Transcripts For CSPAN2 Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor Race For Profit 20240713

Seal the holiday weekend. For morings in visit booktv. Org or check your program guide. [applause] yes. Hi. Im the event coordinator. I am glad to welcome back Keeanga Yamahtta taylor, assistant professor from princeton, and she is writes and speaks on black politicssocial movements and racial equality in the United States. She is here for her third back, race for profits, how banks and Real Estate Industries undermine black Home Ownership. She will be in discussion with professor together the roberts, who is a very acclaimed scholar, public bell electric to all and social justice advocate. So i would like to he introduce keeangayamahtta taylor. Hello, everyone. Thanks for coming. My fourth talk this week. Very glad to be here in philly, which ended up dish began this project in 200820082009 and mostly about chicago do i need this . Okay. I mostly about chicago and detroit, and then when i moved to philadelphia issue found out there was a story here. So, philly has been an important part of me writing this book so ive very glad to actually be able to be here here and talk to you tonight. Im going to very difficult book to read from. Its kind of dense for readable. And so what im going to do is just give a kind of narrative arc that really covers what in Broad Strokes the book is trying to do, and the conversation between professor roberts and i hopefully will elucidate more information. So, to begin, last july in a now typical spasm of racist vitriol, donald trump described the city of baltimore as a, quote, rat and rodden infested mess. That, quote, no human being would want to live in. It was a cruel and thinly veiled code invoked to disparage the hardship and black working class communities of that city. In doing so, it also conveyed a fatalistic disregard for those conditions while expressing a decide lack of ambition to actually attend to something as serious as road dent rodent infish station. Despite the rhetoric, rat infestation and black car and working class communities was not evidence of africanamerican indifference to conditions in their neighborhood. But rats have always been marker s of sub standard house that thrives in the closure of president ial segregation. The neighborhood any 1960s also inspired ridicule from mean spirited white conservatived in government then. It also sparked activism and uprisings inch august 1967, nearly two weeks after riots in detroit, prompted the rare deployment of federal troops in an american city, dozens of demon traitors burst into the chamber of house of representatives chanting, rats cause riots. Days earlier, congress had rejected a twoyear, 40 millioe rats in inare cities across the United States. The protesters sat in the gallery of the hall for 20 minutes repeating the slogan, we want a rat bill. The previous attempt at passing the bill had not merely been voted down but had been ridiculed in the process. A Virginia Republican mocked the legislation to howls of laughter from other white representatives saying, quote, mr. Speaker issue the rat smart thing to do is to vote this rat bill down rat now. One of this colleagues mock it its another civil rats bill. No laughing matter for the people who lived in the inner city. Rats were the most visceral example of the unequal Living Conditions forced on to black people in midcentury america. In the 1960s africanamerican media regularly reported on rat attacks 0 the most vulnerable members of black urban households, children. Lower rain mcturn a single africanamerican mother complained to a chicago defender reporter that she stayed up most nights because of the rats. The rats crawling in her bed which made her nervous and the rats in her childrens beds which terrified her. Quote, they get into the bunk bedded and i sit up allnight. Im miserable and afraid. The rat infestation in black neighborhoods was profound. When africanamerican children in a chicago neighborhood were given a vocabulary test and asked to identify various familiar ons more than 60 of the children miss if youd a rat as a teddy bear. In the aftermath of riots in philadelphia in 1964, a City Commission report found that 100 of reported rat bites happened in segregated black majority neighborhoodded. Housing segregation maintained through a vexing combination of white violence, public policy, and the exclusionary practices of the private sector, insure dedel lap tated and sub standard conditions of black housing. By the end of the 1960s the National Advisory commission on civil disorders, known as the kerner commission, left no doubt that substandard housing evidenced by rat infestation was a recuring factor in the annual bouts of riots that royaled American Cities throughout the decade. Identifies segregation as the root of those conditions and as a significant source of black rage in black communities, the commissions findings called for historic changes to American Housing policy. A Landmark Supreme Court case, jones vs. Mayor, decided just weeks after the passage of the Fair Housing Act and the spring of 1968, drew upon the 1866 civil rights act, and the 13th g housing segregation to slavery. Arguing, quote, when Racial Discrimination herd men into fitows makes their ability to buy property turn on the color of their skin, then it is a relic of slavery. The final piece of the battle to open the u. S. Housing market to africanamericans came witch the housing and urban Development Act in august of 1968. The 1968 hud act was Lyndon Johnsons last greatest legislative accomplishment. It was a bill planned in collaboration with representatives from private enterprise and what was known as the kaiser commission. The businessmen who participated described their promotion of Single Family Home Ownership for for people a sociocommercial enterprise. Business with a conscience. Johnson would go on to describe the legislation as the mag ha carter of the cities but its focus thousand market and ownership ensured it was a bipartisan bill. For decades federal officials relied on Public Housing to shelter poor and low income people but by the end of the 1960s, Public Housing had become politically untenable, within endless justs over its maintenance, location and inhabitants. Housing from the poor suffered from a mixture of government neglect and shrinking tenet ski, a result of the dangerous conditions endured by residents and the constant pressure for such housing to exclude anyone other than the poorest tenanted. The hud act was a pivot from the notion of public or state honest sponsor houstoning poor and low income people. The Program Participants while the federal government paid subsidies necessary to keep the prices low. This meant that the federal government