Race for Profit

How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership

By: Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

Narrated by: Janina Edwards

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.

©2019 Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor (P)2020 Tantor

The role of government, banks, brokers, and realtors in housing discrimination over 100 years

I liked the author and the reader because both content and performance helps fill a gaping hole in historical record or awareness of housing discrimination.

I recommend to anyone in housing public or private.

This rating based on my listening in 2021.

Comprehensive

The book presents a comprehensive and well-researched account of the history of HUD policies and programs that preyed on black homeseekers. I do think it should have discussed gentrification more in the context of its subject.

Powerful. Thoroughly researched. Necessary.

Taylor makes undeniable that historic and President residential segregation as well as vast inequality is not the result of personal choice but the concentrated efforts of federal and local government along with the banking and real estate industries to extract and exploit Black life, property, and neighborhoods. The rule: profit and/or power over people.

THE UGLY TRUTH

Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership (Justice, Power, and Politics)
By Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

No lie! This book was so well researched, edited, written. From the title and its cover to the conclusion "Predatory Inclusion" was way more than I could have asked for. All of it was masterfully left on these pages.
It took me a little more than a minute because I had to pace myself, take deep breaths, scream, cuss...collect my thoughts and regroup.

The malfeasance, predatory negligence and neglect of Government and its treacherous policies and practices; institutional, corrupt failures steeped in this racial, suppressed, discriminatory culture. The levels of inequality and inequity is staggering!!!
🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬
This book was an exercise in personal restraint. It took everything in me to hold it together.
💔💔💔💔💔💔💔
#theseunitedstates

Race for Profit

Commend Keeanga-Yamattha Taylor for researching and writing this crucial book, it was very difficult to listen to, many times I cried because I remembered hearing the struggles my parents and other relatives went through for home ownership and the fact they always stressed the importance of owning your own home. My Father would always talk to my siblings and I as if we were grownups and he would tell us what was real, what was not, and tell how to survive.

Great listen!

I would highly recommend this audible. Her voice was energetic as I listened throughout my workday. This book is well written and just enough pages packed with a wealth of knowledge and experience per chapter.

Excellent source of knowledge

I’ve read many books on this topic and it’s not often I get a brand new perspective on how racism in the US has impacted black Americans. This book provides detailed information on housing-related policies that I’ve not seen covered elsewhere. Well packaged and easily digestible. Highly recommend!

A Great Book

This book really made me think of how private interests continue to perpetuate inequality in American society. For example, I can't believe Jeff Bezos made so much money while Amazon workers contracted COVID-19 due to unsafe workplace policies with minimal hazard pay and were fired (and in some cases smeared and ruined) for organizing for dignified working conditions.

A must read for all Black Americans

If you’re a Black American you need to read/listen to this book. Very well researched and laid out.