[rak]

Unfortunately this is sadly common. If people are interested in the racist history of home ownership in America I highly recommend The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America

It's bad, really bad. It essentially robbed Black Americans of significant generational wealth.

[klyrs]

The Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project has some deep dives on the history of segregation in Seattle. One particular area of focus is on racially restrictive covenants -- when the law wasn't strict enough, individuals and neighborhoods put covenants on land titles forbidding sale to non-whites. Last time I looked, there were still neighborhoods in the Seattle area where these covenants still exist. They aren't enforceable by law, but soft enforcement in the real estate industry is still happening.

https://depts.washington.edu/civilr/segregated.htm

[beckman466]

yes, i also liked the book The Color of Money by UCI law professor Mehrsa Baradaran.

here's some of her research findings:

"Today, Black families have a median net worth of $11,000 compared to a white family’s median of $141,900. Pew Research Center data reveals that white families have 13 times more wealth than Black families. The wealth gap exists at every income level, with a third of Black families having no assets at all. The perpetuation of poverty is stunning—75 percent of Black children who grow up in families in the bottom wealth category remain in that same category as adults. A 2013 study found that for white families, every additional dollar they earn in income leads to $5.19 in wealth. For Black families, each dollar creates only 69 cents in total wealth. This growing divide perpetuates injustices hard to capture in the latest news of riots and protests. The racial wealth gap is where past injustice breeds present suffering."

our systems are still inherently racist and we are a long ways away from equity.

source: https://prospect.org/civil-rights/no-justice-no-peace-fix-th...

[Spooky23]

Those are selected stats to make the point they want to make. Class is more important than race - nobody understands how rich rich people are.

The median net worth for middle class Americans is ~$20k.

To put it in perspective, I was consulting for a payroll system for a hospital where the salary of the CEO was about the same as the sum of about 2,000 employees. (Most specialist doctors are not employed by the hospital)

[theklr]

You know both can be true, and majority of the racial disparities are deeply tied with race in America.

[Spooky23]

Absolutely a valid point.

To me though, highlighting race also reinforces stereotypes. We americans like to pretend that class differences don’t exist when clearly they do.

[beckman466]

i agree with you that socio-economic class (propertied vs. non-propertied) is the most important 'outermost' layer of any critique of the existing capitalist power relations, yet help me understand your thinking here:

> To me though, highlighting race also reinforces stereotypes.

what's the alternative? so called 'color-blindness'? [1] what stereotypes are reenforced by mentioning race/ethnicity when discussing relations of power? right now it sounds like you're trying to refute structural racism.

> We americans like to pretend that class differences don’t exist when clearly they do.

i agree with you that class consciousness is low, yet both critiques/angles can exist/meet/intersect. that's what intersectionality is for.

[1] an example of where this leads: "[...] the organization was informed by a form of “colorblind” Marxism that was incapable of dealing with the realities of racial divisions in the class structure of the United States. While more progressive on issues of race than other political parties in the United States, the WPUS/SLP ultimately failed to make a connection with the black working class, a grouping in society that had shown itself to have enormous revolutionary potential in the period of Reconstruction. While standing for class unity and recognizing the need for inter-racial organization, the WPUS/SLP ideology under closer scrutiny reveals an inability to recognize that black workers in the United States faced a form of oppression that was unique to their racial status, with white supremacy acting as a key linchpin in the class structure of US capitalism. This “color-blind” socialism was ultimately incapable of resonating with black workers. It also falsely expected the proletariat to organically unite under economic pressures as it grew as a class, responding to immiseration and crisis in an almost automatic way. This was a vision that was incapable of taking into account the role of white supremacy in dividing the US working class to develop a strategy that could effectively win the most oppressed sections of the proletariat to socialist politics."

https://cosmonaut.blog/2019/02/17/early-american-socialism-a...

[moralestapia]

>our systems are still inherently racist and we are a long ways away from equity

I find it really bad that the mien of (inherently) racist people has evolved to a point where it can pass undetectable. Yet, the effects are still there as they have learned to operate in a different, more subtle level.

Example, super friendly white boss would never dare to say anything politically incorrect, yet, bonuses, opportunities and valuable information always reaches their white subordinates sooner than it reaches others. The way they get away with it is by just simply waiting for an appropriate opportunity to arise so no one gets suspicious or nobody can point out what they did. Like, you cannot send an email only to white people to talk about a promotion, as that would be too obvious, but one day you may be having coffee with the exact set of people that you like and that's when you drop the news about whatever info that is meant for them, and only for them.

I haven't been a target of that but I have observed it as I've been part of the inner circle several times. I found it quite vulgar, tbh, as I believe strongly in merit above other things. Part of that is what led me to become an entrepreneur so I don't have to deal with people like that in order to make a living.

[Gibbon1]

> super friendly white boss would never dare to say anything politically incorrect, yet, bonuses, opportunities and valuable information always reaches their white subordinates sooner than it reaches others.

Reminds me of an observation that affinity fraud is really a continuum. Exploiting that is a skill. The better you can pass the better your opportunities. Once you see it, it's everywhere.