Michael Strode’s Reviews > Family Properties: Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black Urban America > Status Update

Thus far I have tempered updating between chapters, but this section has me particularly incensed and frustrated. The display of rancid indifference to exploitation is astonishing. Do you want an explanation for a widespread cynicism and disenchantment with the American ideal in the black community? Satter guarantees you an incisive study of how the government and the people were complicit in the rise of the ghetto.

In the phrasing of Chicago Daily News reporter Lois Willie, "reform Illinois-style" remains the order of the day.  I am not highly surprised by how closely the past arguments for housing contract sales mirrors those made recently by the payday loan industry.  "We offer a valid vehicle of credit for the responsible consumer where none exists.  We must profit from our efforts if we are to remain a viable business."

Communities razed by eminent domain, black families bilked out of 4 decades wealth since northward migration, and an unsympathetic city full of immigrants who wonder to themselves, "Why should Negroes be so angry when my grandparents came here with nothing and made it on their own?"  Black codes ain't a Southern thing.  No matter how much Northern shaming and American mythmaking might wish to shift in their honor.