Matti 1
Delilah Matti
Professor H. Culik
English 1190-C1615
March 22, 2017
Minorites still have a taste of the redlining
America has a terrible habit of treating minorities like they are not worthy enough of the finer things due to race or social hierarchy. Redlining- the informal practice of denying someone of color, a loan or insurance all for the purpose to segregate and to keep the poor from climbing up in social class system . The National Housing Act of 1934 was part of the new deal during the Great Depression and was created to put an end to this cruel movement. “The FHA has insured over 35 million home mortgages and 47,205 multifamily project mortgages since 1934. Currently, FHA has 4.8 million insured single-family mortgages and 13,000 insured multifamily projects in its portfolio(The Fair Housing Center of Greater Boston).”Although this is history and people claim they have changed, history always seems to repeat itself but these mistakes and flaws are never brought to the light, they are usually hidden to the corner and hushed away into the dust which makes it almost impossible for light to be shown on the harsh reality of how society really is when it comes to the apportion of society and class. Not only does this social injustice live through unfair loan lending, but through a term that was coined by Lloyd Morrisett in 2001, called the digital divide. The present day redlining is unfortunately a very common thing that applies to the same prey as redlining. Although escaping the digital divide seems nearly impossible to even think about, there are a few tips that could help the people that are being slammed in the face with an invisible door by the upper class.
[i]f you lived in a majority-black or Hispanic neighborhood and you wanted to apply for a mortgage, Hudson City Savings Bank was not the place to go.” The bank serviced one of the largest housing markets in the nation, covering mortgages throughout New Jersey, New York, and even Philadelphia. But the bank went out of its way not to set up any branches in minority neighborhoods. As part of the settlement, Hudson City will have to open two full-service branches in non-white communities. (Mock)
This social injustice is completely unnecessary because if someone really did not want to better their lives they would not bother to go through the trouble even if they had the opportunity to because there is always that bunch that would rather live comfortably with a low paying job and living in the same home they have been living in their whole lives; but the fact that the victims of the continual redlining do not have the opportunity to excel to begin with, there is going to be voices that not only want but need to be heard.a few incidents that occurred with redlining are surprising not old events but are pretty recent.Lawsuits against Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and Citigroup were made for setting high interest rate loans to African- Americans and Latinos, but the lawsuits were almost immediately dropped by a federal judge because “banks could have foreseen the “attendant harm” that resulted from the predatory lending when they resulted in large numbers of foreclosures throughout the city (Shapiro)”.
The rallies for freedom and love for all never have complete truth to them because the same people that preach about equality are the same people that never dare to put their attention to the lower class, less fortunate or the minorities. VerizonWireless along with a few other data providing carriers have proved time after time that according to today’s society, in order to be worthy of the “luxurious” goods in life in the land of the free, a person must be; white, come from a somewhat wealthy picture- perfect family (because it is too difficult/ intimidating to get used to seeing a fatherless family come up in the social hierarchy).
Verizon wireless got into some hot water when they decided to provide FIOS to all counties surrounding Baltimore, except the city itself. Fiber Optic Service (FIOS) is a package that includes Internet access, telephone, and television service that serves over five million customers In the US and operates over a fiber-optic communications network but is a lot less strong than 3G network. The majority of the city of Baltimore African- American and are considered to be lower class. The only thing that Verizon Wireless provides Baltimore is the copper wires that hardly allow for movies to stream or to open large business files. “Access to FIOS is fundamental to social stability and upward mobility for groups that historically have been deprived of the resources and skills needed to prosper (Shapiro).”Having access to the internet is no longer a luxury like it used to be when it first came out because basically everything that is done in today’s day and age is done on the internet.
Cites
U.S department of housing and urban developement. Boston, Boston fair housing, Accessed 22 Apr. 2017.
Mock, Brentin. Redlining is Alive and Well—and Evolving. Citylab, 2015,
Accessed 20 Apr. 2017.
Shapiro, Robert M. Redlining high-speed Internet service Why is Baltimore City a fiber desert? It appears
that Verizon Corporation, the principal provider of telephone and Internet access in much of the U.S., has decide. Baltimore, The Baltimore Sun, 2016, Accessed 22 Apr. 2017.