I'm Dan Stagemann. I'm the college's director of research. And I'm here to welcome you, sorry, to the opening talk in the Office for the Advancement of Research's sixth annual book talk series, featuring Richard Rothstein on his acclaimed 2017 book, The Color of Law. We're honored today to have with us John J. College's president, Carol Mason, who will be providing introductory remarks. But first, I'd like to thank the publisher, W.W. Norton, for providing a number of complimentary copies of Color of Law. We've distributed those to the students of Professor J. Borchert's class who are here today and who have in turn graciously agreed to provide the first few questions for our audience Q&A. Where are our Professor Borchert students out there? I just want to make sure I know who you are. OK, wonderful. Well, when we get to the Q&A, you will be the first we call upon. And without further ado, please welcome President Carol Mason. Good afternoon, everybody. And so poor Dan had to do a song and dance to Stahl while I left a budget meeting to get here.  So the attorney general was supposed to be giving a speech, and she was really late. She was really late. I kept doing everything I could. And finally, I just had to give the mic to somebody else because I was like, I don't know what else to say to Stahl. So I'm glad I didn't make you have to tap dance up here. So thank you all for coming to this book series today. And I'm so excited about this particular topic. So today we have the privilege of having Professor Richard Rothstein join us for a highly anticipated book talk. His powerful book, The Color of Law, A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America is a meticulous, heartbreaking look into our country's discriminatory housing policies. Residential racial segregation is an issue that fits into our justice-focused curriculum. But it's more than just a topic our students to discuss in the classroom. It's an issue that affects our daily lives. John Jay students come from every borough and neighborhood in New York City, and they represent a diverse array of races, ethnicities, religions, and nationalities. But as Professor Rothstein has shown, like every other city in America, New York is racially segregated. And I have to tell you, I grew up in Amityville on Long Island. And I grew up actually until I was an adult and bought a townhouse in Chapel Hill, I had only lived in black neighborhoods. My neighbors were all people who looked just like me every place I'd lived in my adult life until I bought a townhouse in Chapel Hill. Now that was by choice in my later years and my adult years. But when my parents raised me in Amityville, the reason they ended up in Amityville is because when they tried to get a mortgage, they weren't able to get a mortgage, but my father had a friend who was a mortgage broker. And he put my father's mortgage application in the middle of the stack that he was submitting to people to fund their mortgages, and they either had to accept everybody, including my father, or turn down everybody. So that was how they got a mortgage as black people in the 1950s to buy a house on Long Island. And so I lived what you're talking about. Today, in many places, people have a choice, but in many they don't. And that means for many of our students, they come from segregated neighborhoods, neighborhoods composed of folks who look just like them, which is a lot of times by choice, but sometimes it's not. And for me, it was a choice because I liked being able, because I worked in an environment that was predominantly white. I liked coming home to a neighborhood where there were people that looked like me because it gave me comfort. But the question is, what is the choice that you have? And that means that when our students come to John Jay, for some of them, this may be the first time they're experiencing diversity and really America's melting pot. And so this is an opportunity for us to give them a diverse experience in their education environment. At John Jay, we pride ourselves on being a place where any student from any background can find social and economic mobility through education. But with this country's history of residential racial segregation, that social mobility might still be out of reach for many people. I remember driving through Atlanta and wondering in Atlanta, a city that is the leadership in civic and business is so heavily African-American and wondering why our students who are from low incomes could not see what they could become. And then one day I was driving through going to the Braves game and I took a wrong term and I wound up in a housing project. And there was one way in and one way out. And that was a metaphor for me of what these young people were experiencing. So the environment in which people live can sometimes limit their opportunities and their exposure to opportunity. And so today, Professor Rothstein is going to help us unpack the complicated history behind residential racial segregation and explain the unjust ramifications it left behind. So please join me in welcoming Professor Rothstein. Okay, thank you again. As you all know, in the mid 20th century, this nation made a resolution that we were going to abolish racial segregation. We came to the conclusion that the separate but equal system that we had developed allegedly across the country was a fraud. We knew that segregation was immoral. That it was harmful to both blacks and to whites, even that it was unconstitutional. Civil rights lawyers began in the 1930s by attacking racial segregation in law schools because they figured that if judges couldn't understand anything else, they might be able to understand that you couldn't get a good legal education in a segregated law school. And then they went on, they built on that precedent to challenge racial segregation in colleges and universities. Those precedents were then incorporated in an attack on elementary and secondary education. And in 1954, as I'm sure you know, the Brown versus Board of Education, Supreme Court decision prohibited segregation in elementary and secondary schools, at least by law. The Brown decision then gave life, new life to a civil rights movement in many places led by young people, like many of you, that succeeded in 1960s in abolishing segregation and employment, in lunch counters and restaurants, in buses, in interstate transportation, even in water fountains. And yet, despite this civil rights movement, despite our abolition of segregation and all of these forms of American life, despite our understanding that it was immoral and harmful to both blacks and whites, we left untouched the biggest segregation of all, which is that every metropolitan area in this country is residentially segregated. I've lived in many of them. Every one that I've lived in had clearly defined areas that were white or mostly white, clearly defined areas that were black or mostly black. And we've all accepted this as part of the natural environment, all of us. I'm not exempting myself. We all accepted this as part of the natural environment, something that we thought was too bad. We all think segregation in the neighborhood is too bad, but not something that we can do anything about.  The myth is that racial segregation in neighborhoods, unlike all the other segregations that we abolished, racial segregation in neighborhoods just sort of happened by accident. It happened because white homeowners refused to sell homes in white neighborhoods to African-Americans or maybe real estate agents or banks discriminated in whom they sold houses to or whom they lent money to buy. Or maybe it's just that black people and white people like to live with each other in the same race. And that's why we have segregation. Or maybe it's because African-Americans typically, on average, have lower incomes than whites. And so they can't afford to move to middle-class white neighborhoods. All of these individual, accidental reasons, uncoordinated private activity, not organized by government, not the result of rules and laws and regulations like the other segregations. All of these are what have created racial segregation. And if it happened by accident, it can only unhappen by accident. It's not our responsibility to do anything about. We've given a name to this myth. The name we give it is de facto segregation. It's a term that all of you are familiar with. I've used it, you use it. The de facto segregation explanation is shared by liberals and conservatives, by Democrats and Republicans, by African-Americans and whites. We all refer to de facto segregation. It turns out, and what I'm going to speak with you about today, is the de facto explanation for residential segregation is another myth. It has no basis in fact, has no basis in reality. Of course, it was private discrimination. But without government requirement, without government rules, regulations, structures, private discrimination would have not had the force, would not have been able to create the segregated landscape that we know today. It was government policy, not private activity, that was designed to ensure that African-Americans and whites could not live near one another in our country that has created the situation we have today. And the segregation that we have today, this segregation that we call de facto, is the underlying cause of most of our most serious social problems. We don't name it as the cause. We try to deal with the social problems on their own without examining the cause. But I got to this, some of you may know, I used to be an education writer. I was the education columnist at the New York Times for a while. I got to this because I understood that the achievement gap in schools between blacks and whites was primarily the result of residential segregation. If you take children, the most seriously economically and socially disadvantaged children in this country, who may be coming to school in poor health, living in polluted neighborhoods, in great stress because of family economic insecurity or homeless, and you take children like that and you concentrate them in single schools. We call that concentration segregated schools. You concentrate children that these most serious disadvantages in single schools, it's inconceivable that schools can overcome these disadvantages and achieve, on average, at the level that schools in communities where children come to school well rested and well nourished and without serious stress come to school with. It's not to say that some disadvantaged children don't achieve at higher levels than typical middle class children. Of course they do. There's a distribution of outcomes for every human characteristic. You know that. But on average, a child who comes to school with lead poisoning or asthma or stress, as I said, is going to achieve at a lower average level than a child who comes to school well rested and well nourished and secure, economically secure. So schools in this country are segregated because the neighborhoods in which they're located are segregated. And so neighborhood segregation underlies the achievement gap that our social policy, our school policy worries so much about. And public health. African-Americans have lower life expectancies than whites, on average, higher disease rates from some of the most serious diseases. It comes in large part from living in polluted neighborhoods, from living in neighborhoods without access to good food, to healthy food, in neighborhoods of high stress, in neighborhoods without good healthcare institutions. That, too, is a symptom of residential segregation. And certainly, the violence that we've all observed in the last few years between police and young men exists only because we concentrate the most disadvantaged young men in this country, in single neighborhoods without access to good jobs, without access to transportation even, to get to those jobs without hope, and without the ability to participate in schools that aren't themselves segregated. That, too, is a result of residential segregation. And yet, we spend all of our policy time worrying about school reform or public health initiatives or criminal justice reform, as I'm sure many of you were involved in, without ever dealing with the underlying cause of all of these things, which is residential segregation. And as I said, we excuse