Prof. Orfield Quoted in The New Yorker About his Upcoming Book

Professor Myron Orfield, the director of the Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity at the University of Minnesota Law School, is writing a book about the Fair Housing Act in the nineteen-sixties. “Civil disorder in 1968 helped Richard Nixon a lot, especially when there was violence,” Orfield said, “but it feels like the polling is different now. A lot of white people see this differently than they did in the sixties.” His data suggest that people now are much more ambivalent, more likely to see both sides, and, although they might be fearful of violence, they may also agree with black grievances and believe in a need for reform. “I don’t think the violence ever helps, I think it hurts the Democrats,” Orfield said. “In those really white suburbs of Milwaukee, I wouldn’t be surprised if people are scared,” he noted, “but I think they’re already kind of built into Trump’s base.”