American Bankers recreate modern day "Rosewood Towns" in Black America

Over the last two months America has witnessed young 
middle class professionals in Tunisia and Egypt unite with 
the poor in full rebellion against human rights abuses 
perpetrated by their government; and the lack of opportunity 
due to an oppressive two tier system of greed, cronyism, 
and graft that enriched a few elite, while the masses 
barely scraped by.  Today these revolutions are sparking 
protest movements in Yemen, Iran, and Bahrain. 
In Egypt and Tunisia the hard work of building a 
truly representative government of the people has 
just started, but it has begun. 

Meanwhile in America, the Black middle class continues to 
shuffle along hapless and complacently deeper into the 
frozen economic tundra.  All America is suffering.  
But in Black America the bottom has completely dropped 
out due to the Great All American Corporate Mortgage 
Ponzi Scam that has not only ruined the American economy, 
but stripped an estimated $92 billion away from middle 
class Black America, because home ownership represents 
at least eighty percent of the average American's total worth. 
The ripple effects continue to spread wider throughout 
Black communities as the proliferation of vacant homes 
( and those being foreclosed on) stress these communities 
even further, increasing crime while lowering tax bases 
which translates to cuts in services and education. 
In fact many Black communities are starting to mirror 
ghost towns.

For Black Americans, owning a home has always meant 
a chance for stability, permanency, and wealth to 
be passed down to dignify and economically fortify 
the next generation.  

In Toni Morrisons' book "The Bluest Eye", the main 
character Claudia MacTeer, who also narrates, states

"knowing that their was a thing such as the outdoors, 
breed within us a hunger for property, for ownership. 
The firm possession of a yard, a porch, a grape arbor. 
Propertied Black people spent all their energies, 
all their love, on their nest. Like frenzied desperate 
birds, they over decorated every thing, fussed 
and fidgeted over their hard won homes; canned, 
jellied, and preserved all summer to fill the 
cupboards and shelves, they painted, picked 
and pocked at every corner of their houses.
 And those houses loomed like sunflowers among 
the rows and weeds that were the rented houses. 
Renting Blacks cast furtive glances at these owned 
yards and porches, and made firmer commitments
 to "buy themselves some little place". 
In the meantime they saved and scratched and 
piled away what they could in the rented hovels, 
looking forward to the day of property."

The mortgage scam is not the first major erasure of 
whole swaths of Black middle class in America. While 
violence was often deployed to do this, as in the case 
of the 1922 massacre that demolished the town (of  
prosperous Black families) named Rosewood, located in 
Levy Florida, often it was a combination of both fraud 
and violence sanctioned by the local and national 
Government.


This was exemplified on a national scale by 
white supremacist forces who brought a violent 
end to the only truly progressive era in American 
history, known as American Reconstruction, 
which lasted from 1857-1877. All the substantial 
progress Blacks made during Reconstruction 
was reversed completely. Using both violence 
and fraud, Blacks were driven from their homes 
and businesses which were then quickly claimed 
by whites. Legislation was passed that established 
the wretched Jim Crow laws that ejected Black 
elected officials from local and national office 
( others were simply hung) and keep 
Black America in economic bondage for the next 
hundred years. Ironically Reconstruction met its 
doom under the watch of two supposedly liberal 
Presidents, Johnson and Grant.

The dream of home ownership from slavery up until 
today, made the lower rungs of the Black middle class 
easy targets for the okie doke. 98.5 percent of sub-prime 
loans that featured hidden costs and high interest rate 
were targeted to Black communities. In a lawsuit filled 
by Baltimore City against Wells Fargo, a former loan 
officer( who was reprimanded for doing the right 
thing by steering qualified Black borrowers toward 
more affordable loans) testified that his colleagues 
called sub-prime loans "ghetto loans" and Black people, 
"mud people". Similarly, another former loan officer 
stated that Black communities were considered  a 
"fertile ground for sub-prime mortgages,[and] we 
just went right after them"  

Black churches were major conduits of access 
for these unscrupulous bankers who paid Black ministers 
to convince their congregation to take sub-prime loans.

After stripping the Black community of wealth, 
these banks, like fat ticks gorging on the American economy, 

( after growing even fatter off Government bailout money) 
have totally abandoned these communities. lending 
( includes vital small business loans), has decreased by 
over 60 percent compared to a 28 percent decrease in 
white communities. 


This larger modern version of the Town of Rosewood 
is also being constructed on the watch of a 
Democratic president.

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