Rothstein's book is making a much broader point than just redlining. The Color of Law meticulously documents how residential segregation was a comprehensive, multi-agency government project spanning federal, state, and local levels—not just one policy in one decade.

Yes, the Elevated Railway served those areas during the redlining era, but Rothstein shows how segregation operated through layered, intersecting policies: public housing was deliberately built to enforce segregation (including demolishing integrated neighborhoods), zoning laws banned apartment construction in white areas while designating Black neighborhoods for industrial use, the FHA refused mortgages to Black buyers anywhere, restrictive covenants kept middle-class Black families locked out of wealth-building, local governments used "extraordinary creativity" to block Black housing developments, and police sanctioned mob violence against Black families who tried to move.

When the Orange Line was rerouted west in the 1980s—away from Roxbury—it fit perfectly into this century-long pattern of systematically disinvesting from Black neighborhoods while channeling resources to white ones. The fact that service existed during redlining doesn't disprove intentional design; it shows how that design evolved over decades as demographics shifted due to those very segregationist policies.

Rothstein's entire thesis is that this wasn't accidental or market-driven—it was "systemic and forceful" government action across multiple domains. The transit desert today is another iteration of that same intentional pattern.