Sub-prime mess crushed Black America. Nobody got hit by the mortgage crisis like Blacks and Latinos. A study by the nonprofit United for a Fair Economy found that people of color lost an unbelievable $164 billion to $213 billion over the past eight years, thanks to the subprime lending mess. When you go to minority communities all over America, there is evidence of a dramatic economic distress, United concluded. There is an increase in abandoned homes, the devaluation of neighboring houses, increased crime, struggling commercial centers and tax base erosion, it found. “It’s important to realize just how much ground middle- and working-class Black Americans have lost in the subprime crisis,” said Amaad Rivera, a spokesman for United for a Fair Economy and co-author of the report. Rivera says that Blacks saw between $71 billion and $92 billion of their wealth dry up over the past eight years. Latinos, between $75 and $98 billion of wealth evaporated during the same time period. Why? The best answer is that they fell prey to predatory lenders, who disproportionately targeted them, the study says, noting that the subprime mortgage crisis will cost minority homeowners 40 percent more wealth than White homeowners in similar circumstances. “There’s no doubt in looking at the data … these predatory loans were targeted at racial minorities,” Austin King, a spokesman for Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now told Black Voices. “Even when you zero out all the other factors like income and credit scores, even then a high-income African American was still as likely to be sold a subprime loan as a low-income White person.”

Georgia lawmaker says Black colleges unnecessary. In Georgia, where state officials are grappling with a $2 billion budget deficit, one lawmaker wants to merge to historically Black colleges with nearby White ones. Republican Seth Harp, who is chairman of the State Senate Higher Education Committee, says Harp. Harp believes that fusing the two campuses would save the cash-strapped Peach State millions and would allow Georgia to do away with what he contends are discriminatory institutions. But many Black educators, politicians and alumni say the historically Black colleges are serving a special need. “Historically Black institutions play a vital role in the community, the state and the nation,” said Dwayne Ashley, the president of the Thurgood Marshall Scholarship Fund, which supports Black colleges. “They provide educations to a number of young men and women who might not otherwise attend college.” Joining Ashley is a host of other state officials, which is why the measure likely will not see the light of day. “This proposal would continue a long history of White officials implementing an economic plan that disintegrates institutions in the Black community,” said Ruby Sales, the founder of SpiritHouse Project, a social justice organization, drafted a petition to save the Black schools Sales. “Black educational history has been decimated under these types of desegregation plans.”

TAGS: Blacks, georgia, HBCUs, hit hard, latinos, mortgages, Seth Harp, Sub-prime

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