Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership

“…and interest rates on loans, writing “Without such data, it is not possible to reach firm conclusions about discrimina-tion”; though, the authors failed to cite substantial existing evidence of racist discrimination in mortgage lending in making their claim (Massey et al., 2016; Taylor, 2019).”

“The cultural economy of fi nance must therefore heed the advice of Chakravartty and da Silva (2012) and Taylor (2019) to attend to the ways that intersections of fi nancial capital and race are not only ways of punitive exclusion but also ways of predatory inclusion , the ghosts of which haunt the…”

“Notably, the aforementioned sectors specialize in responding to – but not resolving – the unmet needs of historically marginalized groups, engaging in ‘predatory inclusion’ (Charron-Chénier, 2020; Seamster and Charron-Chénier, 2017; Taylor, 2019).”

“In Race for Profit, Taylor (2019) introduces the concept of “predatory inclusion” to describe the way policies aimed at enrolling new groups of previously minoritized Black American home seekers ultimately undermine the ideal of more diversified homeownership.”

“Historians, geographers, sociologists, legal theorists and urban planners have produced large bodies of scholarship on covenants (Glotzer 2020; Gordon 2021; Gotham 2002; Long and Johnson 1947; Taylor 2019).”

“This story is telling of how White privilege operates even (especially) in the most depressed markets and how legacies of systemic racism haunt Detroit’s housing market (see also Taylor 2019).”

“…and credit and debt mechanisms in order to seize Indigenous land (Park 2016), to the continued exclusion and marginalization of women and people of colour in the banking and credit system (Baradaran 2017, Taylor 2019, Roy 2012), fi nance capitalism has always been a racist and patriarchal project.”

“…Black and Brown communities for everything from automobile insurance, payday loans, and banking fees (Fergus, 2018) to the practices of the real-estate industry, which targeted Black neighborhoods for their extractive value, what Keeyanga-Yahmatta Taylor terms “predatory inclusion” (Taylor, 2019).”

“Even after redlining ’ s end in the early 1970s, new policies within the racial economy continued to exclude minorities in housing (K. Y. Taylor, 2019; Wilson, 2009).”

“He concluded that isolating White, Black, and Brown families in deteriorating cities was a recipe for revolution (Taylor 2019).”

“…of scholars and intellectuals are rejecting a race/ class dichotomy and are probing the mutually co-constitutive evolution of market-based economic systems and white supremacy (Dantzler, 2021; Fortner, 2021; Leong, 2012; Melamed, 2015; Ralph & Singhal, 2019; Taylor, 2019; Bhattacharyya, 2018).”

“…project, jointly pursued by the racial state and the ‘private’ real estate sector in the case of the housing-finance market (Glotzer, 2020; Gotham, 2014; Helper, 1969; Jackson, 1985; Taylor, 2019)— has systematically shaped the economic risks to which individuals are differentially exposed.”

“For example, Taylor (2019b) shows how racism interwoven with class exploitation produced discrimination in the housing market of the USA, and Hudson (2017) describes how banks in the USA deployed cultural racism and debt to seize control of the fi nancial systems of countries in Latin America and…”

“New policies, like the Section 235 program, were created with intention of reversing the Federal Housing Administration ’ s role in urban disinvest-ment and racial polarization (Gotham, 2000; Taylor, 2019).”

“Our study contributes to the larger discourse examining how African American communities experience development inequality, which is a complex mix of pressures and legacies (Robinson, 2019; Robinson et al., 1983; Taylor, 2019).”

“…environmental racism; medical racism; and extractive practices such as predatory lending; lack of access to health care; and new forms of segregation that keep certain neighborhoods resource-poor; and relatedly, education a location of inequity (Smith, 2015; Sohoni & Saporito, 2009; Taylor, 2019).”

“Other works like Taylor (2019) have shown that even when included into government sponsored programs, like homeownership, such administrative decisions were built on a form of predatory inclusion that relied on market dynamics and racial exploitation that derived value from Black households seeking…”

“The unequal treatment of minorities throughout the homeownership process has steadily declined over time, but continues to be a prevalent experience for minority households (Korver-Glenn, 2018; Ross & Turner, 2005; Taylor, 2019).”

“Differential economic valuations can be applied to many contexts, such as a house that is appraised more highly when it is located near amenities deemed to be desirable like a park or central business district or near communities with wealthier and whiter populations (Rothstein, 2017; Taylor, 2019).”

