because we destroyed ourselves

November 2nd, 2010

Hotlanta served as a case study for mortgage-based racism, as the Pulitzer-winning series in the Atlanta Journal and Constitution “The Color of Money” so aptly captured.

It showed how blacks were routinely rejected for loans which whites in a comparable economic situation were accepted for. And this phenomenon wasn’t isolated to one city, as a 1991 study showed that out of 6.4 million mortgage applications nationwide, even after income was controlled for – blacks were rejected twice as often as their white counterparts. However that wasn’t the worst of it, in urban centers such as Boston, Philly, Chicago, Minneapolis, blacks were rejected three-times more often than whites.35

Even well-to-do blacks have been unable to escape from this institutional prejudice.

Wealthy black neighborhoods in the DC suburbs have a much tougher time getting loans than low-income white areas, and in Boston blacks living on the exact same street as their white neighbors and earning similar incomes found it much tougher to get a mortgage than their white neighbors. Joe Kennedy summed up the cumulative effect of this racial injustice well, describing “an America where credit is a privilege of race and wealth, not a function of ability to pay back a loan.”36

The city of Baltimore partly captures how higher-rate loans to blacks have affected foreclosure rates, with several Wells Fargo loan officers testifying that they targeted “mud people” for “ghetto loans,” resulting in 71% of foreclosures in that city being made on black homes in recent years. And so, even when income and credit score are controlled for, across the nation blacks are more than three-times more likely than whites to have their home foreclosed and be thrown out into the streets.

America may have nominally advanced from “separate but equal,” however the reality of racial disparity still haunts the bottomlines of black mortgages and checkbooks, holding them back from fully embracing the dream we’re all supposed to share.

Other statistics drive the point home with increased clarity. By 1995, the wealth-gap between black and white was so wide that blacks owned only 8 cents of wealth for every dollar owned by whites. Just eight-cents to the dollar. In other terms, as of 1998 the average white household’s net worth was $100,700 higher than the black average. And that wasn’t even the peak of the gap, according the most recent data, from 2007, the gap in household net worth is now $142,600.

Take a moment to consider that gap.

Your average white American family has a $140,000 leg up on the average black American family. And those families don’t live intermingled among the same neighborhoods, the difficulty black families have securing a mortgage loan have created high concentrations of blacks living in certain neighborhoods while whites live mostly in others. By 1993, 86% of whites lived in communities where blacks made up less than 1% of the neighborhood.13

This racial stratification has created neighborhoods ripe for infection by radical Islamists hoping to begin the accidental guerrilla syndrome. Black neighborhoods have more crime, more poverty, and less governance than wealthy white ones – the ideal conditions for an outside terrorist infection to set in. And the process is made even easier when you consider the effect the prison system has on black communities, isolating young men away from their friends and families and everything they’ve ever known for years at a time, the ideal circumstances for softening someone up for radicalization.

Once radicalized, they’re released back to their old neighborhoods to begin spreading the contagion that had been injected into them in prison while they were held prone by hopelessness, isolation, and fear.

Perhaps most alarming is that the Department of Justice is manipulating its racial drug-related prison data, in effect lying, to make it seem like our Drug Laws aren’t targeting minorities as acutely as they really are. To try and keep up appearances, a few years ago the DoJ decided to simply remove all of the prisoners who were mixed race black-and-white from their data without reflecting this change on any of their tables or in any of their charts.

Category: Uncategorized 9 comments »

9 Responses to “because we destroyed ourselves”

  1. toooner

    Please post references to what the books you’re helping to sell actually refer to. I’m sure those books on amazon are good, but I’m more interested in talking to other people about some of the incredible things you’re saying and I’d like to actually be able to back up my story.

  2. Joseph e. smith

    EXCELLENT article!
    Amerikkka…fine tuning racism.
    Republicans (i.e. conservatives) are not solely to blame either. Democrats, including California Democrats as well as President Obama (shame on you BO!) continue to perpetuate the problem.
    Ask yourself, would George W. Bush have been elected President if he had been exposed as a cocaine user that he was? Would Clinton or Obama have been elected if they had been busted smoking grass? Likely not! They’re lives would have taken a definite turn for the worse.
    What’s more, a person convicted of drug possession in the USA is currently ineligible for federal student loans while a paroled murderer or rapist is still eligible.
    SICK! SICK! SICK SOCIETY!

  3. raptron

    Yeah, I would really love to see the studies and sources of the statistics you are referencing from the books. Referencing the entire books isn’t very helpful. This was an amazing article, and I would just love to read the studies myself.

  4. Rust

    If the majority of blacks commit a certain type of crime, you must legalize it or its a racist law! Everything that blacks want to do, however immoral, should be accepted. And that’s regardless if they they want to smoke crack or cut your throat. According to this author, criminal blacks are angels, and the ones making laws to protect society are evil.

  5. aharon rabinowitz

    good article, but when you say “a third more likely”, do you mean 3 times as likely or 1/3 more likely (which would actually be less likely)?

    TtD: 133% more likely, sorry the phrasing was unclear.

  6. Savage Henry

    Dude, keep on kicking ass. Your writing has gotten even better from the ol’ RMMB days.

  7. Brian Korsedal

    Hi,

    I’m not racist. I’m white. I have black friends.

    I would like to see some of the data you used. I think the top 1% of the income group really throws off the average data. I’m assuming a large portion of the wealthiest people are white.

    It would be nice to know how things stack up when the wealthiest 5% are removed from the numbers. I think the whites would have 2x the wealth of blacks.

    Still bad, but not as bad as 10x. I just find that hard to believe.

  8. RACIST

    Maybe blacks just get caught more? They fall asleep in the get away car.

  9. antihostile

    Superb job. I’m a little surprised at the questioning of the statistics, they’re pretty easy to verify via our good friend Google. Keep up the great work.


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