Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
Speaker 1: and there's Charles W Chuck Bryan over there, and this
Speaker 1: is stuff you should know. Um the man oh man addition,
Speaker 1: do you know what I love about this topic is
Speaker 1: that it's not just a bunch of like ranting about
Speaker 1: how we think things are and how people think things are.
Speaker 1: It's like so studied and statistic heavy that you can
Speaker 1: talk about how things are and then say, and here's
Speaker 1: the proof exactly, here's a lot of data to back
Speaker 1: it up. It's really great. I love it when they
Speaker 1: dovetail like this. Yeah. I get the impression, though, UM
Speaker 1: that you when you're talking about the studying race and
Speaker 1: especially in America like you are, you have to back
Speaker 1: it up with data like people are like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't I don't know about that. But um, I
Speaker 1: want to give a shout out to actually to um
Speaker 1: uh scholars both sell sociologists of race. UM Professor Villnabashi
Speaker 1: Treatler from UC Santa Barbara and Professor Tricia Rose of
Speaker 1: Brown University both are experts on this stuff and they
Speaker 1: helped me out big time with this and some other
Speaker 1: research on on racism I've done, um and they Dr
Speaker 1: Bashi Treatler said, hey, make sure you mentioned this hashtag
Speaker 1: we have going called site hashtag. Sorry, and I'm making
Speaker 1: the hashtag symbol like justin Timberlake hashtag site black women
Speaker 1: ce I t e black women. UM, and that leads
Speaker 1: you to all sorts of good often overlooked research by
Speaker 1: black scholars. Um, who are women that don't always get
Speaker 1: a lot of credit. So I'm glad you told me
Speaker 1: about that one. I wanted to tell everybody else. So
Speaker 1: when you, uh, that was a stutter when he said
Speaker 1: so so sociologists, you didn't mean they were just mediocre sociologists. No,
Speaker 1: I was. I was sociologist. I could see how that
Speaker 1: would be confusing. I was doing my impression of Phil
Speaker 1: Collins saying sociologist so so studio. Yeah, well that's the
Speaker 1: last joke we're gonna tell you. Oh yeah, probably. I
Speaker 1: was warned by Dr Bashi Treatler not to do our
Speaker 1: usual stick when we're talking about race stuff, and I
Speaker 1: was like, well, I mean, we we can handle ourselves.
Speaker 1: She said. I I listened to your stuff. I listened
Speaker 1: to the Braws episode just trust me on this. It's like,
Speaker 1: all right, So then that means the housing discrimination episode
Speaker 1: officially starts. Now, that's right. So that's what we're talking about, dude.
Speaker 1: Housing discrimination and um uh in the United States, and
Speaker 1: there is a very long history of housing discrimination. And
Speaker 1: you might say, like, well, that really sucks. That sucks
Speaker 1: that people have trouble buying a home or maybe they
Speaker 1: get less favorable terms on their loans just because of
Speaker 1: their race, and that does suck. That's absolutely true. But
Speaker 1: it's even worse than that because in the United States,
Speaker 1: one of the biggest ways of growing wealth intergenerationally, like
Speaker 1: over the course of generations within a single family is
Speaker 1: through a house. Yeah, I mean it's sometimes people don't
Speaker 1: have a ton of money to invest in the stock market.
Speaker 1: Some people think the stock market is not something to trust.
Speaker 1: But one thing that has always been fairly reliable in
Speaker 1: this country, you know, say, for a few moments in history,
Speaker 1: is real estate and the idea that if you scrap
Speaker 1: up and save enough money for a down payment for
Speaker 1: a home, that house will eventually be worth quite a
Speaker 1: bit more years later, and you can sell it and
Speaker 1: use that extra windfall of cash to invest in the
Speaker 1: stock market or to pass down to your kids so
Speaker 1: they can then get in the housing market sooner than
Speaker 1: they might have and then it just becomes a cycle
Speaker 1: where it just builds wealth. Yeah, Like the average family
Speaker 1: in America has most of their net worth tied up
Speaker 1: in their house, and then you know, when it comes
Speaker 1: time to sell it and the house is paid off,
Speaker 1: that's a lot of money. And then when you kick
Speaker 1: the bucket, your kids get that money and maybe they
Speaker 1: get a better house, and it just keeps growing and growing.
Speaker 1: So if you put up barriers to housing, you're actually
Speaker 1: putting up barriers to passing along intergenerational wealth. And as
Speaker 1: a big, big problem in America. UM Still today, I
Speaker 1: saw a study from I think Brookings that found that,
Speaker 1: um the median. Yeah, brooking study said that the median
Speaker 1: net worth of a white family in America is a
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy one thousand dollars. The median net worth
Speaker 1: of a black family in America is seventeen thousand, one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty dollars, about a ten of what the
Speaker 1: median is for white people. And that is largely because
Speaker 1: of housing discriminate in the history of housing discrimination in
Speaker 1: this country. Yeah, and as far as history goes, you know,
Speaker 1: it started with literal racist laws where they said, if
Speaker 1: you're a black person or a black family, you cannot
Speaker 1: live here. Um. That went on for a while, and
Speaker 1: then those laws were sort of altered to the Jim
Speaker 1: Crows Separate but Equal era, where they said, you know what, Um,
Speaker 1: we'll say things are better, but it's really the same
Speaker 1: effect in the end. And then they got rid of
Speaker 1: those laws and said, all right, now we've really passed
Speaker 1: the meaningful legislation, and now we can just racially discriminate
Speaker 1: on the down low and very creative ways. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: basically the pattern that it's followed. Um. And what kind
Speaker 1: of stuck out to meet Chuck is is that before
Speaker 1: about nine hundred, before like the rise of like industrialization
Speaker 1: to a really legitimate degree in the United States, like,
Speaker 1: there wasn't not nearly as much segregation as we saw
Speaker 1: starting around nineteen especially in the North, because if you
Speaker 1: had a trade or a craft in the North and
Speaker 1: you were an African American, there's a really good chance
Speaker 1: that you were going to be serving white people as
Speaker 1: well as black people, right and because you usually were
Speaker 1: very closely your home was tied close to your shop,
Speaker 1: you often lived above it if you were like a
Speaker 1: cobbler or something like that. Um, you made live next
Speaker 1: door to a white baker or something like that. So
Speaker 1: the there wasn't a lot of segregation until industrialization came
Speaker 1: along and there was a big call for labor, which
Speaker 1: drew a lot of African Americans, a lot of Black
Speaker 1: Americans out of the South up to the north. And
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, all of those people who were
Speaker 1: living in integrated neighborhoods, all those white people I should say,
Speaker 1: had had a problem with this influx of black migration
Speaker 1: from the South to the north, and they responded with
Speaker 1: a lot of really disgusting violence. Yeah. I mean, we've
Speaker 1: talked about some of these, um race incidents and race
Speaker 1: riots and race almost race wars really uh here and
Speaker 1: there on the show, and they're always hard to talk about.
