The Day the President Turned Black
(But Has He Turned Back?)
He's in hot water now. For a moment, on national television, the President of the United States turned black!
Last week, when his buddy "Skip" Gates got busted for being Black in Boston, Barack Obama forgot his official role: to soothe America's conscience with the happy fairy tale that his election marked the end of racism in the USA.
Instead, Obama, the excruciatingly middle-of-the-road President, was seized by Barack the militant State Senator from the South Side of Chicago, who reminded us that cops bust Black guys for no goddamn good reason all the goddamn time.
I'm reminded that it was not so long ago that we watched the vicious gang-beating by Los Angeles cops of a defenseless, handcuffed, Rodney King, an African-American. King's beating was unusual only in that it was caught on videotape.
Yeah, I know: we've come a hell of a long way. Obama won, Jessie cried, Beyonce has her own line of perfume and Tiger Woods plays where 30 years ago he couldn't eat lunch.
Good on them.
But what about Robert Pratt, Mr. President?
Pratt, a United Auto Workers member, has five kids and a mortgage payment of $1,100 a month on a house in Detroit worth no more than $40,000. The payment's astronomical because he pays 11% on his mortgage balance, double the national average interest rate. Now, on those crazy terms, he's sure to lose his house.
How did that happen? Pratt, whose story we've been tracking, was "steered" into a sub-prime loan by Countrywide Financial. "Steering" is the polite term for forcing folk into crappy loan terms. And not just any folk: Black folk, like Pratt. Over 60% of African-American mortgage applicants were (and ARE) steered into "sub-prime" predatory loans.
According to exhaustive studies by the Federal Reserve Board and the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL), African Americans are 250% more likely to get a loan with an "exploding interest" clause than white borrowers - and notably, the higher the income and the better the credit rating of a Black borrower, the more likely the discrimination.
As an economist, I can tell you it's not a stretch to say that Obama's failure to deal with endemic racism in the finance system is killing off hope of the nation's economic recovery. The "exploding rate" attack centered on Black and Hispanic communities has, according to the CLR, caused 40.2 million homes to lose value due to their proximity to foreclosed properties.
Yet, not a peep from the Obama Administration about ending this Ku Klux lending practice which has laid waste Black neighborhoods and taken a hunk of White America's housing values with it.
Instead, Obama's Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel is the honored guest of the Board of Directors of JP Morgan, owner of one of the most outrageous of the financial predators, Washington Mutual. Morgan/WaMu, with its racially-poisoned mortgage trickery, makes the Cambridge Police Department look like the NAACP.
(Indeed, Emanuel's host JP Morgan was sued last week by the NAACP for "systematic, institutionalized racism in making home mortgage loans.")
The cold truth is, financial attacks on the Black community continue as freely under Obama as under Bush, despite Obama's power to halt it instantly by banning loan-sharking as a condition of continued bail-outs for these banks. Obama has directed the FDIC to guarantee JP Morgan loans, saving the bank $3.1 billion this year. Obama has directed the FDIC to guarantee Mr. Pratt, uh, "hope."
And what about Thomas Johnson, Mr. President?
Johnson's a minister in Florida who lost his vote in 2000, alongside at least 94,000 others falsely accused of being felons without the right to vote. Most of the innocents accused and abused were Black, the minister included. I know, because I saw those state records with the carefully recorded "BLA" next to the voters' names.
I had an editor on the story, won't say his name because he was so typical, who asked me why Johnson, an African-American, didn't pound the table and demand his ballot. Johnson's no Harvard professor in Boston with the President's phone number on his speed dial.
My extremely white editor, a Yale graduate, sitting in San Francisco, could not imagine what would happen if a dark-skinned Rev. Johnson had started making a scene in Alachua County, in the Deep Deep South. The Reverend was smart not to pull a "Skippy Gates" and lip-off at authority: just a couple months ago, Alachua cops 'Tased' an angry, but unarmed, Black man, then shot him dead with seven bullets.
Johnson's vote loss, you might say, was "so 2000." This is post-racial 2009. Bullshit. In last year's election, Florida went right back into the racially biased block-and-purge of Black voters, barring thousands from the ballot through new ID laws that would have made Jim Crow segregationists of the Fifties proud. (See the investigative report, "Block the Vote," by myself and Bobby Kennedy, from the October 2008 Rolling Stone).
Yet, the Obama Administration appears quite squeamish about taking down the nouvelle ballot-box Bull Connors.
Venom
What I'm saying is that the venom of structural racism in America continues to sicken us all, in our economy, in our voting stations, in our schools (don't get me started), our health care system, our ... well, you name it.
Yes, I joined the Hope Parade and voted for Obama, expecting just this one change: a direct attack on the remaining areas of official sanction of racist policies and practices. I'm still waiting.
