Richard Rothstein, a noted expert on American racial disparities, visited a Cal State San Bernardino African-American history class via video chat on April 22 to share his expertise and to discuss his New York Times bestselling book, “The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How our Government Segregated America.” “We are very fortunate to have him visiting our class,” said Marc Robinson, assistant professor of history. The class, HIST 341 African American History 1865 to Present, read Rothstein’s “The Color of Law,” which explores racial segregation, specifically with African-Americans. “We have an unconstitutional system of residential segregation in this country,” he told the class. “In the 20th century, we abolished a lot of forms of segregation; we came to understand that racial segregation was wrong, that it was harmful to both whites and blacks, that it was immoral, that it was incompatible with our self-conception of a democratic society … We’ve abolished all these forms of segregation, and we left untouched the biggest segregation of all, which is that every metropolitan area in this country is residentially segregated. …“Once we understand that residential segregation of every metropolitan area is the explicit creation of racial policies as part of our government, we have an obligation as American citizens to remedy it,” he said.Following Rothstein’s talk, the class had the opportunity to ask him questions.Rothstein is a senior fellow at UC Berkeley’s Haas Institute, a distinguished fellow of the Economic Policy Institute where he works on policy issues regarding education and race, and a senior fellow emeritus at the Thurgood Marshall Institute of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.