Sunday, June 07, 2009

Things that make me want to shower

When you say the word "racism" most people think of Bull Connor and firehoses in the 1950s and 60s. Things are better since then to be sure, but we still have a long way to go. This is appalling:

Wells Fargo, Ms. Jacobson said in an interview, saw the black community as fertile ground for subprime mortgages, as working-class blacks were hungry to be a part of the nation’s home-owning mania. Loan officers, she said, pushed customers who could have qualified for prime loans into subprime mortgages. Another loan officer stated in an affidavit filed last week that employees had referred to blacks as “mud people” and to subprime lending as “ghetto loans.”

“We just went right after them,” said Ms. Jacobson, who is white and said she was once the bank’s top-producing subprime loan officer nationally. “Wells Fargo mortgage had an emerging-markets unit that specifically targeted black churches, because it figured church leaders had a lot of influence and could convince congregants to take out subprime loans.”

Ms. Jacobson’s account and that of the other loan officer who gave an affidavit, Tony Paschal, both of whom have left Wells Fargo, provide the first detailed accusations of deliberate racial steering into subprimes by one of the nation’s top banks.


I'm guessing there aren't a whole lot of blacks in the loan unit in question - "mud people"?? That's something I'd expect to read on far-right racist sites like Stormfront or the Klan. But we can't have affirmative action because that's, you know, racist.

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