Keeanga-Yamahatta Taylor Presents: Race For Profit – How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership

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—longlisted for the National Book Award!—uncovers how exploitative real estate practices continued well after housing discrimination was banned.