What to Do with Continuing Evidence of Race Discrimination

I am white and not an American. I am a Canadian. Either way, I find this appalling. I don't know if this has happened here, but I would find it absolutely without reasonable cause if it did.

Given that this is happening, I would not doubt that the question of available housing etc. does not also come up. I can only shake my head in disbelief knowing that it was not too many years ago that people of colour would even have a tough time riding a bus.

Social change does take time...but it's been long enough in my opinion.

Personally, any type of discrimination disgusts me. It isn't just white to black or black to white. It's every race and every color under the sun. It's over skin color and weight. It's over having money or the lack thereof. It's over being attractive or not being attractive. It's how you dress or how you speak. Discrimination knows no boundaries or rules.

I just heard on the radio this morning that the mayor of Detroit wants to lower the property taxes in Detroit. Hooray! Oh wait...only for the "established" communities (read rich here). What about the people who can't afford to pay the outrageous taxes now? Why shouldn't they get a break? And it comes down to the fact that they can't move and the "established" communities can. I think that not only is this unfair and unjust I think this is blatent discrimination against those in communities that aren't as fortunate. Makes me utterly sick, and this by the mayor of Detroit. A man who should be leading the city in the right direction. Instead of joining Detroiters, lets segregate them further. Why not just have a white community and a black community and the split those each into rich and poor. Arg. It makes me mad and I don't even live in the city of Detroit.

No matter who does it and for what reason, it's wrong and it makes me angry.

As for what to do, I don't know. Beat it out of peoples heads? Education is the only way to make change happen but how do you educate the ones who don't want to be educated?

Your italicized words tell the tale. I have no problem with banks charging a higher rate for people with poor credit.........................the greater the risk, the more money that they should charge, if the lending institutions want to stay in business.

Charging people higher rates simply because of their color is an abomination. How do we get past this practice? Education and publicity. Local papers should print articles often about unconcionable lenders who overcharge certain groups of people. Neighbors should talk this issue up to each other, and boycott those lenders who take advantage.

Community groups should have speakers to educate the neighborhood people about being a savvy consumer, especially when it comes to big ticket items, like home mortgages, and auto loans. The entire issue needs to be brought out into the open, where it can be seen as the stinking practice that it is. Churches and other places where neighbors gather should have lists of reputable and unreputable lenders available for people to access easily.

There is a clothing store that advertises, "An educated consumer is our best customer". That ad line is appropriate here. If folks take the time to become savvy, to patronize only those lenders who have fair dealings with all of their clients, to tell their friends of decent lenders, and horror stories of bad, this disgusting practice will die on its own. If nobody lent from the gougers, they would soon have to modify their business practices, or soon go out of business.

Companies of all types discriminate on all sorts of bases. One thing you often hear when interviewing for jobs is "we want to make sure you fit our corporate culture". These are wiggle words covering whatever discriminatory hiring practice they want to hide, like age discrimination, which is commonplace in high tech.

Do I think it's right? Not at all. Do I think it pays to shop around and find the best people to work for and deal with? You bet!

It is an outrage if this is happening. Targetting minorities as it is splled out in the above article is unethical. But, part of me would like to know how companies know the color of ones skin without actually meeting them?

Are they being harassed on the street by solicitors?

It has been posted numerous times by mr Possum R Fartblossum that discrimination is non-existent in the us of a.

Isn't this practice illegal?

I work in the auto industry, specifically involved with Finance & Insurance sales in auto dealers(I don't work at a dealer, I sell products to them). Some of my products focus on keeping the dealer compliant, and helping them maintain a compliant sales process in that department.

There was a huge thing in NY regarding this issue of race and charging higher rates. In MA for example, the dealer is capped at a 3% rate markup, meaning if the dealer gets your loan approved at 5%, they can give the customer a rate up to 8%. In NY, there was either no cap, or if there was, it allowed for a ridiculous markup. There was a lawsuit concerning this because they found out black customers were getting charged higher rates. There were decent credit people getting hammered with 20% loans, for example.

I've been in the auto industry for about 7 years now, and have sold cars at a dealership where we worked with a lot of bad credit customers. It is hands down, much easier to make more money off these people. And we did make more money off them. They have less negotiating power and are less educated. They can't go to the local credit union, and get pre-approved for a low rate, for example. They just don't have the access to subprime banks like a dealer does. They're more concerned with somebody simply getting them approved, rather than what's the rate and how much they can negotiate price.

Now, I know you mentioned blacks & hispanics who had the same credit score of whites were charged higher rates. I'm wondering if maybe dealers would automatically link a black or hispanic individual as one who is a less educated consumer & has worse credit...why? Because people from lower income areas are made up of more more minorities.

