1. A lot of white folks don't understand what systematic racism is. They believe blacks are lazy or are unwilling to compete. What they fail to understand is, even if we discard the whole 400 yrs of slavery, the American system has had black folks by the scrotum even up to now
2. Right now most of the baby boomers are retiring, they are the second generation beneficiaries of Redlining and the 1933-59 FHA mortgage policies. FHA financed 80 percent of all private home construction nationwide at its peak during WW2. The problem was...
3. FHA loans were just guaranteed by the govt but they were adminstered through banks. These banks provided loans based on risk models that excluded neighborhoods with higher probability of default. The neighborhoods tended to be black. You wld say this is just business but ...
4. The country was coming out of the Great Depression, the govt was providing a necessity given the massive foreclosures which HOLC had failed to refinance. HOLC was government-sponsored corporation whose goal was to help struggling families avert foreclosure but...
5. It became the biggest perpetrator of racial segregation through its redlining policies. Those policies became the standard used by other banks. So by 1943, 98% of beneficiaries were white, who then had a head-start into suburbs while blacks remained in poor neighborhoods
6. Why is this important? The babyboomers you see today retiring ,most in comfort, had opportunities that black contemporaries didn't have. White families financed their kids's education thru equity loans etc from the same high value homes they were helped to acquire by FHA.
7. Black pple were left in low value, inner city areas and did not have the luxury nor privilege. Big box stores followed capital to the suburbs and only liquor & corner stores remained. No jobs, no opportunity. Black kids who went to college had to accrue lots of debt
8. So these baby-boomers had a huge govt-backed headstart. They had less debt and more access to finance. As they retire today, they are passing that wealth to their children and grandkids. Most black college students are probably 1st-generation to get there.
9. They are again probably financing that education thru debt, & coming from poor neighbourhoods they are probably bound to have higher interest rates and more susceptible to predatory lenders. They are starting at negative $100K while their white counterparts have social nets
10. This follows them wherever they go, housing, healthcare, insurance they have to pay more. So the system is designed to squeeze the black person while generationally rewarding white folks. A black person has to work 5x more than the white person for half the step.
11. I am not saying there are no poor white people in USA but their poverty is mainly because of other circumstances that are outside the fact that there has always been a deliberate effort by white people and the institutions they control to disadvantage black pple.
12. Now, what is the solution? Desegregation & deracialiazation of institutions is a start but there are other things.
✅ Affirmative Action
✅Government grants for education
✅Zero interest mortgage
✅Private Equity Support
✅ Justice system reform
✅ Affirmative Action
✅Government grants for education
✅Zero interest mortgage
✅Private Equity Support
✅ Justice system reform
