People of Color Face Historic Wealth Loss

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

"It could take more than 5,000 years before Blacks
achieve homeowner parity with whites!"

The core institutions of American capitalism have condemned
Black and Brown America to further centuries of wealth disparity. Now standing
at about ten-to-one, the wealth gap between African American and white median
households cannot but grow bigger in the wake of the subprime lending
catastrophe. The Boston-based United for a Fair Economy recently released a
report, detailing the carnage wreaked on people of color by predatory lenders -
and it is mind-boggling.

The report, titled "Foreclosed:
State of the Dream 2008," shows definitively that banks and other lending
institutions trapped Blacks and Latinos in predatory lending schemes as a
matter of policy. "Even a surface check of the demographics shows," the report
says, "that, in city after city, a solid majority of subprime loan recipients
were people of color." The very scope of the crime proves that the lending
crisis is not the product of Black "culture," but the result of calculated
policies, near-uniformly carried out by virtually all of the nation's mortgage
lending institutions. This is institutional racism writ large, and
indisputable.

The money-lenders have already sucked the value out of
whole communities, urban and suburban. The wealth loss is staggering: People of
color have collectively lost between "$164 billion to $213 billion over the
past eight years," with Latinos losing slightly more than African Americans.
For the average American, wealth is passed on through the value of homes. That
dream, as the report concludes, has been largely foreclosed.

Before the crisis hit, it was estimated that it would take
594 years - more than half a millennium! - for Blacks to catch up with whites
in household wealth. Now, in the aftermath of the home mortgage massacre, it
could take ten times as long - more than 5,000 years! - before Blacks achieve
homeowner parity with whites. Looking backward, that stretches from now to when
the great pyramids were built.

"People of color have
collectively lost between $164 billion to $213 billion over the past eight years."

If Black wealth creation through home-owning is central to
the drive for equality, then the private sector cannot be allowed free reign;
they have already proven themselves criminally culpable in the death of dreams.
And the crisis is by no means over. The rot extends to the non-mortgage
practices of global financial institutions, that bundle worthless paper and
trade it like real money. So deeply corrupt are the mega-banks, brokerage
houses and finance capitalists of all kinds, the entire planetary house of
cards is in danger of collapse.

Domestically, cities are already feeling the crunch of
diminishing home property taxes - having long ago given away much of their tax
base to attract many of the same corporations that created the current crisis.
Boarded up houses destroy property values in the surrounding neighborhood, but
there are at present no reliable private mechanisms to reverse the devastation.
The banks aren't even taking each other's paper - knowing it is as worthless as
their own.

Forget the sales sloganeering, that owning a home is the
"American Dream." Affordable housing is what the people need, whether rental or
family-owned - many millions of new units. The private sector cannot - will
not - provide affordable housing, since it is more concerned with creating
artificially high sale values than with meeting the public's crying needs. Now
that the bubble has burst, it should never be allowed to be re-inflated. There
is only one alternative, and that is massive public spending on housing that
fits the actual needs and budgets of the citizens. That's the very least one
can demand from one's government.

For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Glen Ford.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contracted
at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

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