It’s rare when a government meeting looks like a book club and Wednesday’s meeting of the Bend Affordable Housing Advisory Committee is kind of going to be a book club.

They will be discussing “The Color of Law” by Richard Rothstein. The book is about how government supported segregation by law by upholding racial covenants, restricting who could live in a neighborhood.

Members of the committee are looking at the book, because they requested it. Staff obliged. It fits right into the discussion the city is having as it takes a closer look at fair housing and its policies.

Many Americans freely acknowledge racial covenants were used to restrict access to homes. As we recently wrote, the Central Oregon Black Leaders Assembly through its Good Deeds program has uncovered racial covenants linger in the chains of title to some property in Bend. One example had covenants attempting to block “Chinese or Japanese” from occupying or using certain property, except as servants.

Society and the courts have struggled with what to conclude from the covenants: To what extent was private prejudice reinforced by government and the law? And is government required to fix it?

If you read Rothstein’s book, he highlights the examples of Supreme Court decisions in desegregation of schools in Detroit in the 1970s or in the 2000s over desegregation plans in Louisville and Seattle. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in a 2007 decision: “‘Where [racial imbalance] is a product not of state action but of private choices, it does not have constitutional implications.”

Rothstein’s book is out to prove that state action did contribute significantly to racial imbalance and so it does have constitutional implications. It did not happen by accident, he argues. It did not happen only because people like to live with people like them. It happened in part because of racial covenants and how government reinforced them.

If this sort of discussion interests you, join in to Bend’s de facto book club and see where the affordable housing committee takes it.