Freedom to Discriminate

"Freedom to Discriminate is a thorough, searing indictment that reminds the reader of the historical forces that have shaped U.S. housing policy and illuminates a dark chapter that has largely, until now, remained in the shadows.”—Planetizen, selected as one of the top urban planning books of the year

"In Freedom to Discriminate, Gene Slater, who has spent four decades as a consultant to states and municipalities on housing policy, makes a powerful case that California’s real estate brokers not only originated a system of residential segregation that became a model for the entire nation, but also effectively mobilized support for Proposition 14 by invoking the central idea in America’s political vocabulary: freedom. [...] Providing a template for opposition to an overbearing liberal state, Slater argues, the successful campaign for Proposition 14 laid the foundation for the rise of modern American conservatism."—Eric Foner, Los Angeles Review of Books

"A book of housing history that is meticulously sourced, fast moving, and well argued."—Michael Lens, Journal of the American Planning Association

“A searing account of how the professional gatekeepers of America’s neighborhoods—realtors—constructed and reconstructed the ideas that anchored the gates of residential segregation, as told by someone who spent a career trying to tear them down. Mining the largely unexcavated records of realtors themselves, many of them smoking guns, Freedom to Discriminate offers a critical perspective on the history of housing discrimination: how its ostensibly race-neutral defense helped shape American political conservatism and, ultimately, underpin the yawning contemporary racial wealth gap.”—Mark Brilliant, Associate Professor, Department of History, and Director, Program in American Studies, University of California, Berkeley

“Slater’s richly researched and persuasive account of planned housing segregation in the United States opens the door to a shameful part of our history, the effects of which reverberate to this day. This work should be read by all who are interested in America’s current racial predicament.”—Annette Gordon-Reed, author of On Juneteenth

“They told a Big Lie—that Black neighbors lower property values—then made it true. They forged an iron cage of legal and institutional restriction, then called it ‘individual choice.’ They invented an ‘American dream’ they systematically denied to millions of Americans. The endless resourcefulness of America’s real estate industry in building and maintaining a racist system in the twentieth century is an astonishment to behold. Slater tells the story with brilliance and clarity.”—Rick Perlstein, author of Reaganland

“A fascinating and timely look at how the seemingly innocuous idea of consumer choice can fuel insidious racism and discrimination. Slater’s rigorous analysis is an excellent addition to the history of the United States, before and after Martin Luther King implored the nation to dismantle its racial hierarchies.”—Marcia Chatelain, author of Franchise, winner of the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in History

“Although I’ve been writing about issues of racial justice much of my life, this remarkable book taught me things I didn’t know. Slater shows how the seldom-scrutinized real estate industry is as powerful as the police and the prison-industrial complex in denying Black Americans their rights.”—Adam Hochschild, author of Bury the Chains

“Revelatory. By reframing the segregation debate through the lens of the realtor lobby, Slater offers new insights into well-known practices and deepens our understanding of how property rights became sacred in California—with consequences that are all too evident today.”—Miriam Pawel, author of The Browns of California

“This breathtaking book finds the demons of twenty-first century America not in our nation’s founding documents, but in our very own houses. Slater unearths the history of how California realtors—of all people—redefined the meaning of freedom in ways that still segregate and polarize the entire country today.”—Joe Mathews, California columnist and editor, Zócalo Public Square

“Freedom to Discriminate shows us in lucid detail how the marketplace of property shapes the everyday economics of racism, and how the discourse of property enables the politics of racism.”—Tony Platt, author of Beyond These Walls