Taylor, Keeanga-Yamahtta

OUR SYNOPSIS: Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor shows how the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) “encouraged low-income African Americans to become homeowners in the 1970s” through public-private programs that continued long histories of racial housing discrimination. (3) American cities became focal points for Black investment, “where profits for banks and real estate brokers were never ending, while shattered credit and ruined neighborhoods were all that remained for African Americans who lived there.” (4) Throughout the book, “The struggles of poor Black women provide particular insight into the ways that overlapping patterns of racial and gender discrimination shaped the new inclusive housing market.” By basing inclusion on likelihood for failure and exploitation, bankers and real estate operatives preyed on Black women’s homeownership ambitions. This “predatory inclusion” is characterized by “how African American homebuyers were granted access to conventional real estate practices and mortgage financing, but on more expensive and comparatively unequal terms.” (5) In the 1970s, redlining evolved into new forms of structural public-private economic exploitation and segregation because “racial discrimination remained good business for the real estate industry.” (7) Federal policy combined with white flight to empower continued racial exploitation led by the private sector based on white wealth and Black economic vulnerability. President Nixon and associates falsely emphasized “choice” in supporting the segregated housing status quo, demonstrating how “the racism endemic to the practice of real estate was amplified when conjoined with the resources of the federal government.” (163) Public blaming of disproportionately Black and female program participants ensued, but these women fought back through activism, self-advocacy, and class-action lawsuits.