ourselves from doing it with a myth. Well, I want to spend a few minutes with you this afternoon hoping to demolish that myth because the residential segregation of every metropolitan area in this country was created by government policy. So let me, and let me say, before I go into the descriptions of it, that if that's correct, and by the end of this talk, I hope you'll understand that it's correct, if it's correct that racial segregation was created by government policy, then it's this unconstitutional segregation of water fountains, which you spent so much time worrying about. And if it's unconstitutional, then we have an obligation as American citizens, all of us, as Americans, to remedy it because if racial segregation of neighborhoods was created by government violations of civil rights, then we have an obligation to remedy it in the same way that we remedied the other segregations that we began by speaking about. So as I said, let me spend some time describing some of the chief ways in which the government segregated this country. One of them was with public housing policy, and we all think we know what public housing is. It's a place where poor people live, lots of single mothers with children, lots of those young men without hope and engaged in formal unlawful economic activity. That's not how public housing began in this country. Public housing began in this country in a new deal, and it was a program not for poor people, but for working class families who could pay rent, but for whom no housing was available because no housing was being constructed in the Depression for working class families. Poor people weren't permitted into public housing. In order to get into public housing, you had to have a good employment record. You had to be employed even in the Depression. You had to have a good employment record. You had to have good furniture. They inspected your furniture to make sure that you would maintain the high standards of public housing. The Public Works Administration, one of the first new deal agencies, built public housing for working class families, and everywhere in the country, it segregated it in the North, in the Midwest, in the Mid-Atlantic States, even in the South, but not only in the South. And it segregated it even in communities that were integrated before the public housing was developed. Now that may surprise you, but in the mid-early 20th century, we had many integrated urban neighborhoods in this country. We would be stunned if we were transported back to the mid-early 20th century to see the extent of integration that existed in urban areas. For the simple reason that most jobs were located in a single downtown district, a factory district, workers who worked in this district, whether they are African-American or Irish immigrants, or Italian immigrants, or Polish immigrants, or Jews, or rural migrants, all of them had to be able to walk to work because they had no volumobiles, which they get there. So they had to be able to walk to work or maybe take short streetcar rides. They had to live in the same broad neighborhoods that were close to the downtown factory districts. So these were integrated neighborhoods. Some of you may have read the autobiography of Langston Hughes, the great African-American poet, novelist, playwright, and it's called The Big C. I don't know, have any of you read it? In his autobiography, go back and look at it again. You'll see that he describes how he grew up as an adolescent in an integrated Cleveland neighborhood, downtown Cleveland. We don't think of downtown Cleveland as having integrated neighborhoods today. He grew up in an integrated downtown Cleveland neighborhood. He says his best friend in high school was Polish. He dated a Jewish girl. I'm not saying this was the norm in mid-20th century America, but it was much less rare than it is today. The Public Works Administration in the 1930s went into that neighborhood when Langston Hughes grew up. It was an integrated neighborhood, demolished housing, and built two separate projects. One for whites, one for African-Americans, clearly segregated, and with that and other projects built elsewhere in the city of Cleveland created a pattern and reinforced the pattern of segregation that otherwise would never have developed with such strength. In my book, The Color of Law, I like to talk about the self-satisfied places like Cambridge, Massachusetts, for example. The area between Harvard and MIT called the Central Square Neighborhood. Maybe some of you are familiar with it. In the 1930s, the Central Square Neighborhood was about half black and half white. It was an integrated neighborhood. The Public Works Administration demolished housing in that neighborhood, built segregated housing, two separate projects were built by the government, one for whites, one for African-Americans. Other segregated projects were built elsewhere in the Boston area, creating a pattern of segregation that otherwise might never have developed, or if it developed would not have developed with such strength that it still determines the landscape of Boston today. Even in the South, in Atlanta, they may have segregated water fountains then, but they didn't segregate neighborhoods for the reason that I said, you had to be able to walk to work. An area near downtown Atlanta called the Flats was an integrated neighborhood, a low-income neighborhood. The government demolished housing there and built a segregated project for whites only, forcing African-Americans who lived in that neighborhood to double up with relatives or find housing elsewhere. During World War II, the process became even more accentuated. During World War II, hundreds of thousands of workers flocked to centers of war production in order to take jobs in defense plants that hadn't previously, jobs that hadn't previously existed during the Depression. They overwhelmed the communities in which these plants were located. They couldn't absorb the influx of workers suddenly as we ramped up war production very, very rapidly. Again, in my book, I talk about another self-satisfied area, Berkeley, California. Just north of Berkeley, a suburb of Berkeley is called Richmond. It was the center of shipbuilding during World War II. There was no shipbuilding there before the war. Richmond was a small, sleepy town of 20,000 whites, virtually no African-Americans, well, no African-Americans were living there. There were a few in the outskirts working as domestics and white families homes. There were very few African-Americans living anywhere on the West Coast before World War II. Hundreds of, 100,000 workers flocked to Richmond. It went from zero employment, the shipyards there to 100,000 by the end of the war. Some of those workers brought their families, so you had an influx in population of maybe 300,000 people into a community of 20,000. I don't know if any of you ever have thought about or already considered how you grow a community from 20,000 to 300,000 in just four years. It's quite a challenge. The only way it could be done was by the federal government building housing for these workers and it built segregated housing. It built housing for the African-American workers along the railroad tracks in the industrial area. It was temporary shoddy housing. It built more stable housing for the white workers and their families and the residential areas of Richmond. The city of Richmond justified the different quality of housing by saying that the African-Americans who came there would have to leave at the end of the war anyway, so there was no need to build stable housing for them. And the government built housing, as I say, along the railroad tracks in Richmond and south of that in Berkeley and in Albany, creating a pattern of segregation there and with other projects elsewhere in San Francisco and in Los Angeles and in Portland and in Seattle, creating segregation that otherwise did not exist and had not existed in those cities and it still exists today. After World War II, there was still an enormous housing shortage in the country. During the Depression, no housing had been built except for those public works projects that I described and a few other public housing projects. During World War II, it was actually forbidden. It was unlawful to use construction materials to build housing for civilians except for war workers and defense plants. And so this enormous housing shortage was then exacerbated by millions of returning war veterans coming home and needing housing. President Truman, who succeeded Roosevelt, was faced with this enormous housing shortage and he proposed a vast expansion of the national public housing program in order to handle this influx. And remember, I said earlier, public housing was not for poor people. These were returning war veterans. These were working families, working people. The African-Americans and the whites both had jobs in the post-war boom. The African-Americans know these good jobs as the whites, but they could all afford to rent housing. There was no housing for them. So President Truman proposed a vast expansion of the national public housing program. Conservatives in Congress opposed Truman's proposal. Not because it was for poor people, because it wasn't for poor people. It was for working class families. Not because it was for blacks. It was always segregated and they didn't object to that. They opposed it because they believed that public housing was socialistic and the government shouldn't be involved in public housing. The private market should take care of it, not that the private market was taking care of the needs of returning war veterans. And so the Conservatives came up with a strategy to defeat Truman's proposal for a National Housing Act that we refer to as a poison pill strategy. Some of you may be familiar with that term. A poison pill strategy is a strategy that opponents of a program employ by proposing to a bill that they oppose an amendment that they think can pass. But once the amendment is attached to the bill, it makes the entire bill unpalatable and the bill goes down to defeat. So Conservatives in Congress proposed an amendment to Truman's 1949 Housing Act that said, from now on, all public housing has to be integrated. No more segregation in public housing, no more discrimination in public housing. Of course it was a cynical idea, proposal of theirs, they didn't want public housing at all. But their calculation was that they would vote for this amendment requiring nondiscrimination in public housing. Northern liberal Democrats would join with them creating a majority, the amendment would pass, and then when the full bill as amended came up before Congress, the Conservatives would flip and vote against the final bill, they would be joined by Southern Democrats and the bill would go down to defeat. Northern liberals campaigned against the integration amendment in 1949. Now you're all young people, but to me, 1949 wasn't so long ago. Jackie Robinson only been in Brooklyn Dodgers for two years by then, it's just yesterday.  