Speaker 1: But that was just sort of the reality of things
Speaker 1: at the time. Um. In the nineteen thirties, the New
Speaker 1: Deal comes along, and this is when legislation starts to
Speaker 1: kind of kick in. When the government stepped in and said,
Speaker 1: you know what, we think we should make it easier
Speaker 1: for people to own homes. We really want to boost
Speaker 1: home ownership because that's a boon for the economy of
Speaker 1: the country. And we're going to create the home Owners
Speaker 1: Loan Corporation, which is going to help people refinance their mortgages.
Speaker 1: But we need some criteria here to sort of establish
Speaker 1: a uniform way of like how to how to dole
Speaker 1: out this assistance. And they reckoned, let's let's look at
Speaker 1: every population of forty or more and let's create a
Speaker 1: color coded map that's based on riskiness of these loans.
Speaker 1: And they said, you know, they talked to real estate brokers,
Speaker 1: they talk to bankers, and they said, help us out,
Speaker 1: help us draw these boundaries, and they came up with
Speaker 1: a one, two, three, four color graded system. Right, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. Because again this was like long before credit
Speaker 1: scores were developed, so you couldn't really look at you know,
Speaker 1: if somebody came into your bank to ask for a loan,
Speaker 1: you couldn't be like, well, you're your your credit scores this,
Speaker 1: So I'm not gonna look at that start. I don't
Speaker 1: know we should do an episode on if we haven't already.
Speaker 1: I don't think for sure. Um, but yeah, so the
Speaker 1: four color codes they had were also um delineated by
Speaker 1: grades Grade A, B, C, and D. Grade A was
Speaker 1: the most desirable neighborhood. They were usually homogeneous, meaning white. Um,
Speaker 1: there were um lots of professionals living in there. Grade
Speaker 1: B was maybe a step down, but still largely homogeneous,
Speaker 1: if not totally homogeneous, and they were considered still desirable.
Speaker 1: And then it started to get into the lower grades
Speaker 1: grades C and D, and C was um, I think
Speaker 1: colored yellow on the map, right, Yeah, the first two
Speaker 1: were green and blue, and then Grade C was rated
Speaker 1: as declining and colored yellow and that sort of. In fact,
Speaker 1: I think it even said infiltration of a lower grade
Speaker 1: population in the document, which you don't have to be
Speaker 1: a genius to figure out what they were saying there.
Speaker 1: It means people of color were moving in. And then
Speaker 1: finally you end up with the color red Grade D,
Speaker 1: which is least desirable. Um, very densely populated areas almost
Speaker 1: always communities of color. Right. So um, the h O
Speaker 1: l C created these maps, and then um, along came
Speaker 1: the Federal Housing Authority and they said, well, we need
Speaker 1: similar maps because we're not we're not here to help
Speaker 1: stem the tide of foreclosures. We're actually here to generate
Speaker 1: new home ownership among Americans. Um, but we still have
Speaker 1: the same issue. We got to figure out who's credit
Speaker 1: worthy and who's not. So we're going to base it
Speaker 1: on where the people live. And they basically made identical
Speaker 1: maps to the h O l C maps, and so
Speaker 1: they probably used them. Right, there's a lot of debate.
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone's found the smoking gun yet. But
Speaker 1: if you take an h O l C map in
Speaker 1: an f h A map and you put them over
Speaker 1: one another, they're basically the same thing. And I I
Speaker 1: it's kind of all. It's up for the debate still.
Speaker 1: But the the the upshot was that because of these maps, Um,
Speaker 1: if you lived in one of these red and often
Speaker 1: yellow communities, they wouldn't lend to you, for um, for
Speaker 1: a new mortgage or even a second mortgage to say,
Speaker 1: remodel your home. And they also wouldn't assist you with
Speaker 1: refinancing your existing mortgage, which means you're subject to foreclosure.
Speaker 1: And if you were in a red or yellow community,
Speaker 1: you were probably um black or a person of color
Speaker 1: or some other ethnic minority. And UM, that means that
Speaker 1: they were shut out of this enormous housing boom that
Speaker 1: generated a tremendous amount of prosperity immediately after the New
Speaker 1: Deal in World War Two. As we'll see, so African
Speaker 1: Americans were left out of or on the fringes of
Speaker 1: the New Deal anyway. And this is where we get
Speaker 1: to shout out Francis Perkins. Perkins again, which is it's
Speaker 1: fun to now that we know so much about her,
Speaker 1: to continually shout her out. But she did a lot
Speaker 1: of work arguing in favor of inclusion for black people
Speaker 1: in the New Deal. Um, I guess you know, sometimes successfully,
Speaker 1: sometimes not. But at the end of the day, the
Speaker 1: f h A imposed these rules through the New Deal. Uh.
Speaker 1: Their maps were just like the UH the h O
Speaker 1: l C. And the process of excluding these groups because
Speaker 1: they were colored red was called redlining. That is that
Speaker 1: like the where that whole term comes from. That's exactly
Speaker 1: where it comes from. So now today, any any time
Speaker 1: you're discriminated against, whether it's buying insurance or anything like that, um,
Speaker 1: based on your race or say your community. Um, it's
Speaker 1: called redlining now. But that's where it grew out of
Speaker 1: those h O l C maps and f A J maps. UM.
Speaker 1: And I mean they would use terms and like their
Speaker 1: their handbooks that like these communities had quote undesirable racial
Speaker 1: or nationality groups in them, so you couldn't you couldn't
Speaker 1: lend them any money or whatever. Um. And it was
Speaker 1: I mean like this is still like a really big
Speaker 1: problem today. Yeah, I mean back then basically and still today.
Speaker 1: In many cases, that leaves you with a couple of
Speaker 1: options as a person of color. You can rent uh
Speaker 1: forever um often times back then and still now from
Speaker 1: a white landlord who doesn't live anywhere near that community,
Speaker 1: not always, but usually, or just pay for the home
Speaker 1: in cash, which is a stretch for anybody. Uh, it's
Speaker 1: it's tough to do unless you're like wealthy. And there
Speaker 1: were there were, I have to say there were black
Speaker 1: owned banks. But there was nine black own banks in
Speaker 1: the entire United States in the thirties. So that is
Speaker 1: a place where you could turn to if you're lucky
Speaker 1: enough to have one in your area. But that that
Speaker 1: was not a solution to the general population for Black Americans. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and like you said, also affected their ability to get
Speaker 1: second mortgages, to do home improvements or to like expand
Speaker 1: on their house and upgrade it, remodel it. So that
Speaker 1: means that the properties are gonna deteriorate and decline over
Speaker 1: the years, and it's just it's part of that systemic
Speaker 1: racist cycle that is just prevalent. Yeah, because still today, eventually,
Speaker 1: over time people from the outside looking in say, look,
Speaker 1: black people can't even take care of their communities. Look
Speaker 1: at look at how their houses are. Um, just as
Speaker 1: a result of this. That is definitely like the definition
Speaker 1: of systemic racism for sure. It's just by the way
Speaker 1: into the structures. If you hear dogs barking, My dogs
Speaker 1: are upstairs and they're just very excited about this topic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I don't know what's going on there, but they're
Speaker 1: not going to shut up. So let's say we press on.
