The editorial page of the New York Times recently weighed in on an important but underappreciated aspect of the financial crisis: The systematic targeting of communities of color for risky and unfair loans. As the Timesput it:
Pricing discrimination — illegally charging minority customers more for loans and other services than similarly qualified whites are charged — is a longstanding problem. It grew to outrageous proportions during the bubble years. Studies by consumer advocates found that large numbers of minority borrowers who were eligible for affordable, traditional loans were routinely steered toward ruinously priced subprime loans that they would never be able to repay.
Rampant lending discrimination during the housing bubble exposed black and Latino communities to the harshest consequences of the economic crisis. The link between race, subprime lending, and devastating rates of foreclosure has been crystal clear for some time. Researches at Princeton have found, for example, that "the greater the degree of Hispanic and especially black segregation a metropolitan area exhibits, the higher the number and rate of foreclosures it experiences." That same study found that these disparities are due in large part to the disproportionate chance that minority borrowers will receive subprime loans.
By Chandra Bhatnagar, Senior Staff Attorney, ACLU Human Rights Program at 10:34am
On this day in 1960, white police officers in Sharpeville, South Africa, opened fire on a peaceful anti-apartheid demonstration killing 69 black South African protestors...
By Rachel Goodman, Staff Attorney, ACLU Racial Justice Program at 7:51am
In an ideal world, a rising tide really would lift all boats. But we know it doesn’t work like that. And, as a new report shows, when the tide goes out, not every boat is equally likely to get stranded.
The median wealth of white households is now an unprecedented 20 times that of black households and 18 times that of Hispanic households, according to an analysis released Tuesday by the Pew Research Center. This staggering disparity is the largest since the government began tracking such data over a quarter-century ago.
