Feds go too far

The Herald was right to criticize the Obama administration’s recently imposed “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing” rule (“Fed housing overreach,” July 19). It wrongly seeks to alter the racial makeup of America’s neighborhoods based on an erroneous definition of segregation.

The rule wrongly defines “segregation” as a high concentration of persons of a particular race or religion. But mere concentration is not segregation. For example, Orthodox Jews are concentrated in certain neighborhoods because they have to walk to synagogue, not because of segregation.

The rule wrongly treats communities as segregated if they lack racially “balanced living patterns.” That ignores the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which emphasizes that school “desegregation” does not require institutions to overcome racial imbalance.

Due to its faulty definition, the rule promotes harmful social engineering, not desegregation.