Speaker 1: We'll press on. Should we take a break, then press on.
Speaker 1: We're going to press on like some lee nails right
Speaker 1: after a break. How about that? All right, it sounds good.
Speaker 1: All right, we're back and look, these things look amazing
Speaker 1: on me. Yeah, they're very nice. There's a little bit
Speaker 1: of cuticle showing. I didn't put them right up against it,
Speaker 1: but it's still it's passable. Well, I think if you
Speaker 1: paint them just right, that's not so noticeable. Right, fill ins,
Speaker 1: that's what I need. I need to get some fill ins.
Speaker 1: So back to the topic at hand, joking is over. Um,
Speaker 1: so here's the deal. There's, like you said, a lot
Speaker 1: of debate whether or not or I don't think we
Speaker 1: said this part, whether or not the lenders actually use
Speaker 1: these maps because these were government maps from government programs.
Speaker 1: It's not like they said, here, banks have these and
Speaker 1: use these. Uh. If you look at the statistics, it
Speaker 1: seems like they probably got their hands on some of
Speaker 1: these maps. It does. And also, don't forget the government
Speaker 1: figured out, you know, how to draw these maps for
Speaker 1: every city over forty people from the lenders, from the banks,
Speaker 1: from the Yeah, so they knew this anyway, but now
Speaker 1: the government has basically said it is okay to do this, um.
Speaker 1: And so so yeah, if you if you look at
Speaker 1: the outcome of this redlining, these red line maps, um,
Speaker 1: it's it's really hard to say, no, this didn't happen
Speaker 1: like this definitely didn't make it out of government hands
Speaker 1: like forts here just great, let's trade off. Between ninety
Speaker 1: four and nineteen sixty two, over of all the federally
Speaker 1: backed mortgages that were issued in the United States went
Speaker 1: to white buyers. Between four and nineteen sixty two, that's right,
Speaker 1: because of this black ownership since then and can tinuing
Speaker 1: today is lagged behind white homeownership in America, and seventeen
Speaker 1: just a few short years ago, of black Americans own
Speaker 1: their homes versus seventy of white Americans. And then the
Speaker 1: other problem with redlining a community is you basically put
Speaker 1: a pox on it. It's cursed, because that means that
Speaker 1: those houses are not going to get any kind of
Speaker 1: attention UM, and so they're going to continue to deteriorate.
Speaker 1: And if you live in this community, as far as
Speaker 1: a banker is concerned, you are a huge credit risk. Right,
Speaker 1: And so still today UM sev of the neighborhoods that
Speaker 1: were originally redlined in those maps are our redline UM
Speaker 1: low income communities today, And which is I mean, that's
Speaker 1: pretty surprising. And I also saw that UM study found
Speaker 1: that homes and red line neighborhoods we're still worth less
Speaker 1: than half of those in green neighborhoods. Yeah, and here's
Speaker 1: the one. I marked these as stats with an exclamation point,
Speaker 1: just that's how excited I get. But the ones that
Speaker 1: I'm really floored by, I don't even write anything except
Speaker 1: for three exclamation points. I've got three exclamation points by
Speaker 1: that of back federally back mortgages. For sure, that is
Speaker 1: definitely one. Um here's mine. If if you might say, well,
Speaker 1: what about variables man and education level and income level
Speaker 1: and stuff like that, Like you gotta factor all that in.
Speaker 1: That's a whole other side conversation as far as systemic
Speaker 1: racism and being able to go to good schools and
Speaker 1: afford a good education and get a good job and
Speaker 1: all that. So just park that to the side. But
Speaker 1: if you control for all those variables, college educated black
Speaker 1: Americans are still less likely to own their home than
Speaker 1: white Americans without a high school diploma. Yeah, That's That's
Speaker 1: what really gets you is when they they're like, well,
Speaker 1: let us just control for all these factors and only
Speaker 1: variable that remains is the race of the people applying
Speaker 1: for a owner owning a home, and it's still the case.
Speaker 1: That's when it's like, well this is indisputable. Actually yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know you can put a price on this.
Speaker 1: Red Fen did a study um just last year in
Speaker 1: twenty that black American families missed out on the opportunity
Speaker 1: to accumulate an average of two hundred and twelve thousand
Speaker 1: dollars of you know what, we're talking about that intergenerational
Speaker 1: wealth per household over the last forty years, just over
Speaker 1: the last forty years. I mean we're talking about stuff
Speaker 1: that started, I mean back in the days of slavery,
Speaker 1: but really started to take off in the nineteen thirties
Speaker 1: with the New Deal. And this is just since nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty they've lost out on that amount of money per household.
Speaker 1: That's nuts and still today, Chuck, here's another one that
Speaker 1: gets me. Black American is five times likelier to own
Speaker 1: a home in a red line neighborhood than a white
Speaker 1: American is. So this is still an issue today. Um.
Speaker 1: So redlining these maps just set off this enormous amount
Speaker 1: of um discrimination and I guess is all you can say.
Speaker 1: And then all of the horrible effects that come out
Speaker 1: of that that level of discrimination. But they weren't the
Speaker 1: only things that set it off. Um. The g I
Speaker 1: Bill really kind of came in and said, well, hold on,
Speaker 1: hold my beer, I want to mess things up to
Speaker 1: what does hold my beer mean? It means that like
Speaker 1: there's some dude just kind of sitting there with like
Speaker 1: his shirt, um just barely covering his gut drinking a beer,
Speaker 1: watching somebody do something stupid and he says, hold my beer,
Speaker 1: and then he doesn't stupid. That's right. Yeah, I thought
Speaker 1: that's what it meant. But you know me, I'm a
Speaker 1: I'm an old man with a shirt barely covering his gut.
Speaker 1: So I wasn't quite short. You should spend more time
Speaker 1: on Urban Dictionary. It should. I don't drink much beer anymore, though,
Speaker 1: although I do love it. What's your favorite? I mean,
Speaker 1: you know I love Tropicalia here out of Athens, Georgia.
