The Day the President Turned Black

[Robin Landseadel]

On Jul 30, 2009, at 7:58 AM, Carvill, John wrote:

> Another perspective on Skip, from Greg Palast. Worth reading I  
> thought just for this bit:
>
>  . . .But what about Robert Pratt, Mr. President?
>
> Pratt, a United Auto Workers member, has five kids and a mortgage  
> payment of $1,100 a month on a house in Detroit worth no more than  
> $40,000. The payment's astronomical because he pays 11% on his  
> mortgage balance, double the national average interest rate. Now, on  
> those crazy terms, he's sure to lose his house.
>
> How did that happen? Pratt, whose story we've been tracking, was  
> "steered" into a sub-prime loan by Countrywide Financial. "Steering"  
> is the polite term for forcing folk into crappy loan terms. And not  
> just any folk: Black folk, like Pratt. Over 60% of African-American  
> mortgage applicants were (and ARE) steered into "sub-prime"  
> predatory loans. . .

When my parents started up as civil-rights activists in the early  
sixties down in L.A., the primary issue N.A.A.C.P. & C.O.R.E. was  
focused on was L.A.'s de-facto segregation, segregation enforced at  
the level of what sorts of neighborhoods a person of the colored  
persuasion could find both homes AND mortgages.