Colorblind Segregation: Equal Protection as a Bar to Neighborhood Integration

On the outskirts of the city of Dallas are the vestiges of a sprawling public housing project of 3,500 units known simply as West Dallas. The city built the project in 1955 as a solution to the "Negro Housing Problem": the fear that the strong private market demand for rental housing among African Americans would lead to black encroachment into white neighborhoods, and that such integration pressure might meet violent white resistance. Intervening in this human tragedy and political controversy in 1989, a federal district court judge ordered the Dallas Housing Authority (DHA) and city council to take affirmative steps to remedy their egregious patterns of housing segregation. In 1999, in Walker vs City of Mesquite, Texas (Walker V) the Fifth Circuit rejected the lower court's finding that exclusively color-blinded remedies could not overcome the DHA's explicit practice of segregation and racial discrimination. This paper uses Walker V as a case study to explore the meaning and potential consequences of a color-blind segregation regime.