Speaker 1: The creature comfort. I still never had one. Well, you
Speaker 1: should come over. I have a cagorator now on my deck.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I'm serving it up. But I don't
Speaker 1: know why I got it. I got it for friends
Speaker 1: because I don't drink. It's on a beer. And then
Speaker 1: the pandemic happened, and now I've just got a half
Speaker 1: keg of beer sitting ship. All right. So yeah, the
Speaker 1: g I Bill um this, you know, in theory, the
Speaker 1: g I Bill is a great thing, and it has
Speaker 1: done a lot of good. But in this case, it
Speaker 1: did block access to home ownership among black Americans because,
Speaker 1: uh they would come home from World War Two. The
Speaker 1: g I Bill was passed. Banks are handing out mortgages
Speaker 1: to veterans and they were actually allowed to discriminate based
Speaker 1: on race. Yes, it's shocking. Yeah, well it's like whenever
Speaker 1: you see that kind of thing, you're like, this doesn't
Speaker 1: jibe with what I understand. Just look to the Dixiecrats,
Speaker 1: the segregationists of the South, who were a very powerful
Speaker 1: voting block and during the Jim Crow era, and they
Speaker 1: were like to appease them and get them to vote
Speaker 1: for something like a New Deal program or to not
Speaker 1: do everything they could to block it. You had to say, okay,
Speaker 1: well we'll make sure that that blacks are excluded them
Speaker 1: this that that that Black Americans won't have access to
Speaker 1: this amazing program. And they'd be like, okay, cool, let's
Speaker 1: let's do it. That's that's that's where a lot of
Speaker 1: that came from. And I mean, it's easy to blame
Speaker 1: the Dixie Krats, but you can also be like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, how hard did you try to go around
Speaker 1: the Dixie Kratz too. I mean it was allowed to happen, yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: by everybody, despite Francis perkins best efforts. Yeah, here's the
Speaker 1: stat For instance, in Mississippi in Uh, they build out
Speaker 1: told out more than three thousand v A backed home
Speaker 1: loans that year. Uh, and two of them were two
Speaker 1: black veterans. Uh. Pretty startling. I don't even know the
Speaker 1: percentage on that point nine eight. Oh yeah, there's got
Speaker 1: to be a repeating something in there somewhere. Uh. And
Speaker 1: you know this is a big deal because when World
Speaker 1: War Two ended, they wanted a housing boom. There was
Speaker 1: a lot of the supplies that would have gone to
Speaker 1: home construction during the war went to the war effort.
Speaker 1: So the f h A said, you know what, we
Speaker 1: we need a housing boom here. We're going to guarantee
Speaker 1: construction loans to you like big construction companies out there.
Speaker 1: And that's when the suburbs popped up for the first time,
Speaker 1: and that changed everything forever. Yeah. I mean, like they
Speaker 1: they the birth of the suburbs were like a deliberate
Speaker 1: program created by the federal government to to basically get
Speaker 1: more people buying houses, to start that intergenerational wealth and
Speaker 1: to create a middle class or to expand the middle
Speaker 1: class dramatically. And they were able to do that partially
Speaker 1: through just like when the f h came along and said, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, we're going to back these people's loans as
Speaker 1: long as they're not in a red line neighborhood. That
Speaker 1: says to the lenders, well, then you know that means
Speaker 1: even if this person defaults, the government will buy the
Speaker 1: loan from me. I'm gonna get paid back no matter what.
Speaker 1: They did the same thing to these construction companies to
Speaker 1: which created this huge housing boom. But there's a caveat
Speaker 1: to it. Just like with the v A loans that
Speaker 1: said you can discriminate based on race for loans, even
Speaker 1: though this is really important, Chuck. Even though the government
Speaker 1: the v A would back the loan of a black
Speaker 1: veteran just like they would back the loan of a
Speaker 1: white veteran and you would be repaid no matter what,
Speaker 1: you were still allowed to discriminate based on race. The
Speaker 1: f h A, supposedly with the birth of the suburbs,
Speaker 1: said we're going to guarantee your construction loans, so you
Speaker 1: can build suburbs, but you can't sell two black Americans.
Speaker 1: That's another one that I don't think there's a smoking
Speaker 1: gun that I saw, so I don't know if that means,
Speaker 1: like get the word out, like you can't sell the
Speaker 1: black people or else we're not going to back these loans,
Speaker 1: or if it was stated policy, that haven't been able
Speaker 1: to turn up. But it's pretty well understood that the
Speaker 1: f h A discriminated against black people basically moving to
Speaker 1: the suburbs by not backing construction loans like that. Well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there were neighborhood covenants in place that said that
Speaker 1: black people cannot own homes in these neighborhoods they were
Speaker 1: there were clauses that said you cannot resell your home
Speaker 1: if you go to move, you can't sell it to
Speaker 1: a black family. Yeah, dude, if you want to be startled,
Speaker 1: go search that um on Google Images. There's like pictures
Speaker 1: of these clauses and deeds that say you can't sell
Speaker 1: to anybody who's not white, or even specifically, you can't
Speaker 1: sell anybody who's black. It's really jarring. Yeah, and it's um,
Speaker 1: I mean, it was sort of expressly understood that the
Speaker 1: suburbs were being created for a reason, and that's to
Speaker 1: get white people out of the city to a place
Speaker 1: where they could live among themselves. And it's it's something
Speaker 1: that's still going on. I mean, during the uh most
Speaker 1: recent presidential election campaign, Donald Trump started playing praying on
Speaker 1: these fears again. He was saying things like, literally, suburban
Speaker 1: housewives of America, Biden will destroy your neighborhood and your
Speaker 1: American dream. People living their suburban lifestyle dream will no
Speaker 1: longer be bothered of fine or financially hurt by having
Speaker 1: low income housing built in your neighborhood. And the these
Speaker 1: are literal quotes, and it's just he's trying to to
Speaker 1: garner a certain kind of vote, to be sure. But
Speaker 1: you know, we'll get to other stuff. I mean, Trump
Speaker 1: has a long history and his and his family with
Speaker 1: he and his father of housing discrimination. But the end
Speaker 1: result of all this is white people. You know, people
Speaker 1: call it white flight. They left the cities, moved to
Speaker 1: the suburbs. People that were in the city still, these
Speaker 1: African American families in these yellow and red line communities,
Speaker 1: we're sort of stuck there. So the government steps in
Speaker 1: to build affordable housing, which at first were racially integrated.
Speaker 1: There were black people and white people, but then even
Speaker 1: the lower income white people, uh fled for the suburbs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because wages rose. Yeah, and they left cities in an
Speaker 1: urban communities almost entirely black. Um. Yeah. So proportionately speaking,
Speaker 1: there was a tremendous drain of white people from the cities.
Speaker 1: I'm sure it was different on a city to city based.
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, I know it was. There's
Speaker 1: not a you can't put a whole blanket of history
Speaker 1: over every square inch of the United States, so different
Speaker 1: cities had different experiences. But proportionately speaking, black people have
Speaker 1: always made up a smaller amount of the American population overall.