It was great. In 1949 liberals campaigned against the integration amendment. The leading liberal in the Senate was a Senate from Illinois called Paul Douglas. Some of you who know your history may have heard the team, but another was Hubert Humphrey who later became Vice President. He was called Mr. Civil Rights. They campaigned against the integration amendment. Paul Douglas got up on the floor of the Senate and made a speech in which he said something along the following lines. He said, I want to say to my Negro friends that you'll get more housing. If it's segregated, then you will if we get no housing at all. And on that basis, Northern liberals defeated the integration amendment. The full 1949 housing act came up before Congress as an ongoing segregated program. It passed. The federal government used that vote in Congress as its justification for continuing to segregate all housing programs in the country, not just public housing, for the next 15 years. Under that program, many of the high-rise towers that we're familiar with, not in New York as in New York, everybody lives in high-rises, but elsewhere in the country public housing high-rises that were built in Chicago places like Cabrini Green, probably the most famous of them or Robert Taylor Holmes or in St. Louis, the Pruitt-Iago Towers. These were all built under the 1949 Housing Act. A Pruitt-Iago in St. Louis was actually two projects, the Pruitt projects for African-Americans, the Iago projects for whites. The subtitle of my book is A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. It wasn't hidden. In the open, everybody knew this was going on. It's not as though African-Americans happened to apply to the Pruitt projects and whites just happened to apply to the Iago projects because they like the sound of the name. These were explicitly designated by race, by the government. Well, very soon after these projects were built under the 1949 Housing Act, a development occurred elsewhere, everywhere in the country. It was quite striking. The African-American projects like Pruitt in St. Louis or Robert Taylor Holmes in Chicago, any of these developed long waiting lists. Many, many more people wanted those apartments than were available. And the white projects developed large numbers of vacancies. Everywhere this happened. Soon the situation became so untenable, so conspicuous. You couldn't have two projects in a city, one of which had long waiting lists and the other which had large vacancies. And so the government began to open up all of the projects to African-Americans. Soon the projects became all African-American or virtually all African-American. At about the same time, we're talking now the 1950s, industry left the cities. It moved to, it no longer needed to be located in those central factory districts that I talked about before and no longer needed to be located near railroad terminals or deep water ports and rivers. It could now get its parts and ship its final products by truck because highways were being built. So industry left the cities. The people living in public housing became poorer and poorer with less access to good jobs. Eventually the government had to start subsidizing the public housing because people couldn't afford to pay for it and rent. And we got the kind of public housing that we're familiar with today, housing for poor people. Why did all these vacancies occur in the white projects and not in the black ones? And that's because of another federal program that was probably even more powerful in creating segregation in this country than the public housing program. And that's a program by another New Deal agency, the Federal Housing Administration. President Mason referred to it, obliquely before. It was a program by the Federal Housing Administration that was designed to suburbanize the entire white working class population into single family homes and all white suburbs. This was an explicitly, racially explicit federal program. It was designed to create all white suburbs and get whites out of cities, leaving cities to African-Americans. You're familiar with these projects. You may not know it, but you're familiar with them. The biggest one, best known one was Levittown, east of here in Nassau County. Maybe some of you also recall having heard a song that Pete Seeger used to sing. It was written by Malvina Reynolds about the little boxes on the hillside made of tickey-tackey and they all looked the same. If you heard that song, that's a song about a development about just as large as Levittown, south of San Francisco. And between Levittown and San Francisco, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of these suburbs were built by the Federal Housing Administration. In Levittown, someone like William Levitt, the developer of Levittown, could never have assembled the capital to build 17,000 homes in one place, for which he had no buyers, where no bank would be crazy enough to lend Levitt money to build 17,000 homes and wait in the hopes he might sell them. The only way Levitt could get the capital to buy the land, to design the homes, to build the homes, was by going to the Federal Housing Administration, submitting his plans for the development, including those plans had to be a guarantee never to sell a home to an African-American. The Federal Housing Administration even required that Levitt and the builder of little boxes on the hillside and all the other suburbs in between required that they place a clause in the deed of every home, prohibiting resale to African-Americans or rental to African-Americans. This was not the action of rogue bureaucrats in the Federal Housing Administration. This was a written policy. And I cite the policy, I think as I recall, I actually may have photographs of some of the clauses in the Federal Underwriting Manual. The Federal Underwriting Manual is a manual that was given to appraisers across the country who had to evaluate the applications of builders who wanted to build these suburbs. And the Underwriting Manual prohibited approving developments that were for different social, were for different social classes, it had to be for the same social and racial class. The manual even prohibited a loan to build suburbs that were all white, but that might be near where African-Americans were living because those suburbs, according to the manual, quoting roughly, ran the risk of infiltration by different racial classes. That's the language of the Federal Housing Administration. This is written. There's nothing de facto about this. De facto segregation is the other myth. And with these policies, the Federal Housing Administration created white suburbs around every city in the country, a doughnut, a noose of white suburbs around African-American neighborhoods everywhere. Well, how does this, is this any more than interesting history? Does it affect the racial landscape that we have today? In fact, it does. It determines the racial landscape that we have today. The white working-class families, and these were working-class families as these suburbs were developed for, not wealthy people. The homes sold in those days for, they were 750 square foot homes. That's how big Levittown houses were at the time. And the same thing is true of these other developments. They sold for $8,000, $9,000 a piece. In today's inflation-adjusted dollars, that's about $100,000, maybe a little less. Easily affordable. To both white and black working-class families returning war veterans, whites were subsidized to buy them. African-Americans prohibited from moving into these suburbs. The subsidy to whites was so great that the white returning war veteran could buy a home in Levittown, move from public housing, and pay less in his monthly housing costs than he was paying for rent in public housing. So that's how the country got suburbanized. Well, those homes in places like Levittown, or the name of the little boxes is Westlake and south of San Francisco, those homes now sell for what, 300, 400, $500,000 in some parts of the country even more. The white families who were subsidized by the Federal Housing Administration on a racial basis to move to these suburbs gained over the next few generations, 200, 300, $400,000, maybe more in equity from the appreciation of their homes. They gained wealth. Middle-class families in this country today gained what wealth they have primarily from the equity they have in their homes. It's only the rich people who get wealth from playing the stock market. White families gained wealth through this process. African-Americans were prohibited from participating in this wealth-generating project. The white families used that wealth to send their children to college. They used it to finance their retirements or supplement their retirements. They used it to take care of medical or unemployment emergencies, and they used it to bequeath it to their own children who then had down payments for their own homes. African-Americans prohibited from participating in this policy had none of those activities to participate in. The result is that today, African-American incomes on average in this country are about 60% of white incomes. It's still a gap. It's a considerable gap, 60%. African-American wealth is 10% of white wealth on average. We don't expect a 60% income ratio to generate a 10%, a 60% wealth ratio. There's nothing different about the income that blacks and whites earn. They can each save money from their income if that was how wealth was generated. But it's not. It's a 10% wealth ratio, a 60% income ratio. That entire disparity is entirely attributable to unconstitutional federal housing policy that was practiced in the mid-20th century, and that not only has never been remedied, but we've never tried to remedy. We never even tried. We have seduced ourselves into believing that African-American wealth is low because African-Americans aren't industrious because they don't save, because they don't wanna work because they're lazy. And it not only has polluted our culture, but it's also created all of the social inequalities that I described before, because the wealth gap is, of course, one of the ongoing contributors to the racial segregation that we have still today. Well, as I said, if we understand this history, we will understand that we have an unconstitutional, call it an apartheid system of housing in this country, and that we have as American citizens an obligation to remedy it. The remedies are easy to understand and to develop. It's not hard to figure out how to remedy this situation. I can describe a few of them perhaps in a minute, but what's really hard is to develop the political will to do so, but it's not impossible. I made a joke before about my being an old man, but I remember things, a time when things that we now take for granted were impossible. And so I don't accept for a minute that things that seem impossible to us now may not be possible at some future time if we develop the political will, a new civil rights movement that's going to take this on. In the course of writing this book, I caused myself to examine the American history textbooks that are used in high schools across the country. I examined all the most commonly used textbooks. Not a single one of them tells this story. They all lie about it. The most commonly used American history textbook in high schools, when I looked at these, so three or four years ago I guess when I was completing this research, was something called the Americans. Some of you are recent enough in high school that maybe you used the Americans. Anybody use a textbook called the Americans in high school? Okay, it's the most commonly used one. 1,200 pages of American history. One paragraph that sub-headed discrimination in the North, not segregation, discrimination in the North. And the one sentence in that paragraph that reads as follows, in the North African Americans found themselves forced into separate housing. That's it. They woke up one morning, they looked out the window and they said, hey look, we're in segregated housing. It's a crime to be teaching this kind of nonsense. The textbooks brag about the great work that the Federal Housing Administration did in creating suburbs for working class families, helping them into the middle class. Never mention of the fact that this was done on a racially exclusive basis. They talk about the great economic programs and they work great economic programs of the New Deal. Like building housing for people who had none. Never once mentioning it was done on a segregated basis. If the next generation doesn't learn this history any better than we've learned it, they're gonna be as poor a position to remedy as we've been. So one of the things that I urge everybody to do is to look in your communities about how this is being taught and challenge your local school boards or principals or teachers or superintendents to remedy it. Now as I said, there are many remedies. If we had the will, if we had the understanding that we have not a de facto situation but what the Supreme Court calls it the jury situation. Of state sponsored segregation, we understand our obligation to remedy it. The remedies are easy to understand. We could abolish for example the kinds of zoning laws that suburbs around the country have to maintain their exclusivity both racial and economic. Prohibiting the construction of townhouses or apartments or even single family homes and small lot sizes. If we understood that those zoning ordinances were designed to perpetuate and serve to effect a continuation of segregation that was created on an unconstitutional basis we would understand