can make payments over time as opposed to the upfront expenses necessary to develop bills and manage Public Housing. These economic concerns also fit with the growing idea that homeownership could stabilize the anger and restiveness coursing through American Freshman senator Charles Percy a republican from illinois described the benefits of expanding homeownership as a new dawn of opportunity from which a new National Effort to bring dignity and a better life todays slum dwellers must be based. We can democratize our city. We can give people of the ghetto a piece of the action. Let them be somebody and achieve something. Richard nixon set up the bill people who own their own home dont burn their neighborhoods. Whether in pride or selfinterest they turned to fixing up their communities and making them livable for themselves and their neighbors. The terms of the new Homeownership Program were low 200 down payment 20 of the participants income as their mortgage regardless of the cost of the house and Interest Rates that were capped at one percent. The inclusion of federal mortgage and insurance for the first time meant that in the worst Case Scenario foreclosure or abandonment the federal government was obligated to pay back the mortgage to the lender. These terms kept the prices of the homes low and manageable for low income and workingclass people. But also removed almost all of the rights for the Real Estate Industry. As one official to describe the program its like doing business in heaven, you cant lose money. The Unprecedented Program linked federal agencies to Real Estate Brokers and Mortgage Bankers to supply the loans of housing and loans to people in neighborhoods these organizations had previously excluded or redlined. But with the promise of lucrative subsidies in the guarantees of mortgage insurance on the promise of profits that came with them the historical hostility of these private sector force melted away. At the same conditions also opened up new pathways for corrupt real estate practices. Speculators and brokers brought up cheap but Dilapidated Properties hoping to flip them for higher prices and sell to people who would qualify for the new program. The entirety of the program was in the hands of the real estate operatives. Hud sent workers list of Eligible Properties when Real Estate Brokers match the person with the house they connected the prospective buyer with the Mortgage Lender. The Mortgage Lender consulted with hud to determine if the person qualify for the program. At no time did an individual speak with a representative of the federal government or any state agency. Not only can money be made by flipping cheap properties of brokers found it easy to brag poorly paid federal Housing Administration appraisers to inflate the value of the house and the new urban markets. Bakers made money on the front ends of the real estate deal by securing the loan in the first place handmade monies on the backend with expensive Closing Costs associated with selling the property. Everyone made money except the poor black families that were disproportionately settled with broken homes and cities across the country. One homeowner turned activist described this collusion as outright murder of our neighborhoods in america. Aided and vetted by the federal Housing Association aband unscrupulous Real Estate Industry. These four institutions are working together systematically destroyed whats left of america city. What for so long has been considered the National Phenomenon changing neighborhoods deteriorating cities, not natural. Its an outright plan and the government the realtors and the bigmoney people are making a lot of money out of changing neighborhoods out of the communities we call home. The federal governments turn to hold the worship was a consummate expression of postwar racial liberalism that viewed inclusion into america democracy through the vehicles of citizenship, law, and freemarket capitalism as the key to unlocking equality and social mobility. For black citizens. As it has been for white americans through the use of the new deal and g. I. Bill after world war ii. In narrowing their focus to access alone racial liberals overlook the racist practices embedded within those institutions. This was shockingly clear in the Real Estate Industry. Banks in the Real Estate Industry have played an essential role in creating the urban housing crisis. Exemplified by the persistent presence of rats in black houses. So the sudden involvement of the same private sector forces in coming up with the policy solution was a recipe for disaster. If a rat infestation in the 1960s was evidence of racial figure cuckoo substandard housing and a catalyst for the rebellion throughout the 1960 then their appearance in the federally subsidized homes owned by black families in 1970s punctured the delusion that simply transforming redlining into inclusion within a Housing Market built upon and oedipus of Racial Discrimination exploited practices and segregation could in and of itself produce an equitable and just outcome. Instead, with minimal oversight and steadfast sensitivity to the bottom line of the real estate and Banking Industries the search for safe sound safe and sound housing in foreclosures and abandonment consider the experience of Janice Johnson, september 18, 1970 Janice Johnson brought her first home in philadelphia with a mortgage guaranteed by the federal Housing Administration. By all previous standards johnson was in a typical buyer she was a black single mother on welfare living with her eightyearold son in a decaying apartment in a building that had recently been condemned by city officials. No facing eviction johnson needed to quickly find a new place to live when her mother told her of an apartment for rent in the same neighborhood. Johnson called the landlord in anticipation but her hopes were dashed when he told her she could he couldnt read her the apartment because she was a welfare recipient. The landlord quickly pivoted from offering a rental suggesting that Janice Johnson my house in the same neighborhood. Within weeks Janice Johnson purchased a home and then came to realize that her home was not the fulfillment of the American Dream but the beginning of an american nightmare. Within days of moving into her new house the sewer line brought spewing wastewater all over the basement floor. The electricity for the house was sporadic and haphazard. There were holes and other irregularities in the foundation of the home. The compromise structure of the house was not the worst of it. On halloween night johnsons son edward woke up to find a rat in his bed. Janice sawgrass throughout her house, including in the kitchen and bathrooms. Apparently the holes in the basement harbored nests of rats that regularly