View a FREE sample

This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What percentage of Westchester county, NY, subdivisions with more than 75 units, built between 1935 and 1947 does Rothstein say had racially restrictive covenants?

2. Whose administration turned racially restrictive covenants into a legal requirement for mortgages?

3. How does Rothstein characterize the nature of the sales when blockbusters sold to African Americans?

4. What does Rothstein say was behind the fear of property values falling?

5. What was the effect of sharecropping on African-American families?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Rothstein say deeds were used as mechanisms of segregation, and how does he say they were backed as de jure segregation?

2. How does Rothstein circumvent the argument that racially restrictive covenants and exclusionary zoning ordinances were private agreements?

3. What does Rothstein identify as the force that made blockbusting possible?

4. What problems does Rothstein say developers encountered when they tried to sell to African-American families?

5. How did towns and developments find ways around the Buchanan decision?

6. What does Rothstein cite as evidence that the government is obligated to remedy segregation?

7. Why does Rothstein say that he started his book in San Francisco Bay?

8. What effect does Rothstein say Woodrow Wilson had on integration in the U.S. government?

9. What is the distinction Rothstein makes between de jure and de facto segregation?

10. How did life change in the South in 1877?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What are the problems or limitations of Rothstein’s argument in The Color of Law? Where is his argument the weakest? Where could his argument be stronger? Does he fully accomplish the goals he sets out for the book?

Essay Topic 2

Where is the climax of this book? Are there different climaxes? What questions does each climax resolve? What questions does each climax leave unanswered?

Essay Topic 3

What is missing from this book? What should have been covered or presented that was not? What is the effect of this absence? Describe an element that ought to have been covered, and explain why it would have made the book stronger.

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 945 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample