One reason it’s important to study Critical Race Theory in America is that Black people always appear to be statistically disadvantaged when it comes to, well, everything—from employment to income to criminal justice to education to mortgage acceptance and homeownership—and CRT explores why that might be instead of boiling it all down to Black people being inherently inferior.
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But since white people, and particularly conservative lawmakers, appear determined to bury CRT below the seventh level of Hell in order to protect their fragile-ass feelings, all we can do is counter that energy by putting people in office that might institute policies that can help combat racial discrepancies.
Marcia Fudge, the Black woman chosen by President Joe Biden to serve as secretary of Housing and Urban Development, said that student loan debt is tied to a decline in Black homeownership, and she and the Biden administration are working on a plan to fix things.
During an interview that aired Sunday on Axios on HBO, Fudge was asked why Black homeownership rates have gone down, while rates for other racial groups have gone up.
“Part of our problem is that we have never totally enforced the Fair Housing Act,” Fudge answered. “That is why we are doing things like homeownership assistance, why we’re addressing the student loan issue, why we’re looking at how credit is distributed. For people of color, especially Black people, homeownership is wealth. It is not only wealth to us, but it is generational wealth.”
“Who has student debt? Poor people, Black people, brown people,” Fudge continued. “We’re the people who carry most debt. And so the system’s already skewed toward us not being creditworthy.”
From Axios:
“If they want to purchase a home — maybe $200,000 or in that ballpark — [if] they have $75,000 worth of student debt, they don’t qualify,” she said. “Once we make the adjustments we’re going to make, that same person will qualify.”
She said that this hypothetical person would “qualify at a rate that gives them an opportunity to go into a home with some equity, but also be so vested in that home that they can afford to stay in that home.”
So what is the Biden administration’s big plan to change things for the better? Well, the HUD announced the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) is updating “its student loan monthly payment calculations to take steps to remove barriers and provide more access to affordable single family FHA-insured mortgage financing for creditworthy individuals with student loan debt, which has a disproportionate impact on people of color.” The policy changes were outlined in a letter sent to FHA-approved mortgage lenders Thursday.
So there you have it, folks—some people are choosing to bury their heads in the white supremacist sands and pretend racial disadvantages in America don’t exist, while others at least appear willing to acknowledge the truth and take steps to effect change.
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