Speaker 1: But then if you look at the you know, percentage
Speaker 1: of black people, say in a city in nine I
Speaker 1: think is when it peaked. For Atlanta in particular, Um,
Speaker 1: it's like say black or something that's a way larger
Speaker 1: proportion or disproportionate amount of black people living in the
Speaker 1: city than say, um, in the suburbs. And then conversely, Chuck,
Speaker 1: when you look at the suburbs and the statistics about
Speaker 1: race or demography in the suburbs, then it really kind
Speaker 1: of all comes home. Yeah, and you know they're living
Speaker 1: in the suburbs. They decide, you know, we still need
Speaker 1: to go into the city sometimes, so we need interstates
Speaker 1: to get us there because we like going to concerts
Speaker 1: occasionally or seeing a professional sports team play, right, and
Speaker 1: so they built these interstates, Uh, they kind of barreled
Speaker 1: through black neighborhoods built them there they often became a
Speaker 1: dividing line. UH. And you know, these communities were set
Speaker 1: up to fail. They had less frequent garbage pickup, they
Speaker 1: had inadequate funding to keep up this public housing that
Speaker 1: they built, UM, lower access to basic utilities, and they
Speaker 1: were just in no position to to succeed basically. Now.
Speaker 1: And I'm trying to remember what episode we talked about
Speaker 1: prow I Go Housing UM project in in St. Louis.
Speaker 1: I think it was the Environmental Psychology episode, if I'm
Speaker 1: not mistaken, But that was a really good example of
Speaker 1: this of how people pointed to that people from the
Speaker 1: outside and we're like, look, you can't like black people
Speaker 1: can't take care of anything. Look at the degraded state
Speaker 1: that this housing project is in. And it's, like you said,
Speaker 1: like they were set up to fail through all through
Speaker 1: like a lack of attention, a lack of funding, UM,
Speaker 1: just a lack of basically everything UM. And it's it's
Speaker 1: that kind of seem to keep perpetuating these um uh biases.
Speaker 1: For example, and this is a big one that we'll
Speaker 1: talk about later, that white people think if black people
Speaker 1: move into an area, their housing values are going to
Speaker 1: go down because of stuff like that. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's sort of the I guess you'd call it the
Speaker 1: dog whistle that everyone leans on there like, hey, we
Speaker 1: you know, we don't mind. Uh, we're not bigoted at all.
Speaker 1: We just want to keep our housing values up. That's right.
Speaker 1: That that so that one and then the the um
Speaker 1: the myth that black people are just inherently um uncredit
Speaker 1: worthy or not credit worthy are the two things that
Speaker 1: seem to be used the most as cover for, like
Speaker 1: you said, post civil rights are segregation in the United States,
Speaker 1: the dog whistle, like you said, yeah, I mean, and
Speaker 1: now is when we can talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: um gentrification, because I mean, the way housing has worked
Speaker 1: in this country is really fascinating and really gross in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways, but just interesting to look at
Speaker 1: from a bird's eye point of view. The way people
Speaker 1: move around and what eventually happened with the cities is that, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, call them what you want, yuppies or dinks.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of name for upwardly mobile white people.
Speaker 1: They're like, Hey, I want to move into the city,
Speaker 1: I want to be closer to to the concerts. Although
Speaker 1: this is going to be controversial, I'm gonna get a
Speaker 1: lot of cred for this, but one of the most
Speaker 1: annoying trends of the last like fifteen years is building
Speaker 1: all these concert venues out in the suburbs. It's so annoying.
Speaker 1: And I know they want their concert venues out there
Speaker 1: so they don't have to come into the city, but
Speaker 1: I hate it when I one of my bands plays,
Speaker 1: you know, thirty miles out into the suburbs. I won't go. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of a pain. Although we did go out.
Speaker 1: It's a huge Motley Crewe thanks to that was Nita Strauss. No,
Speaker 1: that's true, So that was that was worth the trip
Speaker 1: because it was Miley Crue and Alice Cooper. I just think,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I think all sports stadiums and all
Speaker 1: concerts and you should be in the city. I'm with you.
Speaker 1: That's definitely traditional into the city for a big day out.
Speaker 1: You know, when they start moving museums way out in
Speaker 1: the exurbs and I'm done. Um. But the same thing.
Speaker 1: You could make the same case. When they built the
Speaker 1: highways and everything, they just kind of built them through
Speaker 1: black communities. That's what they did with with the stadiums
Speaker 1: and all that as well too. Well, no, that's true.
Speaker 1: You know, think about Braves. They just plunked Braves Stadium
Speaker 1: ted Turner out just right in the middle of Mechanicsville,
Speaker 1: which is a historically black community, and said, everybody moves
Speaker 1: move aside, and don't harass all the white people who
Speaker 1: come down to see the game on you know, same day.
Speaker 1: We should do I mean, I love sports, but we
Speaker 1: should do a There's such a problematic side to pro
Speaker 1: sports from that too. Um, these billionaire owners is using
Speaker 1: city money to build new stadiums when their other stadium
Speaker 1: is just like ten years old or whatever. That is
Speaker 1: definitely problematic. It's crazy, what a crazy amount of waste
Speaker 1: that produces a loan just that alone. Yeah, um, alright,
Speaker 1: so where was I? All right? Uh, white dinks are
Speaker 1: moving into the neighborhoods again in the city because they
Speaker 1: want good Thai food, and uh, these neighborhoods become a
Speaker 1: little more attractive the more white people move into, other
Speaker 1: white people to move in, and they start moving in
Speaker 1: and increasing numbers, and the houses are generally renovated or
Speaker 1: improved over time or sometimes they might bulldoze you know,
Speaker 1: a pretty decent house with good bones just to build
Speaker 1: you know, the biggest house possible on their postage stamp
Speaker 1: of a lot. It's crazy how close they build these
Speaker 1: mammoth houses together. I'm sure it happens everywhere. Atlanta's got
Speaker 1: a real problem with it. But what happens is, you know,
Speaker 1: home user going to increase, that's gonna raise taxes on
Speaker 1: the other homes around them. A lot of time, those
Speaker 1: other homes are owned by UM, longtime lower income residents,
Speaker 1: most times people of color, it becomes unsustainable. UM. We
Speaker 1: have a great, great program here in my neighborhood and
Speaker 1: east like called Neighbor in Need. That is UH Emily
Speaker 1: and I have four main charities that we work with
Speaker 1: and give to every year, and Neighbor in Need is
Speaker 1: one of them because we like to stay really locally focused.
Speaker 1: But Neighbor in Need basically addresses this head on and
Speaker 1: they you know, raise a lot of money and they
Speaker 1: use that money to take care of these people. UM,
Speaker 1: if they hear about a neighbor that's like, you know,
Speaker 1: in need, like an older African American couple who's been
Speaker 1: here for forty years, they're having to pay way too
Speaker 1: much in property taxes so they can't afford a roof
Speaker 1: on their house. They'll go put a roof on their house,
Speaker 1: or they'll pay their power bill, um whatever. I mean.
Speaker 1: It's a really really great grassroots organization, so UM very
Speaker 1: happy to be working with them and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: trying to fight the sort of ills of gentrification overall. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's neat because it also draws the community together to
Speaker 1: help the longest term residents of that community rather than
Speaker 1: that whole everybody's on their own kind of thing, which
Speaker 1: I'm sure most people who move into a community like
Speaker 1: you know that is gentrifying probably would want to do.
