So, you believe in a color blind society my dear conservative friends? Perhaps, you should check your local bank about its mortgage lending practices. Just sayin …
Hudson City Bancorp will pay nearly $33 million to settle civil charges alleging the New Jersey-based bank wrongfully discriminated against prospective black and Hispanic home buyers, in a case that marks the largest ever redlining settlement in history, the U.S. government said on Thursday.
The joint action by the U.S. Justice Department and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said that Hudson City Savings Bank tried to avoid locating branches and marketing mortgages in neighborhoods with a majority of black and Hispanic residents. […]
Gupta said Thursday that the settlement is the largest the Justice Department has ever struck both, in terms of the monetary amount and the geographic regions covered.
She added that the civil rights division has recently seen an increased number of active redlining investigations.
Like anything else, a stereotype about white people is actively racist. Assuming that the actions of a bank in New Jersey constitutes a statement about the entire “white people” segment is an actively racist statement.
Generalizations about everybody based on a single example are not appropriate. Even when they fit the current agenda.
Perhaps you missed this:
“She added that the civil rights division has recently seen an increased number of active redlining investigations.”
When and if those “investigations” result in fines, prosecutions, and followup, that will be interesting information. Until the “investigations” produce something, they are just investigations, right? Innocent until fined and imprisoned, correct?
Although that doesn’t necessarily mean the redlining is getting worse. It does mean the DOJ is doing its job better–lots of cheers for that!
And where the hell did I say all white people are racists based on “one bank?”
Steven’s post didn’t mention white people at all, dataguy.
Steven referenced a “color blind society.” Redlining is an example of institutional racism – discrimination based on structural results, not individual bigotry. Perhaps you should disabuse yourself of the stereotype that every time someone uses an r-word they’re talking about white people in hoods.
Even Fox News and Rush Limbaugh are matters of institutional racism. Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes were acting as institution seeking a bigoted audience. The executives of ClearChannel who built their empire of rural radio stations off of Rush Limbaugh’s racism knew exactly what they were doing and why. The why is easy money and in a lot of cases promoting their own bigoted views.
It’s time that folks learned about those beyond rednecks and crackers–folks labeled “doughfaces”, “Butternuts”, and “Copperheads” were among the pillars of institutional racism outside the South. Butternuts are why Richmond IN had one of the larger KKK chapters in the 1920s. Copperheads did not cease being so just because the Confederacy was defeated. A popular history of the continuity of institutions that support racism from the Civil War to the present day is a project that I hope some enterprising historian is working on this project.
Not actions of white people, just the actions of many of the banks out there. If you want a good example, you should check out the one Wells Fargo pulled with Tavis Smiley.