“…with prior research demonstrating the discriminatory barriers that impact Black women in various institutional capacities, including the workplace (Ortiz and Roscigno 2009), consumer markets (Ayres and Siegelman 1995), and access to housing (Desmond 2012; Massey and Lundy 2001; Taylor 2019).”

“…where ethnoracial boundaries are negotiated and reinforced (Besbris 2016; Besbris and Korver-Glenn 2023; Korver-Glenn 2021; Pattillo 2013; Taylor 2019) with significant consequences for segregation and socio-spatial inequality (Besbris 2020; Krysan and Crowder 2017; Massey and Denton…”

“Other examples of damaging housing policies and practices include the Serviceman’s Readjustment Act (or the GI Bill), blockbusting, and the Section 235 program of the 1968 Housing Act (Gotham, 2000a, 2000b; Katznelson, 2005; Massey & Denton, 1993; Rothstein, 2017; Taylor, 2019).”

“…Taylor wrote, “Despite the simultaneity of fair housing legislation and favorable court decisions banning racial discrimination, they were not acted upon [because of] . . . the underlying commitment by government to help the private sector grow and prosper” (Taylor, 2019, pp. 13–14).”

“…discrimination; public banking Decades of financial market expansion (Davis 2009; Lin and Neely 2020) and public-private partnerships (Taylor 2019; Zullo 2019) have positioned the banking industry to assume a prominent role in the federal government’s COVID-19 Pandemic Recession…”

“…United States, highlights the interlinked dimensions of racialized dispossession, exploitation and oppression as constitutive of the history of capitalism (Kelley forthcoming; Jenkins 2021; Jenkins and Leroy 2021; Johnson 2020; Taylor 2019; Bhattacharyya 2018; Hudson 2017; and see Gilmore 2007).”

“…while devaluing, extracting, or withholding opportunities from residents of color—a relational process that generates or exacerbates racial inequities in wealth, educational, criminal justice, and health (Bell, 2020; Dant‑ zler, 2021; Howell, 2019; Korver‑Glenn et al., 2023; Taylor, 2019).”

“Algorithmic decision-making systems enter into a space fraught with a history of individual and systemic bias, from implicit bias by real estate agents (Oh and Yinger, 2015) to structural and market discrimination that has generated a racial homeownership and wealth gap (Taylor, 2019).”

“…opportunities persists via regularized market practices like the discriminatory provision of sub-prime mortgages within Black neighborhoods (Rugh and Mas-sey 2010) and the “predatory inclusion” of Black households into home-buying terms that are more expensive and risky (K.-Y. Taylor 2019).”

“In terms of the costs of home ownership, often seen as a tool for social mobility and building wealth, Taylor (2019) examined how, following the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968, predatory subprime housing markets led to disproportionately high housing costs for Black homeowners.”

“Particularly for African American individuals, inclusion in the credit markets created by financialization was predatory and extractive (Taylor 2019).”

“More recently, scholarship has emphasized that such policies reflected existing racist ‘best practices’ of the real estate industry (Glotzer, 2020; Taylor, 2019).”

“Seeing Black cities only as sites of disinvestment misses how underdevelopment preempts Black exploitation and coercion when the opportunity for development eventually arises (Bledsoe and Wright, 2019; Desmond and Wilmers, 2019; Taylor 2019; Taylor 2020).”

“As the “renaissance” of 21st century U.S. cities has proceeded, Black and brown communities have now been repeatedly spatially displaced in waves of urban revalorization by capital (Taylor, 2019).”

“Scholars argue that this reflects local appraisers inheriting the “racial common sense” of the real-estate industry which viewed black and immigrant communities as risks to long-term property values (Rothstein, 2017; Taylor, 2019).”

“…shaping access to housing and opportunity (Massey & Denton, 1993, p. 36; Roth-well & Massey, 2009; Sharkey, 2013, p. 60; Shlay & Rossi, 1981; Taylor, 2019, p. 111), and its impacts on wealth inequality from housing supply restrictions that raise real estate prices, contributing to the…”

“…been structured by race and racism, and which in the 20th century produced racial zoning, suburbanization, redlining, and predatory inclusion (Taylor, 2019); deindustrialization; stagnating incomes alongside spikes in housing costs across all neighborhoods of New York City; cuts to welfare;…”

“Racial residential segregation was the engine that drove the city building process and determined the structure, shape, and form of the urban (Fernando, 2023; Taylor, 2019).”