Outlawing housing discrimination did not erase its accumulated vestiges.

Evidence

Racially restrictive covenants were used by white homeowners for years, though eventually race discrimination in housing was made illegal when Congress passed and President Johnson signed the Fair Housing Act. (Incidentally, or not, the act was signed one week after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.) But while the Fair Housing Act made racial discrimination illegal, it fell short of eliminating all vestiges of racial discrimination in housing—as black Americans who have sought to purchase a home are well aware. — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 1231

Categorization

• XREF: This is the pivot from diagnosis to remedy-design (the genre shift under study): legal prohibition ≠ full remediation, which motivates the reparations response.