How long does it take to read The Color of Law?
Richard Rothstein
The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein takes about 6 hours 33 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 6 hours 33 minutes
A weekend read
First published 2017. 357 pages, about 98,175 words.
14 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 10 hours 55 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 6 hours 33 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 4 hours 5 minutes |
The page count is the median across 7 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Widely heralded as a "masterful" (Washington Post) and "essential" (Slate) history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein's The Color of Law offers "the most forceful argument ever published on how federal, state, and local governments gave rise to and reinforced neighborhood segregation" (William Julius Wilson). Exploding the myth of de facto segregation arising from private prejudice or the unintended consequences of economic forces, Rothstein describes how the American government systematically imposed residential segregation: with undisguised racial zoning; public housing that purposefully segregated previously mixed communities; subsidies for builders to create whites-only suburbs; tax exemptions for institutions that enforced segregation; and support for violent resistance to African Americans in white neighborhoods. A groundbreaking, "virtually indispensable" study that has already transformed our understanding of twentieth-century urban history (Chicago Daily Observer), The Color of Law forces us to face the obligation to remedy our unconstitutional past.
Subjects: Government policy, Discrimination in housing, Segregation, LAW / Housing & Urban Development, Discrimination & Race Relations, African Americans