enter the house. She called the agent who sold her the house to complain of its condition, he sent workman out on a couple occasions and they even patched the failing plaster in her dining room. But soon after, the Real Estate Agent reminded her that the problems in her house were now her own step they were what he describes as homeowners business. For johnson the new times of her and thousands of other women like her to buy new homes were predatory inclusion. Predatory inclusion into the Real Estate Markets was evident when black buyers were granted access to conventional real estate practices and mortgage financing but on more expensive and comparatively unequal terms. The disproportionate conditions of property and dilapidation produced by years of public and private institutional neglect became evident of why black buyers should be considered risky and thus treated differently within the Housing Market. Black buyers were also vulnerable to ongoing predatory practices because of the ways that residential segregation producesed. Making them vulnerable to Price Inflation and exploited real estate and banking practices when it came to securing housing. More generally, predatory inclusion describe the ways that africanamericans were welcomed into institutions and practices from which they had formerly been excluded because there were new ways in which they could be extracted from or financially exploited. Miserable and dangerous Housing Conditions in the existing urban market led people to walk away from homes that they had recently purchased and the numbers of the foreclosures and fha insurance payments began to rise. By the end of 1973 10 of section 235 homes which was one of the Homeownership Programs in the 68 housing act went into foreclosure. Along with tens of thousands more and other fha assisted lowincome Homeownership Programs. In may 1974 hud was in possession of 78,000 singlefamily homes that had been foreclosed upon. With tens of thousands more in a default status which meant they were months away from being going into foreclosure. Congressional investigation impropriety in the Homeownership Program showed that federal appraisers were taking bribes and inflating the value of the dilapidated homes by three times or four times their actual work. Local Mortgage Bankers were also accused of accepting bribes to ignore inconsistencies in paperwork in order to authorize loans for these homes. Newspaper reports and hundreds of federal indictments identified local fha officials, appraisers, Real Estate Agents and Mortgage Lenders all involved in the twiddle. These were not only scandals but crimes that had been committed against poor and workingclass black people. In cities as diverse as chicago, detroit, philadelphia, seattle, san jose, Columbia South carolina, Real Estate Brokers fha officials and Mortgage Bankers were arrested and indicted for criminal conspiracy to commit fraud. By 1974 28 hud officials had been indicted for their role in the housing scandal along with other mortgage and Real Estate Brokers. The fbi by the end of that year ahead 1930 open investigations into fraud in the hud ownership program. Instead of focusing on the corrupt practices of the private sector forces at the heart of these programs policymakers scrutinize the homemaking skills and housekeeping abilities of black women the racist discourses of unfit black mothers marshaling the perceived domestic dysfunction in black households guaranteed the ease with which blame for the decline of the Homeownership Program to be attributed to the apparent ineptitude of black single parent led households. Elected officials, media, and the racially resentful what public were more than willing to listen. Even as hundreds of mostly white men were arrested for criminal acts of fraud and corruption within the hud Homeownership Program, George Romney former governor of michigan and secretary of hud in the early 1970s insisted hosing by itself cannot solve the problems of people particularly those people who may be suffering from bad habits, lawlessness, laziness, unemployment, inadequate education, low working skills to ill health, poor motivation and negative self image. In romneys last active secretary he imposed a National Moratorium on all subsidized housing programs. Right in the midst of the end of the aband the onset of the worst economic recession since the great depression. Nixon then used the hud crisis to pivot toward a new section 8 Housing Voucher Program that fully divested the federal government from lowincome homeownership. More generally the discriminatory best practices of the Real Estate Industry made it resistant to change in adhering to new fair housing legislation. Selling dilapidated homes to poor women who cannot afford the repairs will Janice Johnson reinforce the idea of unfit black owners who posed a threat to the quality of the neighborhood and its property values. When the federal government guaranteed johnsons mortgage it became implicated in the shoddy Business Practices of private sector agents bent on profiting from the desperation of low income urban residents. Racially informed real estate practices were not the actions of an industry impervious to change and old in its ways. Instead, Racial Discrimination persisted in the new market because it was good for business. When Ronald Reagan became president in 1980 he called for hud to convene special commissions on housing. For more than 30 years after pledging to provide homes for citizens, the federal government and its department of housing and urban development continued to fail to achieve its goals. The latest Housing Commission panel by reagan called its reports house nation. It began with the criticism of the 1968 hud act. The hud act left as his legacy a belief in the policy of government programs. The genius of the market economy free from the distortion forced by Government Housing policies and regulations that slung erratically from loving to hostile can provide for housing in the federal government. It was a conclusion that could only be reached by ignoring the actual origins of the hud acts and the reasons behind its demise. Lyndon johnson had also promised the genius of private industry as the key to unlocking the mystery of perpetual housing crisis. The lackadaisical management, erratic regulations and transient Racial Discriminations combined with the end of redlining in the inclusion of formerly excluded black urbanites allowed the Real Estate Industry it was not government intrusion but abit was government negligence. But this was not just an issue of poorly motivated personnel, it was the outcome of mismatched objective and impossible tasks. When Public Policies are guided by the objective of the private enterprise at the hud Homeownership Program undoubtedly