Speaker 1: They just don't know how to do it, or they
Speaker 1: don't know how to contact anybody. People don't just usually
Speaker 1: go over to their neighbor's house and knock on the
Speaker 1: door and introduce themselves anymore. So that's cool. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you know this is uh sometimes they are able to
Speaker 1: sell their house for a pretty good you know, the
Speaker 1: housing value does increase, so they're able to get more
Speaker 1: money than they might have before, which can be a
Speaker 1: nice windfall. But I've also seen firsthand, literally with my neighbors, UM,
Speaker 1: these sort of predatory home builders that come in there,
Speaker 1: and while they think it's probably decent money compared to
Speaker 1: what they thought they could get, it's still a lower
Speaker 1: than what they would offer a white family. But even
Speaker 1: if they were treated fairly and they walked away with
Speaker 1: the big windfall from the sale, um and you know,
Speaker 1: had a lot of money to retire on, that community
Speaker 1: was still fractured. You know, the people who are having
Speaker 1: to move and their neighbors who already had to move
Speaker 1: may have lived there for generations or even you know,
Speaker 1: just their whole lives and they formed a community. And
Speaker 1: it's not like that whole community just moves elsewhere together.
Speaker 1: They all go to different communities, often towards the end
Speaker 1: of their life, and it leads to alienation, isolation. Um.
Speaker 1: It's a that I mean, that's a real problem. Even
Speaker 1: even if they are being paid well for the the
Speaker 1: houses they're they're being bought out of because they don't
Speaker 1: necessarily want to move, but they just can't afford the
Speaker 1: taxes anymore. Um. So there's there's that's a big issue
Speaker 1: with gentrification. It's tough to get around sounds like that
Speaker 1: neighborhood group that you're talking about what's the name again
Speaker 1: that they that they've they've figured out a way or
Speaker 1: round it. Do you know what there needs to be
Speaker 1: dude is uh and this is chuck twenty two stuff. Okay.
Speaker 1: I think if you live in a house long enough,
Speaker 1: you shouldn't have to pay property tax anymore. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think there are I mean, I have to be a lot.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's like twenty years or something, but that would
Speaker 1: solve a lot of this problem. There is zero reason
Speaker 1: why some elderly African American couple that's been in a
Speaker 1: home for forty years needs to be paying taxes at
Speaker 1: all on that house, much less these jacked up rates. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: I think that's that's totally true. Um. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: there's a if it's not law, there's a proposal in
Speaker 1: Georgia to do that once you're sixty five or something
Speaker 1: like that. Maybe. I mean, I'm ad about property tax anyway,
Speaker 1: just because it's I don't know, we pay so much
Speaker 1: in taxes. Then you finally scrape up enough to buy
Speaker 1: a place that's your own, and the government's then like, well,
Speaker 1: if you're going to have to pay tax on that,
Speaker 1: do right? You know, I know, it's seems unfair. Also,
Speaker 1: you shouldn't have to pay full price for coffee anywhere
Speaker 1: once you reach sixty five or old agreed, especially after
Speaker 1: three pm. Uh, All right, well, should we take a
Speaker 1: break and then talk about the Fair Housing Act, which
Speaker 1: solved everything. It totally did. It's all great now, alright,
Speaker 1: we'll be right back up to this. Alright, spoiler, So
Speaker 1: we ruined things. They passed the Fair Housing Act, and
Speaker 1: racism has been solved in America. That's right. Ninety eight
Speaker 1: And we talked about the Fair Housing Act a little bit, UM,
Speaker 1: and you know, it's a good thing they passed it.
Speaker 1: It did banned discrimination in housing practices officially, but it
Speaker 1: just led to a little trickier way to get around
Speaker 1: stuff by UM doing it on the download. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that is that is for if you're studying systemic racisicism
Speaker 1: in the United States. The passing of like the Voting
Speaker 1: Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act, the Fair Housing Act UH,
Speaker 1: and some other legislation UM during the sixties really changed
Speaker 1: things in that no longer was the government in the
Speaker 1: business of enforcing discrimination and segregation UM. And also now
Speaker 1: you had recourse in the courts if you were discriminated
Speaker 1: against UM. But it didn't just a race racism in
Speaker 1: the United States that that task of enforcing basically white
Speaker 1: supremacy and racial discrimination and segregation and all the stuff
Speaker 1: that comes along with it fell to um lesser institutions
Speaker 1: in everyday people who carried out. And when you're talking
Speaker 1: about something like housing discrimination, UM, the people who now
Speaker 1: are best able to continue enforcing segregation and discrimination in
Speaker 1: the United States are people like lenders and real estate
Speaker 1: agents and even people who are deciding where to buy
Speaker 1: a house. Um. Everyday americans buying the house UM often
Speaker 1: make choices that they don't necessarily think our racist, and
Speaker 1: they might they probably don't think that they're racist, but
Speaker 1: they're still they're housing choices often reflect um inadvertent or
Speaker 1: otherwise racial choices or choices along racial lines. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: this you know this next bit, we're we're sort of
Speaker 1: busting on real estate professionals a little bit. I have
Speaker 1: very good friends that are real estate agents. They're great
Speaker 1: people for the most part. We don't mean to just
Speaker 1: paint everything with the big broadbrush, but the industry does
Speaker 1: have a history of it, for sure. Yeah, and we
Speaker 1: have to talk about it. So there was one in
Speaker 1: the in the eighties, there was one practice called block
Speaker 1: busting god um not having anything to do with video stores,
Speaker 1: I know it was the eighties, but um literally busting
Speaker 1: up a block. When a real estate agent would work
Speaker 1: or sort of act as a speculator and say, either, hey,
Speaker 1: you know what you know, there are some black families
Speaker 1: that are moving into the area. You may want to
Speaker 1: think about selling just to protect your home values before
Speaker 1: they fall. Or they might sell to a black family
Speaker 1: and introduce them to the area so they could then
Speaker 1: turn around, um, buy these houses from the white residents
Speaker 1: and then sell them to the black residents or you know,
Speaker 1: hopefully black residents, but at a big mark up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which has insult to injury, Like they created a basically
Speaker 1: white flight from an area just from the rumor of
Speaker 1: black people moving in, and then they move black people
Speaker 1: in and sell them sell to them at wildly inflated rates,
Speaker 1: which is crazy. And I read one story to Chuck
Speaker 1: of one of these real estate agents that was doing blockbusting.
Speaker 1: They would have a black dad with the stroller walk
Speaker 1: around the neighborhood, um like he had moved in or
Speaker 1: was thinking of moving in or whatever, and apparently just
Speaker 1: that was enough to get people to start to sell.
