Honestly, the Fair Housing Act of 1968‘s mandate to forcibly reduce segregation in housing feels like it came from an entirely different country. It never had a chance in the face of Nixon’s Southern Strategy, the busing controversy and, especially, after the Reagan Revolution in 1980.
That the Obama administration is going to try to resuscitate the mandate is more testimony that things are changing fast around here. And it’s going to meet some pretty unhinged opposition for the simple reason that you have to be about sixty years old to even remember a time when the federal government would attempt such a thing.
Lately, it’s definitely seemed like things have moved in the opposite direction with the consensus around Affirmative Action fraying badly and people largely forgetting that desegregated living patterns were ever a goal, let alone a legal mandate that the executive branch was supposed to aggressively pursue.