that those zoning laws are themselves an offense and need to be challenged. We have low income programs that subsidize low income housing. There's a tax credit program that the Treasury Department runs called the Low Income Housing Tax Credit for developers to build housing for low income families. It's almost always built in already existing low income neighborhoods reinforcing segregation. We have another low income program that could be changed easily. We could easily create a priority for using those tax credits in high opportunity communities. We have another program that subsidizes a renters ability to rent that's called the Housing Choice Voucher Program, the Section 8 Voucher, it's commonly used. That also reinforces segregation because the rules of the Section 8 Voucher Program guarantee that it will be used mostly to rent apartments in already low income communities. We could easily modify the way that program is designed to ensure that families whose rent is subsidized can afford to move into high opportunity communities. So I can go on and on talking about remedies but that's not on the agenda at this point. What is on the agenda is developing an understanding of the offense to our constitutional democracy that residential segregation presents and the will to do something about it. So I want to thank you for your attention and Dan, I'm happy to answer questions. So we did promise the first few questions to Professor Borchard's class. I hope you guys have been thinking about that. I see one hand. So have you experienced something in regards of discrimination that really spoke to you or if you witnessed it? I'm sorry, say that again. Have you experienced or witnessed something in regards of discrimination that spoke to you or like it really left an impact on you? Have I experienced personally discrimination? If you saw something like witnessed it or it happened to you? Well, I grew up in a all-white community. I didn't realize it at the time. I accepted it as sort of normal. I guess you might say that. But certainly, and I said I've lived in many metropolitan areas in the course of my many careers and every one of them was residentially segregated. So I've never experienced discrimination myself, but I've seen the effects of it all around me. Hi, I have a few questions. My first question is, why do you think the textbooks leave such a fundamental history out and doesn't teach us the truth of what happened? They leave it out. Why do all of us have this? Have you ever used the term de facto segregation? I have. Why? Why do you use it? Because you don't know this history. Right, but that's what, well, in history books, we look upon those books to teach us what we don't know. Well, maybe you should be more skeptical of history books. Well, I am.  This, as I said before, the subtitle of my book is a forgotten history. This was all once well known. Nothing hidden about it. And when I did the research for my book, I didn't have to dig very deep. I read all, you know, but it's all been isolated. Nobody has, before as far as I know, or at least, that's not true, nobody in the last 25 years has tried to pull this all together to show that we have a system of residential segregation. Textbooks conform to the conventional wisdom. They don't say anything that's controversial. And since the conventional wisdom, even promulgated by the Supreme Court, is that what we have in this country is de facto segregation. That's what textbooks repeat. But we should challenge it. Hi. My question for you is, you mentioned solutions earlier. I know you're not specifically talking about them, but do you feel that a solution to this problem is something that will come over time with newer generations teaching the next generation how to fix the problem? Or do you think there needs to be an inciting incident for this to actually get solved? Or do I think what was the second part? If there needs to be a sort of inciting incident for something to be solved? Well, in past civil rights movements, were successful because of a combination of litigation, of marches, of demonstrations, of civil disobedience. In many cases, it was led by young people, like many of you in this room. I'm actually quite hopeful that that can happen again because there are signs of an awakening of consciousness about our racial history that never before existed. We're having a more accurate and passionate discussion about race in this country today than we've ever had, I think, before in American history. The fact that you've invited me here today is an example of this. This wouldn't have happened five, 10 years ago. We have Southern white politicians removing statues that commemorate slavery and the defenders of slavery. We have a Black Lives Matter movement of young people that emerged after the shooting in Ferguson. We have not just my book, but a number of books that have become fairly well known that deal with these problems evicted by Matthew Desmond, for example. So I think that I'm quite hopeful. I think that it's certainly true that there's been a resurgence of explicit white supremacy encouraged by our current president, but it's been offset as well by a new willingness to talk about at least and to confront our racial history. You know, in 1998, I think it was, 20 years ago, President Clinton, who was aware of a lot of this, said he wanted to start a national conversation about race. And he spoke to himself for about a week, and then the conversation ended. And we're now having that national conversation. And I think it's very healthy, and I'm confident that it has the possibility, at least, of leading to a new civil rights movement. I just wanna make sure that we say his name if we're talking about the shooting in Ferguson, Michael Brown. So have all the students asked their questions? So it's a nature of a comment as well as of a question. So for me, having been somebody who did a lot of bond financing for the projects you talked about, I did not understand the origin and the history of how these programs are going to be. So I wonder, have you ever considered, or I think you should consider talking at the US Conference of Mayors and making sure our urban mayors understand this history and understand the role they're playing in perpetuating the segregation. I mean, without having the full understanding, because being able to articulate that the wealth gap happened because of the inequities in our housing program, and then having them being able to demand to Treasury and the others, that you've gotta reformulate these programs so that we can begin to redress this, I think is a place to consider having this conversation. Reactions? I agree. I think you should give that talk to the US Conference of Mayors. I'm an old man. I can't do this myself. You gotta help. But I agree. I'm speaking all over about this, but I need help. So I'm counting on you. Mr. Rothstein, I think this has been a fantastic talk. And thanks to all my students who are here. It's great to see all of you show up and interested in this topic. That's so important. I'm looking at this from, kind of from my grandmother's perspective, my grandmother's 87 years old, wait, 97 years old, grew up in Atlanta, still lives in Atlanta, and speaks in a much different way about race than many people do now that are half her age. And in a more positive, I would say, progressive way. And I can't help but tie this extreme kind of re-segregation of our communities to the rise of mass incarceration and all the mythologies that surround that. And I was wondering what you think, if you think this is as extricably linked as I believe it to be, to mass incarceration. Sure, but as I said earlier, one of the causes of mass incarceration, not the only one, because actually our incarceration of whites is higher than anywhere else in the world. So it's not just the incarceration of young African Americans. But one of the causes of mass incarceration is our concentration of the most disadvantaged young men in single neighborhoods where their oppositional behavior reinforces one another's, where they engage in a cycle of confrontation with the police that eventually leads to violence and arrests and stop and frisk and all the other things that you're familiar with. And if we weren't concentrating those men in single neighborhoods, the police would have to be stop and frisking everywhere and they wouldn't get away with it. So I agree that mass incarceration perpetuates it, but it's a cycle, it's residential segregation that also underlies it. And it would be minimized if we would desegregate. Good afternoon, Mr. Thank you for the conversation you had. I really had a pleasure listening to it. I had a brief question. What is your opinion about this mass movement that I feel is going on with whites now coming into urban neighborhoods that to certain people, which I live in Brooklyn Bed-Stuy, I do live in housing public authority and I do see tourists, such a big movement of whites and I do hear the murmurs of my neighbors. Oh, here comes these folks again and it bothers me because I see it as a movement for a better neighborhood. They see it as they're jacking up my rent, probably not seeing it correctly. Well, you're referring to gentrification, the common term for it. Yes. And gentrification could result in, as you say, integrated healthy neighborhoods if we preserved a share of housing in those neighborhoods for the people who traditionally have lived there. There's low and moderate income housing and that requires a number of policies to control gentrification. We can't prevent it. We can't prevent people from moving into those neighborhoods but we could generate integrated neighborhoods if we had rent control that was effective or property tax freezes that were effective or limits on condominium conversions. There are a number of policies we could implement that would regulate gentrification so that it became a stable form of integration rather than simply a conversion of a segregated low income community to a segregated high income community. But in addition, and this is the thing that the opponents of uncontrolled gentrification typically ignore is that even if we control gentrification, even if we had the policies I just referred to, many people would be displaced still. It's not that you can't have gentrification and nobody gets displaced. Many people, where do they get displaced too? Well, they get displaced typically to new segregated suburbs in the ring suburbs sort of simply shifting the segregated neighborhood from one place to another. So in order to control gentrification in a positive way, we not only need to preserve a share of housing in the gentrifying neighborhood for low and moderate income families, we also have to open up the suburbs so that the people who are displaced are not only displaced to a single new segregated place. I mean, how did Ferguson happen? Segregate a majority African-American suburb. People thought African-Americans lived in the cities. Had Ferguson become African-American? Well, it became African-American because 20, 30 years ago we had gentrification in downtown St. Louis. We had a different name for it in those days. We called it urban renewal, but it's the same thing. And the housing for low income families was demolished. It was replaced by middle class housing, by highway interchanges, by half a McDonald sign that they put up on the river to introduce you to the western United States. Well, the families living those neighborhoods had no place to go except to Ferguson and one or two other small communities near it that where housing was available to them. They were excluded from everywhere else. So we developed a new segregated community. So we need to do both. We need to preserve a share of housing in the gentrifying neighborhoods for people who used to live there. And we need to open up the suburbs so that people who are displaced have decent places to go. Okay. Hi, my name's Vanessa and I'm a professor. Well, you're gonna have to speak louder. I'm sorry. I'm in professor Malcoff's class. And I have two questions for you. So one is about the conversation you just had. Sorry. One is about the conversation you just had. It's about mass incarceration. So what do you feel like? What do you feel like we can be doing for these young men in these minority