Shonda Rhimes needs to make a show for Black kids and let him star.

How ironic. I was just talking about this.

This shit is serious. Gentrification is an issue. Housing discrimination is real. 

True stories:
-A Black family moving into a suburban neighborhood actually would lower the prices of homes. Because all the White people would try to move out as soon as possible.
-If the new suburb was next to a non-White neighborhood, a fence could be put up “for safety” to instantly raise property values.
-Have you heard the term redline/-ing? It refers to the practice of corporations color coding a region and not investing in or refusing service to those from certain (red) areas. These were usually poor Black neighborhoods. This included refusing those in redlined areas access to jobs, loans, medical care, etc.
-Many older developments that were predominately home to poor PoC were destroyed with the promise of a new development or a suburb. This almost never happened and left the country with a shortage of affordable housing that still exists today.
-“Between 1934 and 1962, the federal government backed $120 billion of home loans. More than 98% went to whites. Of the 350,000 new homes built with federal support in northern California between 1946 and 1960, fewer than 100 went to African Americans.” http://newsreel.org/guides/race/whiteadv.htm

White people whose family has owned homes since the mid 20th century: The financial success and safety of our families and ourselves is completely based on racism. Never forget that.

Read more:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_discrimination_in_the_United_States_housing_market
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Housing_Administration
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelley_v._Kramer
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Housing_Act

White real estate agents also took advantage of racist white homeowners with a practice called blockbusting, where they would encourage them to sell their homes at a loss with just the hint or promise that a black family (or sometimes Jewish or nonblack PoC family, depending on the region) was going to move in.

There were also footnotes on the actual deeds for many houses in white neighborhoods, stipulating that the house was never allowed to be sold or rented to a nonwhite occupant (Jewish people were nearly always considered nonwhite for these purposes). Called restrictive covenants, these were demanded and upheld by white homeowners associations, often with the real threat of violence.

Racist housing discrimination is as American as apple pie at a baseball game.

and this brings us to the current situation where the supreme court is going to take a look at the “Disparate Impact” rule of the Fair Housing Act of 1968. What disparate impact rule does is keep people from trying to discriminate against protected groups in America though subtle means. In our society, racism is very subtle especially when it’s corporate. So instead of putting out a sign that says “whites only” in front of building, a landlord can simply refuse to entertain people with a “Black” sounding name. In doing so they can say that their screening process has nothing to do with race but yet their process negatively impacts Black people and under this rule would be considered illegal. Another example would be banks deciding to issue loans at a higher interest rate to people in a certain part of town and claiming that doing so has nothing to do with race when in fact they are well aware that said part of town is populated by mostly Black people. So again, not blatant, quite subtle but under the disparate impact rule illegal. The Supreme Court is set to hear arguments on the legality of this rule and, given their history of gutting civil right protections, could very well strike it down. If that happens, the flood gates of housing discrimination will be wide open and Black people, above all, are going to get hammered.

The case the Supreme Court will here is actually a great example of the subtle racial discrimination and racist practices the rule was made to fight. A Texas state agency awards low-income-housing tax credits to certain developers; a high percentage of this housing winds up being occupied by minorities. The agency, without giving a legitimate reason, granted the tax credits disproportionately to developers who own properties in impoverished, minority-majority neighborhoods. A fair housing group sued, insisting that the agency’s practices had the effect of keeping minorities trapped in minority communities while helping white communities keep minorities out. Simple. A subtle action was taken that had huge negative affect on minorities because where you live is everything in this country. From access to public transportation, healthy foods, clean air, emergency services, well resourced schools, playgrounds, cleanliness and etc are all affect by where you live and if an action is creating a circumstance that keeps a group of people locked in areas where those elements are below average, there’s a problem. Racism and discrimination in this country is subtle as fuck but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist and shouldn’t be fought. What the SCOTUS is going to do is anyone’s guess but I’m not optimistic. We could very well be looking at a long period where Blacks (as well as other minority groups) are going to be preyed upon more viciously than we’ve seen in a very long time. 

and now…

A Black household would have to work 228 years to accumulate $656,000, the average amount of wealth held by a typical white household

main reason?

REAL ESTATE DISCRIMINATION