Northern liberals pioneered what scholars now call “colorblind racism.” That’s when racially neutral language makes extreme racial inequalities appear to be the natural outcome of innocent private choices or free-market forces rather than intentional public policies like housing covenants, federal mortgage redlining, public housing segregation, and school zoning.
Democratic lawmakers drafted civil-rights legislation that would challenge Jim Crow laws in the South while leaving de facto segregation in the North intact. When NBC News asked the civil-rights organizer Bayard Rustin why many African American communities rioted the summer after the bill passed, he said, “People have to understand that although the civil-rights bill was good and something for which I worked arduously, there was nothing in it that had any effect whatsoever on the three major problems Negroes face in the North: housing, jobs, and integrated schools…the civil-rights bill, because of this failure, has caused an even deeper frustration in the North.”
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/03/exit-left/476190/
It is always fun to find the pieces of the event which are conveniently left out of the mass media narrative. However, the author's firm belief that more policies are what is needed to bring the disenfranchised minorities into the fold is fantasy. People are not in need of more laws, they are in need of an unfettered economy where those who work hard and express their life energy gain the benefits that others want. When the path to success is clear and can be seen, more will choose it.
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