neighborhoods? Because I know everybody has their own opinions and we try to put in programs, but nothing really ends up helping. So is there an alternative that we can do for them? Give them access to good jobs. That's the first thing. Give them access to good jobs, which we haven't done. And I think the only way, you know, New York is unusual because so many people are concentrated in such a, we have a subway system and so forth. But in most parts of the country, the young men that you're talking about don't have access to transportation. They don't have access to good jobs. And they have no alternative, reasonable alternative. We can, I think the only way to change that, well, we could change it by building good transportation infrastructure, which we're not doing. You know, in Baltimore, a new governor was elected a few years ago and he canceled the one rail project that was designed to bring African-Americans in West Baltimore to high opportunity areas so that they could get jobs. And he put the money that had been dedicated to that project into highways to bring suburbanites to the city. So we could do that, but fundamentally, we need to desegregate those neighborhoods so that those men aren't concentrated in places without access to jobs. Good afternoon. I do have two questions. Why is the Supreme Court unable to tell the government that what the government did is unconstitutional? Well, yeah, there was a famous cartoonist at the turn of the 20th century, 100 years ago, who, he drew cartoons that were published all over the country of an Irishman in a bar spouting wisdom. And the Irishman's favorite, or the most well-known of his aphorisms was the Supreme Court follows the election returns. And we can see that today, actually. The Supreme Court is not going to be a leader in this. It never has been, never will be. The Supreme Court will respond only when you've built the kind of civil rights movement that will force it to do so. And it will change the way people think about these issues. As I said, the Supreme Court has embraced the notion of de facto segregation. I got into this because I examined a, as I told you before, I used to study education policy. I got into this because the Supreme Court in 2007 prohibited two school districts from enacting very, very token integration plans because it said the schools that this was in Louisville, Kentucky, and Seattle, Washington, and said the schools were segregated because the neighborhoods in which they were located were segregated de facto. Hello. Thank you so much for your talk today. I actually lived through an era. I was a teenager when that section known as the South Bronx was being burned down. And it was part of the organized crime scene. Many of these families couldn't see bringing in not only African-Americans, but anybody of ethnicity to move into that neighborhood and they would burn the houses down and collect the insurance and go and buy their houses along with the government subsidies that were given to them. Now we're dealing with a situation. I'm in the same neighborhood of, again, going back to the question of gentrification which has become a very high issue. And the sad thing is that they are once again threatening to burn parts of the neighborhood down in order to so-called collect the insurance. But the government had to know that this was going on and allowed it to go on. And it became like a widespread disease. It wasn't only African-Americans. I remember when the Jews couldn't live in that area either and that's why they moved over to the area known as the Grand Concourse. And it's still going on today. So I'm wondering, is there really a way to put a stop to this? Thank you. All I can do is repeat what I said. It requires a political movement, a new civil rights movement that's going to force this kind of change. It can't be done, I don't have a gimmick for you to stop it. You've got to stop it and you've got to stop it by organizing and by participating in such a political movement. Can we take two more questions? This may be a very short answer. Sorry, I'm over here. I'm not capable of that. I was wondering if there was any examples of cities in the U.S. that are not as segregated and if that was because they were never segregated or that we actually have desegregated them? There's a wide variety of degrees of segregation but the underlying reality is their commonality. So certainly some are more segregated than others. New York is a New York state, not necessarily a city, New York state is among the most segregated but I prefer to look at what they have in common which is much more important than the small differences between them relative to what they have in common. Hello, can you tell us what you think the incentive to continue with these practices is? Do you think it's just economic purely or do you think that it's associated with bias, explicit and implicit? Well, there are some practices that are continuing that are the result of those biases. For example, we know that banks targeted African-American homeowners for subprime loans that were exploitative during the lead-up to the housing crisis but mostly it's because we have established a structure of residential segregation and you don't have to do anything on purpose to perpetuate it. The programs I talked about before, for example, the tax credit that the Treasury Department gives. Well, why are those tax credits used primarily to reinforce segregation? They're used because it's easier to build low-income housing in existing low-income neighborhoods. The land is cheaper, you don't have to hold 50 community meetings explaining to people why you're bringing black people into their neighborhood. You can put up a for rent sign in a window and somebody walking by will see it who's eligible. So it's easier. And they're facing the same dilemma that Paul Douglas faced in 1949. Do we provide the housing for low-income families in the easiest way or do we take on the fight to do it as it should be done in a desegregated way? And for understandable reasons, we choose to do it in the easiest way but it's not explicitly racial. It's not that the low-income tax credit program is explicitly racist. It's because we have a racially segregated structure on which it's built and it's easier to build housing for low-income families in low-income neighborhoods. So we just exacerbate the problem. Well, I wanna thank you all very much for your attention and questions and good luck to all of you.


All right, we're there in Mark chapter seven. We have an interesting story here we're jumping into. Let's go ahead and look at verse number one. Kind of skim through this story real quickly, leading up to our text. Verse one says, they came together and they came to the Pharisees and certain of the scribes which came from Jerusalem.  So here we have Jesus is invited to a dinner and the Pharisees they are constantly trying to catch him. They're constantly trying to find fault in him. And they're sort of just setting him up constantly. And one thing that they find fault in is when his disciples are eating they don't wash their hands first. Now obviously this is not a good practice to wash your hands and that's not the point of the story. The point is that, and this is what Jesus is addressing is that's not in the Bible. And what the Pharisees would do is they would take traditions.  And that's why Jesus calls it tradition here. And here Jesus skim down to verse six or look at verse five then the Pharisees and the scribes asked him saying why walk not thy disciples according to the Bible? They say no. They say according to the tradition of the elders. That's what they cared about. They had thought of themselves so highly that their traditions were esteemed as the Bible. He answered and said unto them and here Jesus addresses in verse six sort of a recurring problem that God has always had with his people throughout the years. He says in verse six, well, Isaiah speaking of Isaiah, prophesied of you hypocrites as it is written. Notice what he says here. This people, this is a problem that he's quoting Isaiah. So God has had this problem with them before. He says this people honor me with their lips but their heart is far from me. How be vain to worship me. Teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. Here Jesus is talking to the Pharisees and he's quoting Isaiah 29, 13. You don't have to turn there. But it says, wherefore the Lord said, for as much as this people draw near me with their mouth and with their lips do honor me but have removed their heart far from me and their fear toward me is taught by the precept of men. So God is essentially saying here, he's frustrated, he's saying they do lips service to me and they claim to love me and they claim to do my commandments. But their heart is not really there. This is similar to where Jesus said, oh the Pharisees you know you do all these things, you tie, you do all these things which we're not wrong to do. He says these ought you have to do but the problem is that they were leading the way to your matters of the law undone, judgment, mercy, and faith. So the problem was not that the Pharisees were washing their hands, the problem is not of the things they did, the problem is not that they tied. Many of these other things are commandments in the Bible but the problem is that they did these things while admitting the way to your matters of the law, the things that meant more to God. And in so doing this indicated that their hearts was not actually towards God. They were more concerned about themselves, concerned in John it would talk about how they were more after the praise of men than being in favor with God. So turn to Haggai chapter one. Haggai chapter one. So what I like to look at this evening is because we see this theme, we're gonna look at in Haggai chapter one, this theme of just because is every Christian, every saved believer would do lip service to God. Every saved believer regardless of how excellent they are or how spiritual they are would say, oh, I love God and they would do lip service to the Bible and they would with their mouth they would show forth honor to God. But this morning is sort of a introduction is that has nothing to do with where your heart lies. Now what I'd like to do, you're there in Haggai chapter one, look at verse two. Haggai chapter one, verse two, the context is that the Israelites have just come out of captivity. They have been judged in Babylon for 70 years, now they are coming out of captivity. And God wanted them to, God instructed them, he had both Haggai and Zachariah at this time preaching to them that he wanted them to rebuild the house of God. He wanted them to rebuild the temple. Verse two says, thus speak at the Lord of hosts. So God's frustrated with them here. He's just brought them back out of this captivity. He says, this people say, the time has not come, the time that the Lord's house should be built. They came with the word of the Lord that Haggai the prophet saying, is it time for you, oh ye to dwell in your sealed houses and this house, life waste? So God is talking about this problem where these people have come back from captivity and they're building houses for themselves, they're getting settled in, but the house of God is still rubble, it's still in ruins. And God is frustrated with them. And notice verse five, the verse of the week, if you look at your bulletin, now therefore thus say at the Lord of hosts, consider your ways.  Think is this what God wants? Is this, is my heart in the right place? Verse six, he kind of describes a problem that they're having.  So their life's sort of, they're not really cursed. I mean, they're not in Babylon anymore, but they're not only being blessed either. They're sort of just, their life's just kind of, they're just kind of going through the motions. They're not, they're, specifically, they are not being blessed. You have, you eat, but you have not enough. You drink, but are not filled with drink. You clothe you, but there is none warm. Either earneth wages, earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes. So he's saying, you know, you're just not really, you're not doing great.  