was. They are clinched in a dance of conflict with magnanimous as the titans of business who argued for sociocommercial enterprise in the 1960s try to present themselves in the end the objective of profitmaking outpaced the necessity for safe and sound housing. The end of explicit racist exclusion ushered in a period of predatory inclusion with the segregated Housing Market continued because it was profitable. The end result has been perpetual housing and security for black people in the persisting racial abthe key to this is not endless promotion of Property Ownership but on hinging social mobility and life chances to ownership of an asset value is largely determined by deepseated notions of race, culture, and belonging. Those attributes in this American Housing market have always twisted value in such a way that it accrues when in the hands of what buyers and sellers declines in the hands of black buyers and sellers. This is the race for profit and yet another example of the inherent racial inequality embedded in american capitalism. Thank you. [applause] professor roberts will join me for a discussion about this crazy book. Thank you guys hello everybody. Im dorothy roberts. Professor at penn and im honored and grateful and excited to be able to discuss keeangas new book race for profit. I thought i would begin by accentuating the fact that this is your third book in a very short space of time. I dont know if you are aware of keeangas other books but just in the past five years. For. Okay. That might not diminish. [laughter] let me not diminish the achievement here. You published three books now, they all are about black politics and Racial Injustice from black lives matter to black liberations. Published in 2016 examining the history of the struggle for black liberation. Especially the civil rights movement. And also black lives matter. And then how we get free black feminism and the abcollective in 2017 an edited book that focuses on the contributions of black feminists to the black liberation struggle. Now you turn to housing policy. I always think its interesting to see how what the trajectory is where they started, what themes they see as the next important urgent issue to write about. So i wondered if youd Say Something about that. How you connect, where you been, where your latest project and why you felt it was so important to write a book about this particular topic. Its a great question. Just to begin with the trajectory in some ways is a because this was the first book that just kept getting delayed and delayed and delayed. This book is a revision of my Dissertation Research which began as a course paper in the spring of 2008. I finished in 2013 and i tried to immediately pay the two trying to write a book and i couldnt. Its a very intense process writing a dissertation. I put the book away for three years. I didnt look at it until the summer of 2017 because i needed a break. Then there was so much other stuff that was going on. So theres black lives matter and i wrote a book fairly quickly about the politics and the debates at the heart of black lives matter and Historical Context. I think that if there is a thread that connects them all is really where it ended my comments today which is really to understand the ways that racism is embedded in american capitalism and the way that that contorts the realities of black people in this country but the ways it also creates different avenues for political struggle as well. Even in this book, which is really about state organizations and their relationship with big private sector industry in dealing with banks and real estate there is also another story about the ways that these black women that i focus on are targeted and manipulated by those horses. But the creative ways in which they resist that. Not all protests are the typical way we are used to seeing but the willingness to speak out about the conditions that they were living with despite the humiliation of having been duped into buying properties that were in this state. The willingness to combine with other people for classaction lawsuits to challenge the practices of hud and the Business Practices of their private partners and in some cases particularly here in philadelphia the willingness to engage in traditional forms of civil rights and grassroots types of organizing. But i would say the kind of overarching theme is an examination of capitalism as a problem of racism as embedded in those practices as a way of raising the prospects of thinking differently about our society should be organized and not just seeing the choices that we have as confined to the existing political or Economic System that we live in. You said a lot in that answer. Theres a lot to choose from, one aspect of your work that i want to look at a little bit more and that i see connecting to how we get free as to what you said about this book is the role that black women play both in systems of oppression at the heart of capitalism, racism, sexism, all converging in these policies blamed for what is actually deliberately done to them by banks and the government yet they are blamed for it. Sounds familiar. I did it in my own work. It always boils down to that with them talking about reproductive justice prison, foster care, welfare policy. Black women are at the center of these oppressive policies, linking them all together. In the images of black women helped to cement them. Also and i was going to get to it at the very end resistance but because he mentioned it, lets just talk about it now. I would love to close on that as well. But the ways in which black women in particular have resisted. I wondered if you could say a little bit more about that. Its a theme in your work. It was important in this book in particular where its very easy almost to just get caught in a kind of dour poverty narrative. Of unending victimization. So i was aware of that from the cover where i didnt want just dilapidated broken down buildings or some kind of typical viewpoint that just looks at these issues of urban poverty from the perspective of the built environment and what it looks like to tell us all that we need to know about the people who live there. I was very conscious of this throughout the process and in the same ways that i didnt want to portray these women as just helpless victims. The fifth chapter of the book is called unsophisticated buyer. Throughout all of the newspaper coverage the story about the scandals with these programs is coinciding with the emergence of Investigative Journalism in the early 1970s. Theres lots of indepth reporting and one of the things that kind of carries over from philadelphia, detroit, chicago, where good News Coverage is the richest is the portrayal of these women as unsophisticated as unknowledgeable and