Scott

“Ultimately, the FHA was an empty promise. The act allowed the country to publicly denounce segregation while never actually pursuing integration.”
― Mehrsa Baradaran, The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap

“We might want to apply the following short litmus tests to any policy proposal: does the program require some collective sacrifice or does it place the burden of closing the wealth gap entirely on the black community? If the latter, this is a cop-out that refuses to acknowledge that the black community did not create the problem in the first place.”
― Mehrsa Baradaran, The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap

“Even with the bundling and splitting of tranches, Wall Street needed more mortgage borrowers, so it created the subprime market. These were loans to borrowers who did not meet the underwriting standards set forth by the GSEs, or “prime” loans. Subprime borrowers were riskier borrowers, either because they had fewer assets, lower credit score, or lower incomes. But in finance, higher risk is rewarded with higher yield, so mortgage brokers made even higher premiums from subprime loans.”
― Mehrsa Baradaran, The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap

“To continue present policies is to make permanent the division of our country into two societies; one, largely Negro and poor, located in the central cities; the other, predominantly white and affluent, located in the suburbs and in outlying areas.”
― Matt Taibbi, I Can't Breathe: A Killing on Bay Street