Betsy's Articles

Racial integration, and policies intended to achieve greater integration, continue to generate controversy in the United States, with some of the most heated debates taking place among long-standing advocates of racial equality.

The United States is not a country that has historically distributed its opportunities and resources equitably. There are winners and losers in the “geography of opportunity,” and the winners and losers can all too often be described in terms of race and place. This essay proposes a more expansive approach to redressing this situation than has historically been employed.

Forty years ago, shortly before the passage of the Fair Housing Act, the 1 National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, more generally known as the Kerner Commission, famously declared that the country was “moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal.”
In the fall 2007 issue of Shelterforce, Greg Squires argues that the appropriate response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent rejection of voluntary programs designed to desegregate public schools is a more aggressive fair-housing movement.