really as dumb. Thats what makes them a problem because they are easy victims. So i wanted to really challenge that idea by looking at the different Survival Strategies and what it means to buy house that is falling apart and what that means from the perspective of a black mother who is faced with very like Janice Johnson is living in a condemned building and has to leave. Is that a lack of sophistication . Is that a lack of intelligence or knowledge to move into a housing alternative . Or is that a survival strategy . So i wanted to look at these questions from that perspective and also tried to think through the different kinds of strategies they employ. To not just challenge their own individual living circumstances but this edifice of oppression they are trapped in. One of the things i thought about was lisa lever steins book called Movement Without marches which is about philadelphia in the 1940s and 50s in the way black women outside of political organizing and organization figure out strategically how to fend for themselves and their children in the kind of matrix of local state and federal bureaucracy. And how these are legitimate forms of protest that are often ignored. When you ignore them you are left with these hollow narratives about the on sophistication or the lack of sophistication of these kinds of people so i wanted to kind of bring some complexity to how we understood the decisions that they were making and the challenges of doing that. That is so important to contest the disparaging stereotypes would actually these women who have survived deliberate targeted oppression from the most powerful forces in the country, its a testament to their own ab their brilliance and determination to be able to navigate all of that. Its just the opposite of the standard. I think its important to say that they were targeted. In the same way that the housing crisis in 2008 and the wave of foreclosures and aone of the narratives is a conservative talking points is about this is really caused by black people who want to live beyond their means. They want too much house that sort of nonsense. Then you come to find that actually people were targeted by wells fargo that referred to subprime loans as ghetto loans. That called black people mud people. That created a quota system that was linked into financial benefits for their employees based on the number of people they could sign up for these loans. It wasnt just africanamericans trying to cash in on the housing bonanza these are people who were targeted. Its the same thing. These women who were targeted there was an urban aspect and suburban aspect of these programs so these black women are targeted in the urban program and they are targeted because of the likelihood that they will go into foreclosure because the prophets are made for Mortgage Bankers based on volume sales alone. The more loans they make the more money they are making because they get money for each loan that is secured its called an origination fee. And they get money on the Closing Costs. For every house they turn is a prophet. So many times he would have this collusion of appraisers, Mortgage Bankers and fha officials turning over the same house five, six, seven times because theyre making money for each additional sale. In chicago they describe this process as fast foreclosure. Where in the original programs hud had created the stipulation that for these organizations to participate that they had to work with families to prevent foreclosure that they had to accept late payment they had to accept partial payments. Case after case the banks are refusing to do this because the point is for people to go into foreclosure. In that sense they are absolutely targeted. In st. Louis at one point a Real Estate Company sent 8000 postcards to pruitt i go a notorious housing complex that was falling apart because the government neglect in hopes of luring people, black women in particular, into buying homes within this program. So the idea that people are just unsophisticated dont know what they are getting into, ignores the way that they are targeted precisely because of the financial situation they are in and the hope that they will fail as homeowners. And they are targeted because of the prefers nature of what makes a profit under capitalism. Its a pathological idea of the real estate business and banks that you make a profit by somebody else failing. And thats what might be hard for people to understand i want you to explain it some more is how you can make a profit off of poor people. Because many people say, thats contrary to the market model thats contrary to consumers you want consumers to keep coming back so you service them in a way that you give them something the idea that you can make a profit off of people who are losing it seems strange. And thats related to something i want to really dig deeper into your concept of predatory inclusion which i think is so provocative and useful for understanding racial capitalism. Also contesting some of the misunderstandings about it. Including that you cant make a profit off of poor people so i want to look at both of those angles. The predatory part and the inclusion part. The predatory part makes this point that this is a profitable form of exploitation off of other peoples losses. And you focus on private businesses the privatesector here. There is also a growing literature on predation in the criminal punishment system. I thought it was fascinating how you point out this predatory exploitation of black people by private business of course in cahoots with government and you also had a very similar predation of black people in the criminal punishment system with monetary sanctions debt collection, court fees, even fee used to the incarcerated. Even fees, black mothers if their kids get put in jail from detention. That fuels this continual in and out of jail because you are now jail because you cant pay the fees and then you have to pay more fees because god jail. It such a perverse and powerful and devious form continuing racial exploitation in the modern capitalist era that merges with exactly what you are saying in the private sector. And they are both publicprivate partnership. Which ive learned they call p3 advocate should be p4 Public Private predatory partnership. P4 yes. Say something more about i know you have it written about the criminal aspect but. Theyre all criminals. The banks of the real estate agencies but something about this predation as a form of racial exploitation and the connection to capitalism. I think there is a through link which is that which is the way that racism can be profited from. Within our society. I write some about this in the fourth chapter of abthe kind of growing web of fines and fees are used i think partly as a form of social