Knocking on the Door: The Federal Government's Attempt to Desegregate the Suburbs

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Princeton University Press, 2006 - 234 pages

Knocking on the Door is the first book-length work to analyze federal involvement in residential segregation from Reconstruction to the present. Providing a particularly detailed analysis of the period 1968 to 1973, the book examines how the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) attempted to forge elementary changes in segregated residential patterns by opening up the suburbs to groups historically excluded for racial or economic reasons. The door did not shut completely on this possibility until President Richard Nixon took the drastic step of freezing all federal housing funds in January 1973. Knocking on the Door assesses this near-miss in political history, exploring how HUD came surprisingly close to implementing rigorous antidiscrimination policies, and why the agency's efforts were derailed by Nixon.


Christopher Bonastia shows how the Nixon years were ripe for federal action to foster residential desegregation. The period was marked by new legislative protections against housing discrimination, unprecedented federal involvement in housing construction, and frequent judicial backing for the actions of civil rights agencies.


By comparing housing desegregation policies to civil rights enforcement in employment and education, Bonastia offers an unrivaled account of why civil rights policies diverge so sharply in their ambition and effectiveness.

From inside the book

Contents

Residential Segregation The Forgotten Civil Rights Issue
1
The Divergence of Civil Rights Policies in Housing Education and Employment
25
The Federal Government and Residential Segregation 18661968
57
Conviction and Controversy HUD Formulates Its Fair Housing Policies
91
Indirect Attack A Housing Freeze Kills Civil Rights Efforts
121
The Recent Past Present and Future of Residential Desegregation
144
List of Abbreviations for Notes
167
Notes
169
Works Cited
207
Index
227
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About the author (2006)

Christopher Bonastia is assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at Lehman College, City University of New York, and a former Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in Health Policy at the University of California, Berkeley

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