You're, you plants, but you're not really harvesting quite what you expected. They're not being blessed. So God says again, in verse seven, he says a second time, he says, now sayeth the Lord of hosts, consider your ways. Verse eight, go up to the mountain and bring wood and build the house. And I will take pleasure in it. And I will be glorified, sayeth the Lord. So this morning, what I'd like to do is I'd like us all to do a spiritual self diagnosis. I'd like us all to stop and consider our ways. And is every one of us this evening, or this morning, sorry, would do lip service to God. And we, we, we claim to, to serve God and love God, but let's slow down and let's, let's all self diagnose ourselves and look at the measuring sticks that the Bible mentions on, and try to find out where our heart lies. Is our heart and spiritual things? Is it in unspiritual things? Is it with the world? Is it with, is it with God? Where are we all at this morning? Let's self diagnose ourselves, because Proverbs 21 too, you don't have to turn there, says that every wave of man writes in his own eyes, Lord pondereth the heart. So everyone to themselves, this is just mankind in general, whether someone's saved or not saved, everyone thinks that the way they are and the way they are doing things is right. So instead of comparing to what we think, let's compare ourselves to the Bible this morning. Turn to Matthew six, Matthew six. I apologize, that was a typo. Turn to first Peter chapter one, first Peter chapter number one. So let's look at a few things this morning. How, how do we tell where we are spiritually? Where is our heart? It has nothing to do with what we say necessarily, or that's not strong enough of an indicator. If it's possible to say one thing, but our heart be somewhere else, how do we tell? The first way this morning is this, what do you spend your time on? What do you spend your time on? You're there in first Peter chapter one, look at verse 17. The Bible says this, and if you call in the Father, who without respect of persons, judge you according to every man's work, notice this, past the time of your sojourning here in fear. Say if you're saved, you call, if you called on the Father and you were saved, it's saying, here's what you should do, you should pass the time of your sojourning, is we're not, our home is not this earth, we are just passing through the Bible says, so how do you, as we are passing through this earth, and with our very limited time, how are you passing that time? Are you passing that time in fear? Are you passing that time in other things? How do you use your time on earth, fearing God, turn to James chapter four? And the reason that this is such a good measuring stick, or such a good comparison, or good way to tell where you are spiritually, is because you only have so much of it. Time is actually very similar to money in that sense, you've heard the saying, put your money where your mouth is, in the same way, the reason that money can be used in some manners to tell what you really care about is because it's a finite resource.  Benjamin Franklin once said, you may delay, but time will not. It's a finite resource, you know, the time will never stop. In James chapter four, 13, I wanna look at a, this verse is often used to talk about how your life is a vapor and time is a finite resource, and that's what it's saying, that's a very great, but there's a greater meaning of this chapter, there's these few verses, there's a greater lesson that the Bible's trying to teach us here. Verse 13 says this, go to now, you that say today or tomorrow, we will go into such a city and continue there a year and buy and sell and get gain, whereas you know not what shall be in the moral for what is your life? It is even a vapor that appear for a little time and then vanish it away. So here, he's just talking about people making business plans, this is something we all do every day, this is something we, just making plans in life that have to do just with life in general and the decisions we all make in life. And here he's talking about people who have a plan of, okay, we're gonna go into a city and we're gonna start a business, we're gonna sell, we're gonna buy, we're gonna try to make some money, nothing wrong with that. But look at verse 15, he doesn't say that's wrong to do, he doesn't say you shouldn't do that or think that, but here's what he does say, he says, for, here's how I can correct that a little bit, here's how you could say this a little better, for you ought to say, if the Lord will, we shall live and do this or that. So the lesson here is that obviously it's a major factor that yes, life is a finite resource, but the major lesson here is that everything you do at that time needs to be run through the will of God. There's nothing wrong with making plans, there's nothing wrong, but everything you do, you should, you ought to say, okay, if God will, if this is what God wants, we shall do this or that. Turn to Psalm 90. Everything we do as Christians should filter through the will of God. God's not against you having success or you having money, but there's a point where if you don't run that through the will of God, that can, those things or any earthly thing can take preeminence over what God wants. Psalm chapter 90, Psalm 90 is a great chapter, this is actually, Psalm 90 is written by Moses. The beginning you'll see is written by Moses, the man of God. So Psalm 90 was actually written by the prophet Moses and it's just a great chapter where he's essentially the whole Psalm, he is speaking about time. He's talking about time, he's sort of pondering on time and thinking about time and how it affects us as believers. He says this, he's talking to God here, this is a prayer, it says, that was said our iniquities before thee and our secret sins in the light of thy countenance. So he's just sort of lamenting in a sense or the fact that we only have a finite amount of time to serve God and we're sinners and we make mistakes and no one is perfect. For all our days are passed away in thy wrath, notice this, we spend our years in the world that is told.  It's like a, this is what a biography is. You read, what are you reading? You're reading about how, about someone's time on earth.  Which is a side note, this is a, I've heard it put this way, your life is a tale that is told.   How will that tale be told? What are you writing down with your life? Is you, what are you spending your time doing? Are you spending your time serving God? Are you spending your time, is today's story, is this next week's story of your life going to be a story of serving God throughout the day or thinking about following God's commandments throughout the day and in every waking hour, is it going to be a story of fulfilling the lust of the flesh?  Look at verse number eight. Thou hast said our, I'm sorry, we already heard that, verse 10. The days of our years are three score years and 10. And if by reason of strength, they'd be four score years. So he's just talking about how we only live before a certain amount of time. Yet their strength is labor and sorrow for it is soon cut off and we fly away. This is the hymn we sing, all fly away. That's what it's talking about. We have a short amount of time and we die and we go to heaven. Who know what the power of thine anger even according to thy fear? So is thy wrath. And verse 12 he says this, so because of this, because we have a short amount of time because we're writing our story down every single day. So he says to God, teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts into wisdom. So he's saying, as a result of this God, as a result of the time that you've only given us a certain amount of time, we don't know when it is. It's soon, it's nothing compared to eternity. As a result of that God, help us to take our days, our years, our numbers and apply them under wisdom. Be wise with them as much as we possibly can. This is the song in the hymnal, So Little Time. It was written by John R. Rice an independent fundamental Baptist preacher. And the words say this on one of the verses. So little time, the harvest will be over. Our reaping done, we reapers taken home. Report our work to Jesus, Lord of Harvest and hope he'll smile and that he'll say, well done. Today we reap or miss our golden harvest. Today is given us lost souls to win. Oh then to save some dear ones from the burning. Today we'll go to bring some sinner in. A song speaking about not just we should go out and we should preach the gospel, but the fact that the amount of time that we spend doing it is directly proportional to how much success we will have at it. If we do not, if we spend half the time or we spend twice the amount of time then soul winning and preaching the gospel that's just being one area that we would have, there will be twice as many people in heaven than there would have been as a result of our actions. So we wanna find out, we wanna do a self diagnosis of where is our heart spiritually? Is our heart in the right area? Well, the first way we can decide that this morning is what do we spend our time doing? Look, even if you are three to thrive and you should be three to thrive, but even if you are, you were only in this church for about six hours a week. What are you doing with the rest? What are you doing? And just like James said, that doesn't mean that every single waking hour is meant to be at church, but everything we do when we're not at church, everything that we do when we're not soul winning, everything that we do when we're not reading our Bible, when we're not praying, everything, all those things still should be at least run through the will of God and make sure that God has the preeminence to spend our time. Turn to 1 Peter 4. So, we're discussing how to tell where our heart is spiritually. The first way is, what do we spend your time doing? The second way is this. What do you get happiness from? What do you get happiness from? What makes you joyful in life? They're in 1 Peter 4, look at verse 12. Beloved, think not, think not strange is concerning the fiery trial, which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you. So, he's talking to believers who are being persecuted, and he's saying, don't think it's some strange thing, don't think it's some unusual thing, that is happening to you. But, verse 13, rejoice in as much as you are partakers of Christ's sufferings, that when his glory shall be revealed, you may be glad also with exceeding joy. Verse 14, if ye be reproached for the name of Christ, happy are ye, the spirit of glory and of God, the rest of the bond you, on their part, he is evil spoken of, but on your part, he is glorified. And you read this, and you say, rejoice, glad, happy. How is this supposed to give me joy in life? How is this supposed to give me happiness in life? Because when your heart is in the right place, when your heart is with the Bible and with serving God, there are certain things that are going to give you joy that you would not get joy from if your heart was away from God. Let's look at a few different areas of this. The first one is persecution, that's what this verse is referring to. Persecution, persecution should make you glad. I love that verse in the book of Acts, where it mentions when they were beaten for the cause of Christ, in towards the beginning of the book, it says they rejoiced that they were counted worthy to suffer for the name of Christ. They weren't, instead, they could have been angry and they could have been mad and they could have been embarrassed or they could have been resentful, but instead the emotion that they had was they were happy just that they were worthy, just that God had given them the privilege to suffer for his name. Those are people whose heart is in the right spot. That's the indication of that. Here's another thing that should give you happiness in life. Getting people saved, leading people to Christ. That should give you joy, that should come close to being, if not the most happiest thing in your life. Turn to the third John three, third John three. While you're turning there, I'm going to read to you Psalm 126, five through seven that says this, they that sow in tears shall keep in joy. They go forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, that is the word of God. He that goeth forth and weepeth, that has compassion, just like Jesus had compassion, just like Jesus wept for the multitude, bearing precious seed shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him. Here's someone in written in a poetic way who goes, he goes forth bearing the precious seed of the word of God, he as hard as any, he goes forth he's weeping, and he comes again bringing his sheaves with him, just like the fruit that we bear on this earth, the people who get saved on this earth, Jesus is often compared to sheaves as a harvest. It says they will come back with rejoicing. They'll come back with those sheaves and those souls that they have won to Christ with great rejoicing. But not just getting people saved, what about discipling others?  