control partly as a form of perverse form of punishment. And then partly as a source of municipal income. Between the three of those in the way that black people are overrepresented in the criminal Justice System and in the ranks of the poor and workingclass that they would be tripoli targeted in those ways. I think in the private sector does a similar impulse in trying to find new and creative ways of making money where there otherwise might be done. And housing has been an important site for that. Especially what im most interested in is the way that this plays out and black people become increasingly urbanized population. The first iteration of this happens when africanamericans begin to in cities and real estate opportunities, this is coinciding in the early 19th century its coinciding with the kind of height of racial pseudoscience, eugenics, disbelief that black people are either born to die out or that athis is based on a certain statistical reading of census reports from the late 19th century into the early 20th century that the rate of deaths among African Americans are much higher than the air for white people. No one ever factors in race. [multiple speakers] [inaudible] some people have this evolutionary mechanism that we are evolved to die. Either black people will die out or abthey also read statistics about crime and the rate at which africanamericans are being arrested and imprisoned. Of course again, there is noathat explains that well in the south where 90 of the black population lives in the south thats where the statistics come from that there is all the financial incentive in the world for black people to be arrested in the south as a way of repopulating the source of labor in that region after the workforce had been shattered with the end of slavery. With no Historical Context the statistics just be that black people are dying out or criminals. And what do you do in either case, you segregate and keep them separate. This is what is informing the kind of first impulses around segregation. There is a way in which business immediately recognizes that this is now a captured captive market and in housing it becomes very clear what to do because housing is one of those things that members of the human race need. You cant decide not to have it. You cant opt out. That means when you put a price on it people will pay anything. Whether its prescription drugs, health care, food, housing. These are water, air, these are things you have to have which means there is an instant market around it. Famously in northern ghettos around the north, landlords would divide and redivide and divide again living structures to create even more apartments that africanamericans would pay any price to live in. An extreme example, not just the early 20th century. In baltimore 1947 or the early 1950s. 47,000 single room occupancy rooms. Sros oneroom residents, the bathroom landlords take the bathroom out of the rooms and create a new apartment. They dig trenches and create latrines and that is now where black people are supposed to use the restroom. No longer indoor plumbing they are making massive amounts of money off of this process of redividing. It points to the ways that segregation go hand in hand with the kind of profiteering around housing where the conditions of the housing can be driven down to its lowest form while the prices are driven exponentially higher because africanamericans are captured market. I think its important to say that segregation is not just a question of do white people want black neighbors or not . In chicago in the early 1920s there are dynamite bombings every week that are directed at black people who breach the color line. I write some about this in the book. As late as 1969 black families who move into white neighborhoods long island, firebombed black families in cleveland get pipe bombs to their front door. When they try to move into a white neighborhood. The boundaries of segregation are violently enforced. When that happens its because housing is a human need its literally means you could charge anything and you will have to pay that in order to have a place to live. This is part of the predatory profiteering aspect that is directly connected to the question of housing. I wrote about this idea of predatory inclusion even when the law is formally changed redlining officially ends in 1967 housing discrimination becomes a crime in 1968 with the passage of the Fair Housing Act. I wanted to understand why then does housing discrimination continue to persist. And what new forms does it take. The hud act introduces a series of new ways in which black homeowners can be exploited. It looks at some of the financial changes, the creation of mortgagebacked securities which bring even more amount of money into the home buying and selling process which creates more incentives around selling. Some of what i described earlier. Theres almost a frenzy around home cells in black communities at this time because Interest Rates are going up in the conventional markets and because of the Interest Rate cap in this subsidized homeownership market it becomes an attractive place for businesses to invest in. Those are some of the new things and trying to look at. Lets look at, we discussed the predatory part of predatory inclusion. I want to discuss a little bit about the inclusion part. So much of the way that we traditionally think about racism and capitalism is that its about exclusion. Discrimination is excluding black people from all of the good things that america has to offer. And its about privatization. Its about everything turning to the market and the solution is a two include black people in the market and that would be the answer. What your book shows is that when it became illegal to officially discriminate or to officially exclude theres a new form of oppression which is based on including black people including them in a way that continues the exploitation the predation, the its a different form of discrimination. So you can test set idea that its all about exclusion, its all about privatization. I think you accentuate the way in which privatization in the market continue to have the backing of the government. But we have to take into account the way in which racism is so embedded in the market that including black people in it is not itself an answer if you havent dismantled the racist structure that are so entangled from the beginning of america with capitalism. Thats one of the Central Point im trying to make. The overwhelming focus on exclusion because it really as good as toluca or interrogate the institutions into which we are saying you should be included into which is to say that the whole discourse of disparity that looks at whether africanamerican guards sufficiently represented in schools and