It was quite inspiring, last Thursday, to the see a Black man appear, if momentarily, behind the Presidential seal. Unfortunately, Obama's swift demand for equal justice under the law was provoked only when the whip came down on someone, like himself, whose professional and class status had, they presumed, made them exempt from the daily insults and assaults visited on their less privileged brothers.
So much was made of Gates' Harvard post that the issue seemed to be, "It's not right to cuff a dark-skinned man who's a HARVARD PROFESSOR." The race-neutral rules of class privilege had been violated.
What's missing in America -- and in the Oval Office -- is any hint of outrage at the systemic cruelties visited on Black Americans, like Pratt and Johnson, who lack a key to the Harvard Alumni Club.
******
Greg Palast, an expert in finance and regulation, is the author of Armed Madhouse: Strange Tales and Sordid Secrets of a White House Gone Wild. His investigative reports for BBC Television and Democracy Now were recently released as a film on DVD: Palast Investigates: From 8-Mile to the Amazon, on the Trail of the Financial Marauders.
Sign up for his reports at www.GregPalast.com.
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Greg: You nailed it, bro...exce
If truth be known, the new Repugnican meme is that we are living in a 'post racial America', as if the election of an African American has solved all the problems of racism. This is usually followed by the obviously coded message of 'we want our country back'.
Those who cannot see the connection between those two statements are truly in a state of denial and use every ounce of demented, vapid logic to obviate the truth that stares them in the face.
You're absolutely right, and at the same time, Obama is correct in knowing that if he were to be "too defending of Black people" many white people in America would get freaked out and scared to death that he only cares about defending blacks and making whites "pay".
It's sad, but true...and there is a reason that 47% of the people in the south do not believe Obama was born in the USA. The numbers are directly related to the people who are afraid of black people "taking over" (aka: truly being equal!)
Mr. Palast, thanks for the article! As you read over the commentary appended to it, mostly you will see it's all uphill in every direction.
Don't think that Countrywide only steered Black families. Families of all colors that had bad credit got that deal. We were victims of credit card and identity theft to the tune of $89,000. We got a 12% loan and then exorbident fees and charges if we consolidated and/or refinanced before four years. Countrywide had no color preference to who they screwed. Read the countless stories of people who have written online about them.
Palast reports what has been confirmed by other journalists, that blacks were discriminated against, and not based on credit-rating, but on race:
"African Americans are 250% more likely to get a loan with an "exploding interest" clause than white borrowers - and notably, the higher the income and the better the credit rating of a Black borrower, the more likely the discrimina
some people are professional victims and live with a comforting chip on their shoulder all of their life.
Do you call the incidents mentioned in this article a fluke? How about the statistics? Part of the reason why this persists is because people like you refuse to accept the truth.
And your degree is in...? And your life experience is ...? The chip seems to be on your shoulder, Elmer.
A person isn't paranoid if someone is really out to get them.
I love how some folks are so eager to dismiss evidence of racism, even when it's staring them in the face.
When the police show up to protect your property and you call them names, you're the post boy for paranoid.
Have any of you seen the "messages" regarding President Obama on the Free Republic or Politico or even the AOL websites? They refer to this president as everything, but a child of God! The posts have nothing to do with his policies, but they are aimed at his being half black. They rail about his wife and those precious little girls! They are so vicious that I am afraid for Obama ( I pray for him daily). Yes I would love for the president to speak out more on racial issues, but Glenn Beck called him a racist for speaking truthfully about the police "stupidly" arresting a man for breaking into his own home (his castle?). Hopefully when enough "good" people speak out, there will be real changes.
I've been a public servant on California for 39 years and in the last 5 months had my salary slashed 15%. I attempted to get a Loan Modification from Litton Loan Servicing and after 7 agonizing months I was denied and my home is set for auction on August 10th! I applied under President Obama's MHA Plan. The cruel irony is that when I finally got my denial letter in writing it was dated a month before I ever submitted a document to Litton. No explanation and no appeal or review; even the most heinous murdered gets an automatic appeal.
Irony #2: Our Governor signed a Forecosure Moratorium into law on June 25th and Litton(owned by Goldman Sachs) had a permanent exemption from it on July 1st. So I, too, am waiting for my President to stand up in a major way for average Americans like me. When the Corporate good outweighs the common good there is little hope.
Um, who "forced" Mr. Pratt to sign a mortgage? Steer all you want...but no one put a gun to his head and said "You have to be a homeowner". Why couldn't he have signed a lease agreement for an apartment until he could get a better loan?
This constant "victim mentality" of people who were "tricked" into crappy loans is getting old. I have walked out of a closing for a 1% loan discount point...I walked out, because I took the time to READ the paperwork I was signing and ask questions.
