Overview

By the late 1960s and early 1970s, reeling from a wave of urban uprisings, politicians finally worked to end the practice of redlining. Reasoning that the turbulence could be calmed by turning Black city-dwellers into homeowners, they passed the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968, and set about establishing policies to induce mortgage lenders and the real estate industry to treat Black homebuyers equally. The disaster that ensued revealed that racist exclusion had not been eradicated, but rather transmuted into a new phenomenon of predatory inclusion. Race for Profit uncovers how exploitative real estate practices continued well after housing discrimination was banned. The same racist structures and individuals remained intact after redlining's end, and close relationships between regulators and the industry created incentives to ignore improprieties. Meanwhile, new policies meant to encourage low-income homeownership created new methods to exploit Black homeowners. Narrating the story of a sea-change in housing policy and its dire impact on African Americans, Race for Profit reveals how the urban core was transformed into a new frontier of cynical extraction.

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9781665201308

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Details bungling mismanagement, gross corruption, distorted incentives, civil rights regulations that went unheeded and unenforced. -- New York Times The book makes a strong case that giving so much power to profit-driven industries doomed the program's goals from the start, and there are clear parallels to the later subprime mortgage crisis of the 2000s...A valuable warning. -- Foreword Reviews

Author Information

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor writes on Black politics, social movements, and racial inequality in the United States. Her articles have been published in Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture and Society, Jacobin, New Politics, the London Guardian, In These Times, Black Agenda Report, Ms. magazine, International Socialist Review, Al Jazeera America, and other publications. She is assistant professor in the department of African American Studies at Princeton University. Janina Edwards, an Earphone Award-winning narrator, is a graduate of the acting program at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.

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