ISBN: 9781597145435
Editorial: Heyday
Autor: Slater, Gene
Año de edición: 2021
N° Paginas: 456
Tipo de pasta: Pasta dura
Descripción: Product DescriptionA bracing, original look at the connected histories of real estate, institutionalized racism, and our political polarizationA landmark history told with supreme narrative skill, Freedom to Discriminate uncovers realtors’ definitive role in segregating America and shaping modern conservative thought. Gene Slater follows this story from inside the realtor profession, drawing on many industry documents that have remained unexamined until now. His book traces the increasingly aggressive ways realtors justified their practices, how they successfully weaponized the word “freedom” for their cause, and how conservative politicians have drawn directly from realtors’ rhetoric for the past several decades. Much of this story takes place in California, and Slater demonstrates why one of the very first all-white neighborhoods was in Berkeley, and why the state was the perfect place for Ronald Reagan’s political ascension.The hinge point in this history is Proposition 14, a largely forgotten but monumentally important 1964 ballot initiative. Created and promoted by California realtors, the proposition sought to uphold housing discrimination permanently in the state’s constitution, and a vast majority of Californians voted for it. This vote had explosive consequences—ones that still inform our deepest political divisions today—and a true reckoning with the history of American racism requires a closer look at the events leading up to it. Freedom to Discriminate shatters preconceptions about American segregation, and it connects many seemingly disparate aspects of the nation’s history in a novel and galvanizing way.Review"Freedom to Discriminate is a thorough, searing indictment that reminds the reader of the historical forces that have shaped U.S. housing policy and illuminates a dark chapter that has largely, until now, remained in the shadows.”—Planetizen, selected as one of the top urban planning books of the year"In Freedom to Discriminate, Gene Slater, who has spent four decades as a consultant to states and municipalities on housing policy, makes a powerful case that California’s real estate brokers not only originated a system of residential segregation that became a model for the entire nation, but also effectively mobilized support for Proposition 14 by invoking the central idea in America’s political vocabulary: freedom. [...] Providing a template for opposition to an overbearing liberal state, Slater argues, the successful campaign for Proposition 14 laid the foundation for the rise of modern American conservatism."—Eric Foner, Los Angeles Review of Books"A book of housing history that is meticulously sourced, fast moving, and well argued."—Michael Lens, Journal of the American Planning Association“A searing account of how the professional gatekeepers of America’s neighborhoods—realtors—constructed and reconstructed the ideas that anchored the gates of residential segregation, as told by someone who spent a career trying to tear them down. Mining the largely unexcavated records of realtors themselves, many of them smoking guns, Freedom to Discriminate offers a critical perspective on the history of housing discrimination: how its ostensibly race-neutral defense helped shape American political conservatism and, ultimately, underpin the yawning contemporary racial wealth gap.”—Mark Brilliant, Associate Professor, Department of History, and Director, Program in American Studies, University of California, Berkeley“Slater’s richly researched and persuasive account of planned housing segregation in the United States opens the door to a shameful part of our history, the effects of which reverberate to this day. This work should be read by all who are interested in America’s current racial predicament.”—Annette Gordon-Reed, author of On Juneteenth“They told a Big Lie—that Black neighbors lower property values—then made it true. They forged an iron cage of legal and institutional restriction, then called it ‘
- Idioma: Inglés
- Envío: Desde EE. UU.
- Libro Impreso y Nuevo