So dealer sees a black customer come in, and thinks "this guy probably has bad credit," vs. seeing a white customer and assuming they have better credit, because they're assuming the black consumer is from a lower income neighborhood, or they're a lower income individual. Even though it's not the race that usually dictates the credit, rather than their demographics; where they live and income. It's not right, and it IS discrimination, but it's still out there. Obviously, trying to take advantage of anyone is wrong, and it's just plain out stupid(from the dealer's perspective) trying to whack good credit minorities with higher rates because they're black/hispanic.

And in general, there are good dealers and bad dealers. Even dealers that try to max out their reserves on every customer(black, white, midget, hermaphrodite) aren't usually guys that stick around a long time. Guys that know how to make SOME money off their customers and still keep a good relationship are the guys successful for a long time.

Because of these instances, auto lenders are facing some heat, and the buzz is reserves(ability to mark up loans) may go away at some point, or some states have to disclose on the contract the rate may have been marked up by the dealer.

Now I'm just talking about what happens at dealerships...not sure what specific types of loans this study is about. But like I mentioned, there was a huge blowout that happened at dealers too, very similar to what you wrote about.

edit: I see this is about mortgages....funny, I have wondered why mortgage lenders haven't faced any heat from this and only auto dealers so far. Mortgage brokers have the same ability to mark their "buy rates" up a certain percentage.

"Red lining," as it is known, has been a pernicious problem for quite a long time. It appears not soley in lending institutions--insurance companies have been known (and are often still found to be) to charge the highest rate for neighborhoods with predominant minority populations. I believe the term "red line" refers to city maps with the areas marked out by red lines.

In Columbus, Ohio, the Huntington Bank was accused of red lining. Denying it, they were embarrassed when the NAACP was able use their own books (which they freely provided) to demonstrate that it had been common. Since that time, Huntington Bank has worked closely with community leaders in neighborhoods such as the Linden neighborhood (predominantly black working- and middle-class) to actively offer loans and credit instruments to residents on generic base qualifications. I could not say if other banks in Columbus responded similarly. I can't say if insurance companies responded similarly, but it would be interesting to find out, as Columbus is an insurance industry center and the home of Nationwide Insurance.

Ironically, when i went looking online for a story about Huntington Bank, i found several (hard-to-read) references to Hunting/First Michigan. Huntington Bankshares owns Huntington/First Michigan as a holding company. The articles i saw referred to redlining by the Huntington in Detroit, and there was a contention that Huntington was stonewalling people about an FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) application for CRA (Community Reinvestment Act) funds. CRA funds are monies which banks are provided for loans in the inner city, in effect making the bank the financial agent for the Fed. The charge was that Huntington/First Michigan was redlining in Detroit, which can only mean that they were using CRA funds for loans to other neighborhoods than Detroit inner city neighborhoods.

I'm not going to have the time to do any research right now, but doing some searches on redlining and the CRA might be productive.

Slappy--thanks for that explanation. When someone says "blacks and Hispanics are charged higher rates"--you sort of wonder why the hell anyone would want to arbitrarily make life harder for people because of their skin color.

But, as usual lately, it's not the brown or the black--it's the green.

See my remarks above--it is based on the address of the applicant.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean - so, blacks and hispanics are not being targeted gor higher interest mortgage loans? Or, is it your contention that they may be getting targeted, but it's not because they're black and hispanic, but that their money is green?

I can't speak for Lash, but my sense of what she wrote was that the motive for targetting minorities was green, i.e., money. She had asked the question of why someone would target a minority group member, and answers it with money.

I suppose it's common in every city but here in Albuquerque that are many "payday" loan shops that often poor people use to cash pre-dated checks. The avoid the normal usury laws by not charging interest but rather charge a "fee" which often runs between 20% and 50% weekly. There was a bill in our state legislature last year to outlaw these practices but it was defeated. It was quite easily possible to start with a $100 "loan" and within one month owe over $500. The most common "victims" seemed to be the southside minorities and low-income miltary around the air force base. But, like Mr Possum said to Setanta on another thread, there is no discrimination in the US of A anymore.

Yes, Dys, how foolish of me to have forgotten that.

dyslexia- I believe that you too are mixing apples and oranges. No one is forcing those folks to go to the payday loan shops. I would expect that those shps charge similar rates, no matter who the customer is. That is NOT the same as charging people with equal credit ratings a different rate, based solely on their race and ethnic group.

it certainly seems to violate the Equal Credit Opportunity Act:



http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/housing/ecoa.htm