homeownership and all of these practices doesnt actually tell us anything about the practices about the institutions that people are being included into. And im saying that real estate, im not trying to make grand proclamations although i will make grand proclamations about the book. [laughter] we might get some. [multiple speakers] am talking about the Real Estate Market. But there has been no golden age of real estate we can look back to where the Real Estate Industry was not thoroughly racist and predatory and really instrumental in creating notions of race and attaching them to africanamericans. For the entirety of the Business Practices will 20th century forward its been a completely and thoroughly racist institution. He is quickly saying we need more black homeowners doesnt compel us to think about what is this thing that we could be included in. Thats not an argument for exclusion. Thats not saying that africanamericans relegated to the rental market or should be relegated to secondclass citizenship. It is to say that perhaps we should think about what it means to live in a society that hinges social mobility and a decent quality of life on your ability to own a home. And if you dont own one, then you are on your own. What does that mean when 40 the number of black homeowners is dropping precipitously because of racism and Real Estate Industry but also because of higher rates of unemployment, unemployment, poverty, the racial wellkept, all of that lead to a situation where the number of black homeowners is dropping precipitously. We have a society where you have access to owning this asset determines your quality of life. Owning a home determines for so many people whether you can finance your Childs Childs education. Whether you have the financial means to whether a financial crisis. The quality of what your retirement might be. If you have a retirement at all. This is all hinged on do you have a home. 60 of black people arent included in that conversation. For the 40 who are, what does homeownership mean for them . It functions in a completely different way than white people. Black houses are viewed as having less value neighborhoods are viewed as having less value. Even if youre lucky enough to have somehow stumbled upon homeownership, it still doesnt function in the same financially beneficial way that it does for white people because the Real Estate Market the entire notion of how value is accumulated calculated is completely tied up in racist notions about who black people are which is to say that the market itself is socially constructive. What does that mean in a thoroughly racist society . It means that what is seen as valuable, what is seen as worthy as reflected in the kind of racist configuration that the market is constitutes itself. We have to look beyond just questions of exclusion we have to look at the institutions themselves and not say that exclusion is fine because these institutions are discriminating. We need to question the institutions and shouldnt we be organizing things differently on a social and societal basis. [applause] [applause] i think thats what makes the most powerful books, the one that dont just say, heres whats wrong but they get you to think about maybe we should be thinking about our society differently altogether. Not just fixing something but if theres something deeply wrong that we now see that we read this book and we have to do something fundamentally to change it. Lets and on that powerful note and open up the floor to questions from the audience. Remember, use your movement voice. Feel free to laugh of the second half. The other component of once you are in the home there are a lot of contractors and home repair companies that also predate on neighborhoods and actually get people to sign liens on their homes for the work they do. The other question is, you mentioned the women who formed the class action suit where any of the people who were swindled in this Program Given any adequate recommends . The resolution of the largest classaction lawsuit which we began here in philadelphia and led by george gould of the Community Legal services and he is still there, this was a classaction lawsuit that hailed hud responsible for the conditions of the home and they were successful in forcing hud to create new Program Section 513 b. Part of the 1974 Housing Community Development Act. Which essentially gave homeowners within these programs one year to file a complaint with hud and hardwood pay for the repairs to the home. Of course hud wouldnt tell anyone that this program part of the activism involved getting the word out in the neighborhood. There were two primary groups they were concerned homeowners which were part of one program that had the subsidized cap Interest Rates. In section 221 d2 homeowner where they didnt receive a subsidy but they received 40 year mortgages as a way to bring their Monthly Payments down. They organized separately, occasionally together, to do outreach to the different kinds of families who had purchased homes in those programs. They didnt get the big financial settlement but many of them were able to get their homes repaired through huds programs. Other questions . I want to piggyback on a panel you were in last week about reparation. How can reparations help american descendents of slavery. Africanamericans in defending themselves against wood reparation help that group of people . I think. I support reparations of private organizations, Insurance Companies all of them who profited from the enslavement and exploitation of black people. But i dont think reparation is the solution to the problems that black people have in this country. I do think that there are many different ways you can think about Reparations Program who were exploited in these programs. Winning the things that happened in terms of predatory inclusion in a way that black consumers post redlining are treated differently from white people is banks still commercial banks big suppository commercial banks continue to refuse to do business in black poor working class neighborhoods. Even though these banks would accept deposits all the time. And then spend black peoples money out to the suburbs to finance all sorts of things happening out there. In order to get around the legal requirement that banks a athats illegal for them to discriminate against black consumers in order to get around that they created these subsidiaries banks called mortgage banks. Mortgage banks were just lenders. They just lend mortgages and they dont have any. Their focus is on volume sales and packaging as many mortgages as possible and then selling them to longterm investors and using that money to lend out and repeat the process over and over again. So this creates theres a way in which the big banks could be