>A disproportionate number of blacks were in foreclosure fairly quickly because the recession in late 2008 hit low-skill workers harder than professional and high-skill workers. <
Regardless of color, people who take out loans don't "put money into equity". They take on debt, overpriced loans that inflate the "value" of the home they bought or refinanced. When it crashes, one loses equity only if they had any before they took on a new loan. The strawberry picker that was lied to in order to encourage him to buy into the $750,000 no down loan on a house in California never had any equity, but was worse off after the loan failed.
The inner-city loans didn't fare as badly as the suburbs. Everything I have data on says that suburb collapse was far quicker and worse than inner-city values (which, frankly, started lower and didn't rise nearly as much) And that was mostly white folk.
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What occurred was the exact opposite: The suburbs boomed and busted and went into foreclosure in much greater numbers than inner cities. The tiny suburbs and exurbs of South Florida and California and Las Vegas and Arizona were the big boomtowns, not the low-income regions. The redlined areas the CRA address missed much of the boom; places that busted had nothing to do with the CRA.
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Here.
They did lose jobs, but not the mid-pay jobs which have been the hardest hit. The people who had those jobs have now moved into the lower paying jobs, if they got one at all, and thus displaced black folk (among others) to some extent. I am not minimizing it, because when you don't have much to start with one's losses can be more devastating, that is surely true. But the wealthy don't depend on their home values or such jobs for most of their money. That's for the 99%.
I was actually being sarcastic above. It
is the policies. Our problem is not the lack of individual persistence and work ethic. We have that in abundance. Yet our own President is pushing the individual effort meme (check his speeches before and after his latest election), telling us how "anyone can make it if they just work hard". We hear about "tough choices". Apparently we are supposed to believe that it is harder to beat up on the most vulnerable by cutting aid to them, not invest in them, that the phony debt issue demands it, (the debt isn't the problem, costs are) instead of going after the people who caused the problem.
In reality it is not a "tough choice" at all. It's easy to hurt someone weaker than you, someone powerless, (cops prove it to us all the time), much easier than standing up against the policies that allow for excessive profits in the Health Industrial Complex, or jailing banksters, some of the biggest contributors to political campaigns, for their overtly criminal acts, whose friends one sees every day in the White House, as lobbyists to Senators and Congresspeople, as golfing partners in clubs where, when a black person is seen, they are far more likely to be working there than enjoying an early tee time.
For example, it's much easier to let landlords put someone in jail for being late on their rent than it is to address draconian rental policies..
It is not the over 10 million people who we call "working poor" that are the problem. They work hard every day, but have better odds at winning a state lottery than they do of "making it" in America. It is policies that act as barriers to getting oneself out of poverty while supporting income inequality by making sure the rich can continue to take, and keep, the product of other people's labor.
On the policy question at least, I think we agree. And it's high time those policies are addressed.
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