So when we get people saved, that's not where it ends.  What we teach is that salvation is the end of the road. Salvation is what you're shooting for, your whole life is trying to get saved, trying to hope you can be saved, trying to be saved over a period of time. The Bible, with the Bible, with what the gospel says is that salvation is just the beginning. Salvation is the beginning, someone comes to you, that's the easy part.  Now your Christian life is just begun. This is the starting line.  You have just started much less finished. Here's third John, look at third John verse three. For I rejoice greatly when the brethren came, he's talking to people he has gotten saved. When the brethren came and testified of the truth that is in thee, even as thou walkest in truth. Verse four, I have no greater joy than to hear that my children, talking spiritually here, walk in truth. This is similar to how Paul would refer to people he's gotten saved as his son in the faith, or this is what he's saying here. He's saying there's no greater joy in my life, there's no greater happiness I've experienced than not just leading someone to Christ and seeing someone's soul go right there in front of me, go from death unto life, but actually seeing that soul, that person grow in Jesus Christ and learn to, and start coming to church themselves and get baptized and walk spiritually and learn to soul in and learn to get other people saved. There's no greater joy I have than that, he says. This is what should give you joy in life. Turn to Proverbs 29, Proverbs 29. Here's another one, what about helping others? Just in general, just helping other people and putting other people before yourselves. Here's Proverbs 29, but Proverbs 14, 21 says this, he that despises his neighbor Sineth, but he that hath mercy on the poor, happy is he. So how am I happy if I'm helping other people? I'm losing resources, I'm losing money, I'm losing time, I'm losing whatever it is, it's a net loss. How does that make me happy? Well, if your heart is in the right place, that will give you joy, that will give you happiness. Here's Proverbs 29, here's another one that should give you joy, following the laws of God. Where there is no vision that people perish, but he that keepeth the law happy is he. You keep the law and you're serving God and your heart is in the right place, that will give you joy, that will give you happiness. And say, well, it doesn't give me joy, these things don't give me joy, I don't have joy from serving God, I just do it because I have to, right? It doesn't give me joy to help others, it doesn't give me joy to go so winning. Then consider your ways, consider your ways. Obviously, no one's ever going to be perfect, so it's something that literally applies to everybody. Our heart is never going to be in a perfect place with God that will never happen, unless we are sinless. So we can take all these things, if they look at this one area of the Christian life, there's no longer giving you joy or giving you happiness, work on getting your heart back in the right place. Here in Proverbs 16, here's another area that should give you happiness. Trusting in God, trusting in God, taking trust off yourself just in your day to day life and putting more of it on God. Psalm 146.5, you're turning to Proverbs 16 says this, happy is the man that hath the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the Lord his God. Salvation is just a small example of that.  But it's not just with salvation, it's with every other area of your life.  There in Proverbs 16, look at verse 20, it says, he that handled the matter wisely shall find good and whoso trusteth in the Lord, happy is he. Turn to Ecclesiastes two, we'll end this point with Ecclesiastes chapter two. Let's look at a bad example of this. So we looked at all these good examples of, hey, this should give you happiness, this should give you happiness, this should give you joy. But let's look at the wrong example of this. Let's look at what happens when the opposite is done. When someone goes to the world for happiness or goes to, it goes to, that depends solely on what the world has to offer for their happiness. Ecclesiastes chapter two, look at verse one, this is Solomon. This is Solomon sort of lamenting on the mistakes he made in life, that's what Ecclesiastes is. Verse one, I said to my heart, go to now while I prove thee with worth, therefore enjoy pleasure. Look, again, there's nothing wrong with having money and there's nothing wrong with having success and getting happiness from that. But when it comes to the core of what gives you purpose and life, it should not be what the world has to offer. Two, I said of laughter it is mad and of mirth what do with it. So now we're gonna go just down the list looking at all the things, that's what he's talking about here, that he tried for happiness, the specific things that he went to for happiness. I saw to my heart to give myself unto wine. He tried alcohol. A lot of people are trying that. He had a quainting my heart with wisdom. Look at verse four, I made me great works. So he built things. I built to be houses. I planted me vineyards. I made me gardens and orchards. I planted trees and them of all kinds of fruits. I made me pools of water to water wherewith the wood. They're bringing forth trees. I got me servants and maidens and had servants born in my house. Also I had great possessions of great small cattle above all that were in Jerusalem before me. Notice how he keeps saying I had more than anyone ever had up to this point. I, there was no one before me that had what I had at this time. I gathered me also silver and gold and the peculiar treasure of kings of the provinces. I got me men singers and women singers and the delights of the sons of men as musical instruments and that of all sorts. Verse nine, so I was great and increased more than all that were before me in Jerusalem. Also my wisdom remained with me. So again the problem, if you look at this, the problem is not necessarily that it made him happy to plant trees that it made him happy to build himself a house. The problem was that gave him what of all these things that he listed, you know what you don't see? You don't see the joy he got from helping other people. You don't see the joy he got from teaching. David would talk about the joy that was given to him by telling other people about the Lord. You don't see that here. You don't see the joy he got from discipling people and teaching people about the word of God that he got from trusting in God. That's omitted here because that's not, that had nothing, that was no part of what gave him joy at this point in his life. Verse 10, he just reiterates this and talks about how this was and whatsoever of mine I desired, I kept not from them. I withheld not my heart from any joy. My heart rejoiced in all my labor and this was the portion of all my labor. And then verse 11, I feel like, I love verse 11 because I feel like there's a certain moments you can almost see in his writing. You can almost see a certain moment in his life where something clicked with him, where there's a realization that hit him. Where he had everything and he thought he was happy and he got to a point where it finally clicked with him that he was miserable. That all these things he had, he was still had an empty life. Verse 11, then, so after he had all these things, then I looked on all the works, my hands had wrought, he's, I believe there's a moment that it clicked with him where he realized this, where he looked at everything he had. He was looking at his vineyards. He was looking at his trees and pools of water and house and silver and gold. And on the labor that I had labor to do, again the time, because labor is time, he's looking at the time he spent doing these things. And behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit and there was no prophet under the sun. It was a moment where he looked at it all and he saw all these things and none of it was for God, none of it was for serving the Lord. And he looks at it and he says, this is all waste. This is all for nothing. All the time and later in my life I spent all the good I could have done and this was all I did with it. This was all I did with it. Verse 17, therefore I hated life because the work that is raw under the sun is grievous unto me because what you see, we're not gonna read it all between verse 11 and verse 17 in a heavy theme throughout the book as he talks about how so many things are vain because of the fact that we all die. We're all gonna leave this earth at some point.  What was the point of spending 100% of my efforts in life on this? Look, if you were saved in all of your effort, the majority of your happiness in life and what you go to for happiness, what you go for for joy, if the majority of it is for searching for happiness and vain things, you will come to deeply regret it one day. Guaranteed. We all have the Holy Spirit in us and just like with Jonah, you cannot run from the Holy Spirit. And if we search the wrong things to where the joys of the Bible and the joys of church and soul, those things no longer give us happiness anymore, we go to happiness for other things, we will come to regret that one day. Turn to Acts chapter 15. Acts chapter number 15. So how do we tell where our heart is spiritually this morning? How do we tell if our heart is really in the right place or if we need to make corrections or adjustments? Well, the first way is what do we spend our time on? Ask yourself that. What do I spend? What am I most excited to spend my time doing? And then the second thing is what do I get happiness from? What do I do? What do I go to for mainly in my life that gives me excitement? What gives me happiness and what doesn't give me happiness? What do I, maybe even things I do that I don't really get happiness from? How about this one? What would you give your life for? What would you give your life for? Acts chapter 15, look at verse 25. It seemed good unto us being assembled with one accord to send chosen men unto you with our beloved Barnabas and Paul. Look what they say about them. Men that have hazarded their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Look, even if we knew nothing about Paul and Barnabas, even if they were never mentioned again in the book of Acts, even if this is the only mention in the Bible that we ever had of these two men, that's all we knew about them. And just from these two verses, or rather that one, I bet I could tell you where their heart was. I bet I could tell you what their deepest care was in life, but I could tell you what they spent, just as one glimpse of a single phrase, of a single verse, I bet I could look at that and I could have a pretty successful prediction of what the majority of their life was spent doing. Or where their heart was. Turn to John 13. John 13, well you're turning to John 13 because ultimately the best example of this is Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the ultimate example of this. How do we know what Jesus cared about? How do we know why he came to this earth? It's because of what he died for. Well you're turning there already Matthew 20 verse 28 where Jesus says this, even as the son of man came not to be ministered unto, he's teaching his disciples about leadership and how if you wanna be in a leadership position you have to serve, it's not this preeminent position, if you want to be a leader you must serve other people. And he's teaching, he's saying here's the best example of this, it's me, I'm the best example of this, even as the son of man came not to be ministered unto, he says I didn't come to this earth to be served, to be treated like