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The whites don't really have to be affluent or powerful. They are simply people who could be human resources managers who don't hire browns or blacks. Or teachers who give poor quality teaching to browns or blacks. Or police who press charges on blacks and browns but let whites go without an arrest or prosecution. Or it's the browns or the blacks who are harassed on the job while the whites who are doing the same type of work get off without a snicker. The list goes on and on. It is not just about affluent or powerful whites.
Did it ever occur to you that maybe you just can't cut the mustard? Like . . .maybe if you were white, you'd still be a reject and a failure?
Once again, even though we disagree, I appreciate your comments and will take a look at Ellis Cose's book since I am an avid reader. I am always willing to learn from someone with opposite viewpoints since they require me to challenge my own.
In responding to the bold, how do you know I haven't already done this? How do you know that I am not personally what I speak of? Just because I take a position that is opposite yours does not mean I am not Black or not a minority.
I have already done what you have suggested, as I quiz people I know and meet on a regular basis. One of my main topics are this exact issue. Usually the ones who complain about WIDESPREAD racism are the ones who display negative behaviors that cause people to reject them and it has nothing to do with skin color and everything to do with acting in a classless or uneducated manner. Those things extend to being denied a job, housing, etc, since even other Blacks, minorities and non-racist white people don't want to hire, house, or do business with a classless person.
The Blacks and minorities I know who are educated and classy may see isolated cases of discrimination or racist attitudes from people typically with no power.
Maybe your reality of race, living in progressive enclaves is different from my reality in Southern, more conservative enclaves.
Have a good evening, and thanks for the healthy debate!
I don't believe that you just happen to spend your time, 'quizzing' minorities about racism. That's just too coincidental, as is your claimed involvement in both the real estate, and law enforcement fields. So you have absolutely NO credibility with me!
You think that if minorities are educated, 'classy', and have skills, that they don't experience much racism. Racism isn't something that only happens to unskilled, uneducated minorities. It happens to ALL minorities, and it's STILL widespread.
So don't come on this thread and insult my intelligence, by trying to find ways to deny the existence of widespread racism. As sure as the sun rises and sets, widespread racism has existed, does exist, and will probably always exist in our country.
Racism may be more covert than in the past, but it's STILL a big problem in America.
Did it ever occur to you that maybe you just can't cut the mustard? Like . . .maybe if you were white, you'd still be a reject and a failure?
Did it it ever occur to YOU, that you have no right to brand someone that you know nothing about, as a 'reject', and a 'failure'. Who are YOU, to make such arrogant assumptions against those that you don't know?!?
I don't believe that you just happen to spend your time, 'quizzing' minorities about racism. That's just too coincidental, as is your claimed involvement in both the real estate, and law enforcement fields. So you have absolutely NO credibility with me!
You think that if minorities are educated, 'classy', and have skills, that they don't experience much racism. Racism isn't something that only happens to unskilled, uneducated minorities. It happens to ALL minorities, and it's STILL widespread.
So don't come on this thread and insult my intelligence, by trying to find ways to deny the existence of widespread racism. As sure as the sun rises and sets, widespread racism has existed, does exist, and will probably always exist in our country.
Racism may be more covert than in the past, but it's STILL a big problem in America.
Which proves a big point.
YOU CANNOT CONTROL HUMAN BEHAVIOR, no matter how hard some try or think you can
Did it ever occur to you that maybe you just can't cut the mustard? Like . . .maybe if you were white, you'd still be a reject and a failure?
Well said. I've know too many whites who were failures simply due to the fact they lacked self discipline, ambition and were content to blame someone or something for their lot in life rather than kick themselves in the ass and get moving
You think that if minorities are educated, 'classy', and have skills, that they don't experience much racism. Racism isn't something that only happens to unskilled, uneducated minorities. It happens to ALL minorities, and it's STILL widespread.
...
Racism may be more covert than in the past, but it's STILL a big problem in America.
Addressing anecdotes are difficult because we all have them and they can't really be challenged. He says he's a minority with a different pov. It also doesn't read to me that he's attempting to insult your intelligence. If anything he's having an intelligent and calm dialog with you.
Whatever the case, he did take the time to read your links (as I did) and respond. You haven't challenged any of his responses and I'm not sure why. I hope you, or someone in this thread, can answer my questions. For example, to address your first link, is it true that black potential home buyers typically use black realtors and mortgage brokers? I have no idea. If it's the case, tho, then it wouldn't be about race, per se, at least on the sole parts of whites. Further, what I don't understand is how these financial institutions would know race to begin with. Perhaps my memory is poor, but I do not recall putting race on any applications. I did not meet anyone at my financial institution either. I had a realtor, a second party (I guess) mortgage broker that shopped for loans, and a lawyer.