Buying a home is a huge commitment
You are doing a disservice to these people by making them look like helpless moronic sheep who couldn't have possibly had the wherewithal to avoid making a stupid decision in the face of temptation of homeownership.
If you wanted a home and a mortgage company told you that the rate you should be given is commensurate with your income and credit rating, how can you compare that to the requirements for whites? I'll tell you what, perhaps the roles need to be reversed. Perhaps all of the injustices that we as black people experience should be shifted to people like you. You're what I call part of the Hit Home bunch. You never see a problem with any injustice until it affects you personally.
In fact, I think that deep down, you are glad that people are treated this way, because you somehow see that treatment as helpful to you and your life.
You're half right.
People like him are BEHIND these racist practices.
I strongly suggest that you read this: http://www
From the Columbia Journalism Review article you link:
"the cold calling, the hard sell, the bamboozling of over-their-head civilians, not to mention the outright lying, forgery, and fraud in its purest form—were carried out on a massive scale and as a matter of corporate policy by name-brand lenders: IndyMac, Countrywide, Citi, Ameriquest
And, as Palast reports, blacks were targeted -- even when they had good credit and qualified for a regular mortgage:
"According to exhaustive studies by the Federal Reserve Board and the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL), African Americans are 250% more likely to get a loan with an "exploding interest" clause than white borrowers - and notably, the higher the income and the better the credit rating of a Black borrower, the more likely the discrimina
So, yes it happened to whites too, but a lot less frequently. And the "over-their-head civilians" are not to blame. Criminal mortgage-industry professionals are to blame.
Obama won't and can't act outraged because many of your white liberal friends, neighbors and certainly conservatives of the same hue would call for his head if he said anything remotely critical of the white perspectives. Don't you know when blacks point out white rac!sm that in of itself is called rac!st? Specifically it's called playing the "race card" which is just a way of twisting the argument from offensive white behavior. The President is completely comprised on this issue because whites resent blacks (or even half-blacks) criticizing their biases. But they LOVE it when he lectures US and African blacks. So it will take whites like YOU to speak up and address your fellow whites for this to change. He had to walk a tightrope juggling live grenades just to get through the primary and general elections.
What;s this about you not being around? What's up?
Bob Somerby said as such at http://dai
Posted here, Colon Powell on Larry King and A.G. Holder have both been profiled. Powell was pulled aside at the airport when he was National Security Adviser working in the White House.
Your postings about credit availability was my experience when I was helping people to get mortgages.
When a white person is inconvenienced by a cop, it's called 'life'. When a minority is inconvenienced, it's called 'racial profiling'. If you look at all the times I've been pulled over for really lame reasons, I'd swear I'm the victim of some sort of conspiracy. But since I'm not black, I don't have that all too easy 'answer'.
There are white congressmen and other high up government people that have hassled in airports and they couldn't blame racism. What about the elderly white women? We do everything BUT racial profiling at the airports! We bend over backwards to hit up everyone rather than just single Arabic men, ages 18-30.
One of the differences is the number of Black men, women and children who have been murdered by police violence. They died in the most ignominious ways. You should have just seen the young man Oscar Grant shot in the back with his hands handcuffed behind his back.
Eleanor Bumpurs, a 66 year old woman shot twice by a shotgun wielding cop in her own apartment in the Bronx. The 82 year old woman in Atlanta shot to death by a bunch of SWAT cops who were at the wrong address. Police lawlessness is kind of a regular occurrence in Black communities. Remember the Knapp and Mollen commissions?
Perhaps the difference would lie in the fact that black people may end up "dead" which is more than just an inconvenience, don't you think?
You got some nerve. Obama didn't turn Black. You say that as if he forgot who he was. He didn't, the nation did and when he spoke people got uncomfortable as he reminded them.
We have come along way, but still have a way to go. One day....
Don't attack the writer for telling the truth!
I'd like to think that Pres. Obama has opened Pandora's box. I thought once that he might be waiting, but we all know that the problem with waiting is that what one waits for comes as soon as one stops waiting.
We can be thankful now that most folks walk around with recording devices so that we might witness such hideous sights as a handcuffed young man named Oscar Grant being shot in the back.
But somehow, the nation was not in shock or hardly cared that things like that happened here. However, it happens a lot, so it must be ok, right? Professor Gates, his moment in the history he has long studied dropped right into his lap. He better know that the move is to take this to the courts and expose publicly and entirely these out of control police forces. He could have a beer with the President anytime, I'm sure. This doesn't strike me as a beer moment.
Obama knows the hissy fit that his being Black is causing and that is just because he is Black. Then they find out that he has a friend who is Black. The ball is rolling now. One day soon he is going to be waiting for the next round and "Brother Gates" is going to slip out...
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