housing sales and rentals. What stood out to me in this section of The Color of Law is how an assassination was needed to establish the ethical bill. It is almost like the U.S. Senate was waiting for a perfect time to pass it. In my opinion, Martin Luther King Jr should not have been the reason to pass this bill. This makes it seem like the bill was passed just to show sympathy.
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While there were reductions of discriminatory barriers in the labor market, African-Americans were not affected by upwards mobility. Going from lower ranks to the middle class in the national income distribution is difficult for everyone to do, especially African-Americans. “For those born to parents in the bottom income quintile, over half remain there as adults, and only a quarter make it to the middle quintile or higher” (Rothstein, 2017, pg. 184). This meant the only access to jobs and schools were low due to the lack of mobility. Another point is how the Section 8 program segregates African-Americans and other minority groups to low-poverty neighborhoods. Due to the socioeconomic status of Section 8 housing applicants, vouchers are commonly needed. Since the vouchers are too small to rent in middle-class areas, the only way to take advantage of the voucher is to move to an even more segregated neighborhood than the one they were already living in. As a result, minorities are clustered once again, in neighborhoods with no diversity.
The information given in this chapter correlates to the article Gentrification by Ajay Panicker. In both pieces, gentrification is seen as affecting African-American and other minority groups living situations. As viewed in The Color of Law, gentrification through private housing, redevelopment projects, and highway routing had forced low-income neighborhoods to leave and search in different locations. This negatively affects minorities and causes them to face difficult