My mortgage broker was not the lender. I guess he was the interim lender, but he recommended an FHA loan. I don't see the problem with that either. FHA loans typically have lower interest rates and require lower down payments with FHA loans only requiring 3.5% down and conventional loans requiring 20% down. The PMI is also lower and if a person does not have 20% to put down then they're paying PMI. Of course, if a person has 20% to put down on a home they will opt to avoid PMI.
When I got my loan, my broker advised me not to put down as much as I wanted, which would have been about 20k on 225k home. I would need a >40k down payment to avoid PMI or a soft second mortgage. Now, 100% financing is not the way to go either, but in the end I found that he was correct. I put down 5% and sat on the rest of my monies. Little did I know as a first time home buyer that the 15k I sat on would get absorbed in the blink of an eye.
Frankly, if whites were being guided away from FHA loans when qualified I don't see how that's discrimination against blacks. Further, conforming conventional loans have a higher max limit (~400k). If a person only has 17k or less to put down on a home, they have no business needing a loan for 400k. All that will do is get people in trouble. Further, the median home price in Pittsburgh is 200k, so I'm not following the argument. There is a salary cutoff to qualify for FHA loans. If any of these people in this study qualified for FHA loans they were low earners to begin with (black or white).
So, on the one had we have an argument that FHA loans, which typically have lower interest rates than conventional loans for low earners, are being pushed on blacks and then we have the argument that higher interest rates are being pushed on blacks in the same breath. I know full well predatory lending exists, but the argument here doesn't make sense to me. Or, perhaps I got suckered in my loan process, but it doesn't seem that way. Who knows.
I remember reading this back in '07 about predatory lending and it's on point. "Minorities are the emerging face of the subprime crisis
Quote:
When Alberto and Rosa Ramirez began looking for a home, they never imagined that 18 months later they would personify a national real estate crisis. It's not that they bought a house with walls crawling with toxic mold or inherited an insane neighbor next door or, even, God forbid, that they didn't buy at all. They bought, and they love, their slice of the American Dream.
Quote:
"It's all very nice and beautiful," Rosa tells me through a translator. "The neighborhood is very peaceful. The problem is not with the house at all. It's the price of the house." ...
The husband and wife work as strawberry pickers in the fields around Watsonville, and each earns about $300 a week. They have three children. Not only did they dream the impossible dream, they managed to finance it.
It all began when they were talking to another family about escaping their subsidized apartments and getting a real house. The other couple -- Jesus Martinez and his wife, who also have three children -- work as mushroom farmers, earning about $500 a week each when there is work. The two couples decided to pool their resources and begin house-hunting. Given their total income, they estimated that they could afford payments of $3,000 a month. They spotted an ad in the local magazine La Ganga for Maria Avila of Rancho Grande Real Estate and called her.
"We wanted to live in Watsonville," says Rosa. "But [the real estate agent] said the houses there were older and more expensive." One of the first homes they were shown was a "new" four-bedroom, two-bath house in Hollister for $720,000. When the Ramirez's heard the price, they worried that they couldn't afford it.
But the couple says they were assured them it was possible. "The monthly payment was supposed to be $4,800, but then after we bought it, it went up to $5,378," says Rosa, speaking of their zero-down mortgage with a one-month "teaser rate." "Our agent told us that once we refinanced, we could get the payments down to $3,000 or less." ...According to the buyers, this arrangement was supposed to carry them over until the group refinanced.
How did a strawberry picker earning $15,000 a year qualify for a loan of $720,000? The answer, say the experts, lies in a lending industry that got too innovative for its own good."
Whatever the case, these people lost the home, etc. A big problem with our crisis was putting people in homes where they did not belong. And I don't know what to say about folk who are so clearly uninformed that they are rendered incapable of making adult decisions. Don't get me wrong, we can't all be experts and we rely on professionals to be honest with us, but lets get real here. These folk didn't use their noodles at all.
Something else to consider to consider with predatory lending is what's noted in the last link I provided...
"There was the charge for years that minorities were underserved," says Karl Case, an economics professor who specializes in housing at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. "Now the attitude is reversed. Instead of discrimination, [lenders] are taking people who are not sophisticated, talking them into low-down-payment, high-ratio, interest-only, and stated-income mortgages, and we call it predatory lending."
So, you can have two people with the same credit score, the same income, and the same family dynamic, but a predator might not be able to talk both into the same mortgage package. Predators care about one color and that's green.
There's lots of "phoney" people out there.
Maybe it's affluence ?
Pro this, pro that, very into social justice. And then they go home to their gated suburban stepford subdivision that has the "best" schools in the "best" neighborhood.
There's lots of "phoney" people out there.
Maybe it's affluence ?
Pro this, pro that, very into social justice. And then they go home to their gated suburban stepford subdivision that has the "best" schools in the "best" neighborhood.
It boils down to "sure as long as it's NIMBY"
It is about affluence and I don't think it's so much of skin color, but to keep the poor out.
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