held responsible for that. It is an enormous papal trail around these programs in which organizations and institutions could be held to account. But there is a bigger set of issues and a bigger set of problems that im focused on that look to the structural and institutional nature of these kind of discriminatory and exploitive practices that are really at the root of black people and poor and workingclass people across the country. Wood elements of that be a good idea for a hood to institute a day and what should be doing today to address it . Part of my batik is homeownership so im not interested in any Homeownership Programs as a response to social problems in the United States. Especially in ways that kind of reinforce what i would argue is inherent inequality involvement. So there are many, to repair the harm done what we are proposing is if youve lived in a red line segregated neighborhood for somewhere between five and 10 years that look at reduce Interest Rate loans you can buy a house there. The house might lose value over time. Thats not an asset. Thats not going to grow over time that means you can send your kids to college and you can retire on that. Thats about keeping someone in place separated from jobs where the real opportunities are something progressive because we are going to call you a homeowner when we saddle with this debt that wont accrue over time. You want to tell people who, black people who live in red line formerly red line segregated areas that you know actually we will give you a house the fastest highest Land Property values. The most Expensive Properties in west philadelphia. Okay. Maybe we could talk but thats not what is offered. These programs are about keeping segregation in place. In this case its about understanding the relationship the way that segregation functions in the Real Estate Market which is how homeownership becomes a completely different venture for black people than it does for white people. In Public Policies that are promoting ownership of private property is problematic because in reality if our health care was covered, if our College Expenses were covered, if we didnt treat old people like garbage and to set them outside when they are no longer financially productive, if we have a society that actually cared about the end of someones life then you dont need a house. You dont need this private assets if there is a social responsibility to care about people during the meaningful part of their lives. Because we dont have that in this country you dont have the right to anything. You dont have the right to live somewhere. You dont have the right to e. Dont have the right to health care. You dont have the right to education. You dont have the right to anything in our society so they tell you to go out and get a house and weather the storm. Public policies that promote that are part of the problem. We need different kind of set a Public Policies that deal with these larger Financial Issues in peoples lives that take the burden off of individuals. [applause] we will take one more so people can get the book. A fantastic presentation and excellent conversation. Thank you for your excellent comments. I have learned a lot from this because traditionally when we think of the racism that africanamericans have experienced you think of it as labor and the exploitation of labor, slavery and so on. I hadnt thought about it in terms of land which is traditionally associated with native americans and dispossession of their land and how central labor and land have been. I thought it was really interesting how you built on segregation in relation to the high cost of rentals but also redlining practices. You can probably throw the distraction of rent and so forth. All this leads me to accommodations that many of us have been having around cedric robinsons notion of capitalism which is that racism is central to capitalism. What do you think of that concept and would you say if we accept that that we can mitigate through social movement some of the worst aspects of these things but in the end the system is so creative in finding new ways of extract a profit from growth that in the end there really isnt a longterm solution to this process. The longterm solution is no more capitalism. We need socialism. [applause] and i think that capitalism is an important concept that speaks to the inclined history in the United States and in particular of race and capitalism that really understands that this is a country founded on the genocide of its native population and with a small group of people become enriched through the forced labor of africans and in which those riches were multiplied a million times over by the exploitation of successive waves of immigrant labor in addition to the black labor that was in primitive accumulation. There is not a single period of time in the history of the United States where racism, oppression and exploitation were not at its center. I think because of that yes as i said before this is a systemic and structural issue that cannot just be voted away, cannot just be commissioned away. Lets have a commission to talk about how bad these things are. It extends beyond the life of public policy. That doesnt mean theres nothing the people can do. Any notions that we have a progress in this country have come through the organizing efforts of people who are oppressed here from civil rights organizing to uprisings and revolts and rebellions. All of these have been instrumental in creating our notion of progress. And yet for all the progress that is made as soon as the momentum of a social movement hedges in any way they come back and try to take anything that was given away and that points to a systemic rob lowe. That is really what im looking at in the book in terms of real estate and part of the motivation for that is because at the heart of antipoverty policy i teach at princeton its all at the heart of the socalled solution. They always come back to the homeownership. You want to and they wealth gap would have to increase the number of lack homeowners. If you want to create more opportunities for africanamericans we need to create more homeowners. Without any Serious Investigation into what that course of action has meant. That is part of what i am trying to do, is spark a conversation about that and to ask people to think or deeply about the meaning. I will let you get the book. Thank you. [applause] thank you so much. I think im going to sign them over there. We asked Speaker Nancy Pelosi what books are important to her. Im love books. I love books. I have a lot of looks electronically but i do love books and turning the pages myself. One of the books ive been talking about a red long time ago about a year ago and i was rereading it because as a member of congress they have