Lent begins next week, on Ash Wednesday, February 26. Traditionally, Lent has been a season of lament for the church …
We live in a broken world that inflicts violence on other humans, other creatures, and creation as a whole. And often the people of God participate in this violence as much or more than our fellow humans that do not follow in the way of Jesus. We have much to lament: racism, sexism, homophobia, consumerism, environmental degradation, and on and on.
As we lament during the season of Lent, we recommend reading one or more of these books that narrate history in a way that gives shape to our laments. Here are a few book recommendations that are fitting Lenten reading, some tell stories of the church’s sins, others tell the stories of broader sins in which the church has too often participated uncritically.
The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
Richard Rothstein
This “powerful and disturbing history” exposes how American governments deliberately imposed racial segregation on metropolitan areas nationwide (New York Times Book Review).
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.
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