Speaker 1: And again you're like, you know, this is this is
Speaker 1: terrible that real estate agents are doing it. But the
Speaker 1: fact that it was effective really says a lot about
Speaker 1: every day you know, white homeowners too. And also again
Speaker 1: like it it doesn't mean like that these white homeowners
Speaker 1: hate black people like they were worried about their property values,
Speaker 1: because it's such an embedded myth in America that when
Speaker 1: a black family moves into a neighborhood, they're so bad
Speaker 1: at taking care of their their house and their home
Speaker 1: values that it's going to drag the home values down
Speaker 1: in throughout the entire neighborhood. And so everybody needed to
Speaker 1: get out before that happened. That's that's again, that's the
Speaker 1: definition of systemic racism. Yeah, and you know this has
Speaker 1: been busted up to a large degree officially, but up
Speaker 1: until nineteen fifty, the official policy of the National Association
Speaker 1: of Real Estate Boards UM said a realtor should never
Speaker 1: be instrumental and introducing into a neighborhood members of any
Speaker 1: race or nationality whose presence will clearly be detrimental to
Speaker 1: property values in that neighborhood. That was like literal policy
Speaker 1: up until nineteen fifty, and then there was a study
Speaker 1: in two thousand six by the National Fair Housing Alliance
Speaker 1: that said, and this is something else called steering, which
Speaker 1: is not blockbusting, but it's like, hey, like we want
Speaker 1: to show you houses over here in this neighborhood because
Speaker 1: we think it's a better fit for you. Uh. And
Speaker 1: you know here the financial instruments available to get mortgages
Speaker 1: for you and maybe not just for everybody. And black
Speaker 1: people historically have not given the full picture. They're maybe
Speaker 1: not shown white neighborhoods. Uh. And the study found that
Speaker 1: steering occurred sent of the time when researchers posed as
Speaker 1: buyers and we're shown homes like these sort of undercover operations. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and steering occurs, um not just you know, if you're
Speaker 1: if you're a black home buyer, you're not just going
Speaker 1: to be shown a black neighborhoods. If you're a white
Speaker 1: home buyer, they're probably not going to take you to
Speaker 1: black neighborhoods either. So through this process of racial steering,
Speaker 1: this is basically enforcing patterns of segregation still in the
Speaker 1: United States. Yeah, there was another study by Brookings. They
Speaker 1: found that black owned homes are undervalued by an average
Speaker 1: of forty thou dollars. And this is one that's controlled
Speaker 1: by all the factors like home quality and amenities and everything. Exclamation, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's forty eight grand literally because it is a home
Speaker 1: owned by a black individual. When they control for amenities
Speaker 1: where the home is the size of the house, everything
Speaker 1: else about the house. If you compare apples to apples,
Speaker 1: and it's the same house owned by a white person
Speaker 1: and the other house that's exactly the same home by
Speaker 1: a black person, the black person's house is going to
Speaker 1: be forty thousand dollars less in value just because it's
Speaker 1: owned by a black person. And that's that's just basically
Speaker 1: that whole idea of um that black people drag home
Speaker 1: values down becoming a self fulfilling prophecy, and um that
Speaker 1: those same home values are all of that undervaluing that
Speaker 1: same Brooking study found amounts to a loss of about
Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty six billion dollars for Black Americans. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for wealth they were not able to achieve. And uh,
Speaker 1: you know, we talked a lot about the Great Recession
Speaker 1: in the mortgage crisis kind of when it was going
Speaker 1: on and shortly thereafter, Um, Black Americans back then were
Speaker 1: likelier to receive subprime mortgages. These were the loans that
Speaker 1: were really expensive to repay. They had higher fees, they
Speaker 1: had higher interest rates, um they also had mechanisms built
Speaker 1: in if you were a black loan owner that made
Speaker 1: it easier for the lender to seize their collateral with
Speaker 1: usually meant their house and so like, it makes sense
Speaker 1: that if you are taking a greater risk lending to
Speaker 1: somebody as the bank, you should be able to get
Speaker 1: more money for it, right, But the problem is is
Speaker 1: like subprime mortgages were doled out to black homeowners or
Speaker 1: black home buyers at way higher rates than they were
Speaker 1: to white home buyers. And that's a problem in and
Speaker 1: of itself if the if the rates are less favorable
Speaker 1: and it's easier for the bank to repossess the house.
Speaker 1: But especially it proved to be a big problem during
Speaker 1: the mortgage crisis when that bubble bursts, because if you
Speaker 1: were a low income Black American, you were probably denied
Speaker 1: a mortgage of any kind. But even if you were
Speaker 1: a middle to high income black home buyer, you probably
Speaker 1: got a subprime mortgage compared to say, a white buyer
Speaker 1: with the same criteria that you had to offer. UM.
Speaker 1: So that meant that when those foreclosures happened because the
Speaker 1: bubble bursts, Black Americans, especially UM, wealthier Black Americans, were
Speaker 1: disproportionately impacted, so that that subprime mortgage debacle erased way
Speaker 1: more Black intergenerational wealth than it did for white people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have my last three exclamation points. Stat during the
Speaker 1: subprime mortgage crisis, there was a study that found black
Speaker 1: and Latino families, because you know we've mentioned people of
Speaker 1: color a few times, is not just solely African American
Speaker 1: families affected? Um, And the study found that black and
Speaker 1: Latino families making two hundred thousand dollars a year or more,
Speaker 1: we're still more likely to receive a subprime loan than
Speaker 1: white families making less than thirty thousand dollars a year.
Speaker 1: That nuts, and six point two percent of white people
Speaker 1: with a credit score of six sixty or higher received
Speaker 1: a subprime mortgage compared to twenty one point four percent
Speaker 1: of black borrowers with that same credit score. So, Chuck, UM,
Speaker 1: there's a big problem with all this. And it's kind
Speaker 1: of like you said at the beginning, like when you're
Speaker 1: talking about race and especially discrimination by race. Um, people
Speaker 1: tend to be like, especially white people tend to be like, well,
Speaker 1: I don't know about that. I mean, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of other factors involved, Like it could be anything. So
Speaker 1: you really have to kind of prove that this is
Speaker 1: a thing. And ever since the federal government got out
Speaker 1: of discriminating on paper, um, it's gotten a lot harder
Speaker 1: to track. So back in the seventies, the Department of
Speaker 1: Housing and Urban Development, they have an office of Research
Speaker 1: and Policy. They came up with the way of testing
Speaker 1: this to control for as many variables as possible and
Speaker 1: just see if it's just race that is being discriminated against.
Speaker 1: And it's called paired testing. It's actually pretty clever from
Speaker 1: what I understand. Yeah, that's when you get to equally
Speaker 1: qualified candidates to apply for homeown or to go to
Speaker 1: a real estate agent and like look at apartments or
Speaker 1: houses or whatever. Uh. They are trained to basically be
Speaker 1: as identical as they can be to one another, to
Speaker 1: respond to the questions in the same way, have the
Speaker 1: same credit history, same job status, same income level, and
Speaker 1: basically sort of be duplicates of one another except for
Speaker 1: their skin color. Uh, they're not working together so they
Speaker 1: don't even know, um, like there's no bias there even
Speaker 1: because they're not like paired together, right, They're not like,
Speaker 1: oh they got too, I'm gonna try this with them.
