Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor. Dr. Taylor is a professor of African American Studies at Princeton University.
Her 2013 PhD dissertation in African-American Studies from Northwestern is titled Race for Profit: Black Housing and the Urban Crisis in the 1970s which moreover serves as the core of this book.
As a result of reading Evicted by Matthew Desmond, Keeanga’s book offers very powerful insights to housing in society from the Housing and Urban Development Act (HUD) of 1968 under the Johnson Administration to the 1974 Ford Administration Housing and Community Development Act which created uneven block grants and shared revenue with federal oversight to social welfare.
However, in contrast to Evicted, Race for Profit reveals deep, historical racism within the housing market that continues today and certainly accelerated under COVID. These forces obviously created downstream impacts at state and local levels, along with private financial firms including banks and real estate.
Keeanga in fact documents those failings were simply accelerating via “public/private partnerships” by Real Estate and Banking firms. This provided another opportunity to fleece poor African American women.
Downstream impacts
The understanding for many readers is the reinforced racism during the Nixon administration. His goal was to derail LBJ’s great society and used new coded speech, introducing the phrase “urban crisis” as nothing more than whites not wanting African Americans in their neighborhoods. Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law is noted by Keeanga. This further illustrates Richard’s De jure versus de facto segregation and reinforces the history of Racial Restrictive Covenants.
In conclusion, the impact of Race for Profit is very strong and impactful. In addition, the private financial firms also reinforced extreme state and local biases, gain a greater understanding to the history of failed government housing efforts.. Readers will also understand the remaining homeownership barriers African Americans continue to face today. Perhaps this book will shift your view on fixing this terrible issue impacting so many Americans. Keeanga has delivered powerful lessons indeed.
In conclusion, the impact of Race for Profit is strong. Any reader will be better educated to the history of government housing and perhaps a lot more compassionate to the remaining barriers African Americans continue to face. Perhaps it will shift your view on fixing this terrible issue impacting so many Americans.