a king, but rather to minister and to give his life a ransom for many, he says I came to take this life and to give it to other people and not myself. John 13 verse one, I love this verse, says now before the feast of the Passover when Jesus knew that his hour was come, he knows that it's his time, throughout the Gospels he would tell people my time's not come, his time was not yet come, his time was not yet come. Now it is his time to die for the sins of the world and he says when he knew that his hour was come that he should depart out of this world, unto the Father, having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end. His greatest concern, obviously Jesus, he asked God and he prayed God to, if it was possible to remove this death from him, but his greatest concern, his greatest sadness was leaving his disciples behind. He says he loved them unto the end. Say, how do we know this? First John 3.16, you don't have to turn there, says, hereby perceive we the love of God. Here's how we know he loved them unto the end. Here's how we know that's not just the narrator saying that because he laid down his life for us, we ought also to lay down our lives for the brother. In John 15, Jesus would say no greater love have the man than this than to lay down his life for his friends. We know what Jesus cared about because of what he did. That's why all these religions that say, oh Jesus was just a good teacher, he was just a good man, they're missing obviously salvation but the greatest part of Jesus that they're missing is that the Muslim can't prove to me what Jesus cared about. The person who believed Jesus was real or just walked around in this earth but he wasn't God and he wasn't deity and he didn't die for us, they can't tell me what he cared about because they don't believe that he died for what he actually died for. Turn to Revelation chapter 12. Then Revelation chapter number 12. The Bible says this, and I heard a loud voice in heaven. Now has come salvation, strength, and the kingdom of our God and the power of his Christ for the accuser of our brethren is cast down which accuse them before our God day and night. And look at verse 11, talking about believers here and they overcame him by the blood of the lamb. The reason we are gonna overcome, we still have the flesh in this life but the reason that we will one day win in the end and the reason that we will one day overcome the devil and sin and death is because we overcome him by the blood of the lamb. And by the word of their testimony, and look at this phrase, it says, and they love not their lives unto the death. They didn't love their life, they loved God who died for them. When it came down to it, when it came down to the very end, that's who they love their life for.  That's true.  Turn to Revelation 2, already in Revelation, turn to Revelation chapter 2. A few things we'll define in a greater way where your heart is than knowing yourself what you would give it. Revelation verse 2, look at verse 9, or chapter 2, look at verse 9. I know thy works. Is Jesus talking to the churches here? He's rebuking some, he's praising some, he's both rebuking and praising some. I know thy works.  That's known to God. The purpose of this sermon isn't because God doesn't know where our heart is, it's so we can know where our heart is so we can fix it or improve. I know thy works in tribulation and poverty, but thou art rich. And I know the blasphemy of them who would say they are Jews and are not but are of the synagogue of Satan. Through none of those things which thou shalt suffer, behold the devil shall cast some of you into prison. He may be tried. And he shall have tribulation in 10 days, be thou faithful unto death. And I will give thee a credit of life.   Look, Christ was faithful. If you're saved, Christ was faithful unto death for you. What do you do the same for him? Turn to Colossians three. So how do we tell where our heart is? This is Colossians three is the last place we'll turn. Okay, where do we spend our time? Where do we spend our time doing? That's a good measurement. What gives us happiness? What would we die for? That's a big one. But here's perhaps the greatest one. Here's the perhaps the greatest measurements of where your heart is with God. What do you live for? What do you live for? Look, dying for Christ is often considered the epitome of spirituality. I wouldn't disagree with that. But I've heard it said, Pastor Meheah had a sermon I listened to a few months ago and he made a really good point. But that's what perhaps is harder and more difficult than dying for Christ is spending an entire life living for him. He's like, dying for Christ, that's a decision you make in one moment. That's a big decision.  But you know what's difficult? Sending an entire lifetime, deciding every single moment whether or not to serve God. Colossians three, look at verse one. The Bible says this, if then you'd be risen with Christ, that's everyone here. If you're saved. Everyone who's here, that is we are risen with Christ. Seek those things which are above where Christ is on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above and not on things of the earth. See, okay, that sounds nice. But how do I do that specifically? So I set my affection on what God wants it. That's easy. This is the sort of thing that people give lip service to. But specifically, how do we do this? How do we know if we're doing this? Look at verse five. Mortify, kill, therefore your members which are on the earth. Just look, when you got saved, the new man born inside of you, but you still have the old man. You still have the flesh with you. You still have our sinful, we still have our sinful nature with us. When we die, the old man, that is when the old man will finally perish. Mortify therefore your members which are on the earth. Fornication, here's some specifics for you. Uncleanness, inordinate affection, evocompiscuance, covetousness, idolatry which is idolatry. Covetousness in the New Testament is often compared to the, in the Old Testament idolatry was a major thing. In the New Testament, it's often compared to covetousness. It's the same concept.  You're having, it's the same, if it was an idol, taking some thing that's not real, some temporary thing, some mortal thing on earth and you are placing it above God in your life. For which things sake the wrath of God, cometh on the children of disobedience. These are things that God chastises us for as believers. In the which he also walked some time when he lived in them. But now you've also put off all these. He's saying, you used to walk in these things before you were saved. So don't keep walking in them. Anger, wrath. Look, are you an angry person?  Do you still speak the same ways before you got saved? Lie not one to another, seeing that you've put off the old man with his deeds. He's saying, you need to take this old man that's still, you need to try to put him off. You need to try to get rid of him. He didn't, he didn't die when you got saved. You have eternal life, that's what the new man is, but you still have the flesh with you. Look at verse 10. And now have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him. He says, you have the new man, act like it. Look at verse 12. Put on therefore, as the elect of God, again, the saved, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies. So write these down to remember these things and bookmark this in your Bible because these are the specifics. When it comes to what do you live for? What do you spend your life doing? These are the specifics. We can compare it to. Bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long suffering, for bearing one another, for giving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any. Even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye. It's another thing in the Bible.  None of us will be perfect at doing this, but if we forgave everyone in our life for anything that they ever did against us, no matter how severe, that will never come close to what Christ forgave you. Above all, these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness. And then I love verse 15, I'll kind of tie this together. It says, it'll let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which ye are also called the one body and be thankful. Look, if you can do this, if you can live a life where your heart is with God and no one's perfect and no one will ever be perfect until the old man dies and we're in heaven, but if we can have a heart that is towards God and if we can spend a life where our time is, the priority of our time and our happiness and what we would die for, what we would live for is to God, there is an unmatchable peace that comes along with that, of serving the Lord. Verse 16, let the word of Christ dwell in the heart of God, always done, teaching and admonishing one another. So he's just talking about the joy that will come from if you can do this. Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, what do you listen to? Singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. In verse 17, he ties it all together. He says, and whatsoever you do, whatever you do in your life, what does it mean to live for God? Whatsoever you do in word or deed, whatever you say and whatever you do, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him. If you are thankful and that's why I think it ties it with thankfulness twice here, you can be thankful for your salvation, you can serve God with thankfulness, out of thankfulness for what he did for you, the peace of God will rule in your heart. Look, this is the spiritual, successful, selfless Christian life. Is this where your heart is? You know, it's funny in closing, I was thinking about this, as I was writing the sermon, I was thinking about this phrase you hear a lot, where people talk about finding yourself.  Just, okay, people who say this from their perspective, what are they talking about? And basically finding yourself, what people are talking about when they say that, I mean, you'll have entire articles written by professors and doctors on this subject. Basically finding yourself is this thing where you need to go and you need to forget what everyone else has taught you, forget what you were taught, forget what it is doing, forget any advice, anything, and just do, just think about what you believe and what you really want to do, and just do that thing. So basically, you just think of every lust of the flesh or everything that you want or every false belief that you may have, and instead of going to the Bible or going to people who are wiser than you or going for advice, you just double down on whatever it is you want to do. That's wicked. That's evil. That's what Satan is trying to get everybody to do.  Just born into this world and born in chooses to stand against God all by default, all by, on their own. By default, Satan has won with them. So all this is, that's what Satan wants you to do. He just wants you to take your default setting of rebellion against God in separation from God.  That's what Satan wants for the unsafe world. Look, so essentially what the sermon is, what we're trying to do is we actually are trying to find ourself, but the difference is that we find where we are and we look at how wrong we are and we correct it. We find where we are, we compare it to the word of God, we compare it to what God wants for our lives and then we change to move towards that. Instead of doubling down with what our flesh wants and doubling in what we want, we find ourselves. Look, you need to go and need to find yourself. That's what this sermon is. I hope you find yourself. And then I hope you, once you've found yourself and you find where you are compared with God wants, we need to change and move towards that. But most people can't change. It's very difficult. Well, my dad, what I would say that's very, most people can't change. Or not that they can't change, but most people will not change. You need to. That's what, look, if you're saved, you can change. If you have the Holy Spirit in you, you can change. So look, let's find ourself. Let's find out where our heart is. If you have the spectrum from spiritual to unspiritual, your heart is somewhere in there. Let's find it and change for the better. Let's borrow our heads and have a word of prayer.