Speaker 1: Like they don't. They don't meet one another, they don't
Speaker 1: interact with one another. They're just doing their thing and
Speaker 1: they're just trained to do it exactly the same way.
Speaker 1: The only distinction between them is their their race. Right.
Speaker 1: And so the Urban Institute, which is a think tank,
Speaker 1: UM study this and they came up with kind of
Speaker 1: four big points from this paired testing UH exercise, which
Speaker 1: is UH. They found about discrimination and housing vouchers that
Speaker 1: are intended to let low income renters choose from a
Speaker 1: bigger pool a rental housing uh than the realtors even showed. UM,
Speaker 1: there were fewer homes and apartments available to minorities like
Speaker 1: we were, like I kind of mentioned earlier, like just
Speaker 1: a smaller like no, you know, we'll just look here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the racial steering usually results in fewer, fewer places being shown. Um.
Speaker 1: They were steered again to primarily um, you know, neighborhoods
Speaker 1: of their own ethnicity, and then given less information overall.
Speaker 1: Like I mentioned about mortgage products, UM, different kinds of loans,
Speaker 1: different kinds of ways of structuring a loan, just not
Speaker 1: given that information at all. Right, Um, so the they
Speaker 1: also found this paired testing turns up very frequently that um,
Speaker 1: it's not just even people of colors, not just black Americans,
Speaker 1: but it's people of color in general. But um, it's
Speaker 1: not even just down to to racial discrimination. There's also
Speaker 1: a lot of discrimination against people who are differently abled.
Speaker 1: They actually sometimes fair worse than minorities when it comes
Speaker 1: to housing discrimination. Paired testing is has turned that up
Speaker 1: as well. So it's still the upshot of all this
Speaker 1: is that it's still a problem and there is like
Speaker 1: some silver lining to it. Um the I think. Uh.
Speaker 1: That same think tank, the Urban Institute, also turned up
Speaker 1: that there's been a general decline overall. It's not huge,
Speaker 1: but it's it's noteworthy. It's remarkable. Um of preference in
Speaker 1: favoritism toward white white buyers over buyers of of like
Speaker 1: minority buyers by about five percent between and two thousand.
Speaker 1: It went from about so And there does seem to
Speaker 1: be a general decline in racism or discrimination, I should say, uh,
Speaker 1: in the United States. So that's the good news, is
Speaker 1: that America seems to be getting less racist. The bad
Speaker 1: news is that America is still racist. Like, we still
Speaker 1: have a long way to go. It's, as the study
Speaker 1: put the studies findings confirm a hard truth that America's
Speaker 1: long journey to end housing discrimination remains unfinished. Um. And
Speaker 1: so there's still a long way to go. And I
Speaker 1: think it's really important for everybody to realize that there's
Speaker 1: a long history of discriminating against people of color, but
Speaker 1: also very specifically Black Americans, and that it's still going
Speaker 1: on today. And even though it's in a slightly lesser form,
Speaker 1: it's very important if it's going on at all, that
Speaker 1: we we erase it. That's right, agreed, You got anything else?
Speaker 1: Nothing else? All right, Chuck, Well then that's housing discrimination.
Speaker 1: And since I said all right, Chuck, it's time for
Speaker 1: a listener mail. Well instead of reading a specific listener mail.
Speaker 1: And because this episode is a little heavy, we thought
Speaker 1: we'd have a little fun. Um. We got maybe more
Speaker 1: emails than we have for any other episode in our
Speaker 1: history down literally about Neco wavers Um. A lot of
Speaker 1: support for the Neco for people, and a lot of
Speaker 1: condemnation for yucking yums without giving having tried them. You
Speaker 1: were all correct. We honor you all, and we're gonna
Speaker 1: Josh got some sent them to me. We're gonna try
Speaker 1: some necka wafers on the air. Listen there. I just
Speaker 1: realized I think I made a grave mistake by not
Speaker 1: having any water in the basement. Yeah, I just realized
Speaker 1: this as well. Do you have a pipe to tap into?
Speaker 1: I think we should eat the same color. Oh really? Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, so we can kind of go, you know,
Speaker 1: nose to nose. I'm never open one these before. Okay, exactly, already,
Speaker 1: so nasty. You know, everybody was right about yucking people's
Speaker 1: yams in general, but also because we hadn't tried them.
Speaker 1: So that's why we're doing this. I mean, they're just
Speaker 1: falling apart when I opened the package. So to strike one,
Speaker 1: I've got a mess on my table. What color are
Speaker 1: we gonna do? I mean it's hard to tell. This
Speaker 1: looks sort of like a very pale yellow. That's the
Speaker 1: only whole one in my hand. Pale yellow. I don't
Speaker 1: even have that. I got white. I've got orange it
Speaker 1: maybe maybe it is white, Okay, I'll call it. Wait wait, wait, wait,
Speaker 1: I might have a palio when I do, I do it. Okay,
Speaker 1: apology to the people of Mesophonia, but here we go.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, it's just like it's like a flatter um,
Speaker 1: bigger candy heart. The conversation hart, it's not bam like okay,
Speaker 1: very hard, the crunches. I think what probably gets people.
Speaker 1: I mean, the taste isn't bad, but it's not great. No,
Speaker 1: they're not great, But I mean, who's crazy for conversation hearts,
Speaker 1: sickos and weirdos? You know, the same goes for me. Well,
Speaker 1: what's the verdict? Would you ever buy and eat Neca
Speaker 1: wafers after this? I will tell you what. I will
Speaker 1: probably eat the rest of these. And I like sugar.
Speaker 1: I like as atter fact, I'm gonna do one of
Speaker 1: the gray ones real quick. What about you? Uh no, no,
Speaker 1: that is not my up my alley. But I'm gonna
Speaker 1: try one of those chocolates because those where I think
Speaker 1: recommended steer clear, the dark gray ones, the liquorice ones.
Speaker 1: They're awful. It tastes Oh no, it is slightly different. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I get a little hint up cocoa. I've come around
Speaker 1: a little bit to the liquorice ones. At the end Wow,
Speaker 1: I'm turning into an eco weirdo. Actually, the chocolate aren't bad.
Speaker 1: What about pink? Try pink? Well, that's um, this is
Speaker 1: winter green. I think people are so disgusted right now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is all right. We're literally the last two people
Speaker 1: listening to this. Man, I think we should wrap this. Okay. Well, um,
Speaker 1: if you want to tell us that we shouldn't yuck
Speaker 1: everybody's jump, especially about something we haven't tried, we need
Speaker 1: to hear that whenever we do that. It's totally true
Speaker 1: and totally right. Thank you everybody who wrote him. You
Speaker 1: can get in touch with us at Stuff podcast at
Speaker 1: I heart radio dot calm Stuff. You should know it
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