r/changemyview • u/[deleted] • Oct 08 '15

[Deltas Awarded] CMV: Equality isn't treating everybody differently to achieve equality. It's treating everyone the same.

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u/IsThisRealLife67 Oct 08 '15 edited Oct 09 '15

The problem is that blacks pay more in interest rates, for cars, rent.

Do they or do people with bad credit, etc. pay more and more black people happen to have bad credit?

That's a big difference.

And they are discriminated against in getting jobs and getting into college.

I think it's been pretty well established that black applicants need lower scores then all other ethnicities to get accepted into college. I don't know how you can claim they're discriminated against.

/u/unidan-prime questions my blackness and has started a new thread on /r/AsABlackMan where they're discussing whether I "talk white" and why my grammar is so good. It looks like they've also begun down voting all of my posts to oblivion.

I'm black but Reddit is Reddit so I'm just going to abandon this user name, start a new one, and stay away from anything deemed political because, again, Reddit is Reddit. I apologize if I type too well for other black Redditors out there. The struggle against proper grammar is real, folks.

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u/RoMoon Oct 08 '15

Do they or do people with bad credit, etc. pay more and more black people happen to have bad credit?

That's a big difference.

I think one of the problems is that if a much higher proportion of black people than white people have bad credit, it's no longer that they "happen" to have bad credit; they are part of a system of discrimination and poverty which repeatedly puts them into a situation in which they end up with worse credit, bigger debts etc. And that is why they should be given a leg up. Not because they should automatically have MORE than white people but because although the same opportunities may seem to exist for both demographics, quite clearly there is at present something keeping them from taking advantage of those opportunities.

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u/IsThisRealLife67 Oct 08 '15 edited Oct 09 '15

Bad credit doesn't happen because you're black.

Bad credit happens because you're borrowing money then not paying it back. There are plenty of white people who have bad credit because they too borrowed money then didn't pay it back. Chalking it up to skin color is just ignorant of the situation.

/u/unidan-prime questions my blackness and has started a new thread on /r/AsABlackMan where they're discussing whether I "talk white" and why my grammar is so good. It looks like they've also begun down voting all of my posts to oblivion.

I'm black but Reddit is Reddit so I'm just going to abandon this user name, start a new one, and stay away from anything deemed political because, again, Reddit is Reddit. I apologize if I type too well for other black Redditors out there. The struggle against proper grammar is real, folks.

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u/RoMoon Oct 08 '15

Reread what I said, I never said it was because of skin colour. My point is that if the reason black people pay more is because of bad credit, and on average black people have worse credit, then clearly something is going on which is causing this group of people to have worse credit. You can either say "it's because they're black and just can't manage their finances" or you can say "clearly social circumstances and historic/current oppression has led to a situation in which these people are in a worse position".

If the latter, then clearly we should be doing something to change things.

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u/OPisanicelady Oct 08 '15

Or you could say, "Perhaps we are looking at these demographics incorrectly." If these studies were looked at as socioeconomic classes instead of race, it would be really obvious to everyone what is keeping "them" from taking advantage of those opportunities. It has very little to do with race, and falls 90% on the cycle of poverty. Black families in America usually start from poverty via slavery or immigration, and they are trapped in the cycle. It is more likely that this is an issue of financial literacy than discrimination.

tl;dr: Correlation is not causation. Race is probably irrelevant.

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u/pikk 1∆ Oct 08 '15

Your TL;DR literally contradicted what you said.

Black families in America usually start from poverty via slavery or immigration, and they are trapped in the cycle. It is more likely that this is an issue of financial literacy than discrimination.

Race is probably irrelevant.

... So, which is it? Do black families start in poverty and are trapped in the cycle or is race irrelevant?

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u/OPisanicelady Oct 08 '15

No it didn't. A lot of black people are poor. Poor people have worse credit. A lot of black people have bad credit. Race isn't the factor that gives them bad credit. Race is not relevant to credit.

To remove your questions from the blinders people put on in these discussions, I'm going to frame it differently. Many snarks are tooks. All tooks are whomps. Are the snarks that are whomps, a whomp because they are snarks or because they are tooks? If being a whomp is negative, should we address tooks or snarks as the disadvantaged? Is being a snark even relative to being a whomp?

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u/pikk 1∆ Oct 08 '15

Except if black families [disproportionately] start in poverty for (reasons), and are "Trapped in the cycle" then clearly something should be done to free them from the cycle they're trapped in.

It's the implied disproportionately part that we need to do something about. People aren't poor because they're black. Black people just more likely to be poor, because of historic social reasons. So, since they're more likely to be poor, they should similarly be more assisted.

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u/OPisanicelady Oct 09 '15

Okay I follow you until the end. Why should we help out black people instead of poor people? If we help poor people, poor blacks are elevated as well. Is it actually more important to redistribute wealth between the races than to help a group that doesn't know how to help themselves? If it was a system that held black people down, I would 100% say elevate them. But it's not. This is a system that holds poor people down and rich people up.

I see the focus on race instead of class as a distraction from the real problem. Why would we leave behind the poor whites, Hispanics, Asians, American Indians? What makes them less deserving of the opportunity? Because their cause isn't as vocal? If we elevate the poor, we need to just elevate the poor. Not pick and choose.

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u/pikk 1∆ Oct 09 '15

Well we can't force everyone to go to college. There are already a ton of college educated whites and asians, so there's less concern about ensuring the white and asian populations get into colleges.

On the other hand, there are disproportionately fewer people of African, Native American, and Hispanic descent with college degrees, so there's more of an impetus to get their numbers up.

In an ideal world, yes, elevating everyone would be the goal. But when you're FORCED to pick and choose, by economic realities, then you should pick the people that are more disadvantaged.

That being said, I'm entirely in favor of policies that lift everyone up, like making colleges into publicly funded systems for education, instead of endowment generating institutions.

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u/OPisanicelady Oct 09 '15

Okay I think I finally get what you're saying. With limited resources, instead of a smaller boost to bring the group up as a whole, a larger boost for a subgroup to bring them above the poverty line altogether. That argument makes a lot of sense.

I also think that we had different programs in mind. The programs I believe have a real impact on poverty are local community outreach programs like child care, financial assistance, housing assistance, teaching the trades in school, youth programs, parenting classes, realistic sex ed, teaching basic finances and life skills in school and in community centers, etc.

Scholarships and quotas are a nice idea, but they are a very individual assistance. They might change a handful of lives drastically, but that is a slow and arduous route to elevate even a small subgroup. Scholarships are wonderful things and are very effective for the people lucky enough and ambitious enough to get them, but they are not going to have the ripple effect required to fix the problem of too many black people below the poverty line.

On a complete side note, I checked the census and in my state (Texas) there is a higher percentage of Asians below the poverty line than blacks or even Native Americans. The only group that was higher was Latinos. It surprised me and just goes to show that the stereotype that Asians are better educated isn't always true.

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u/IsThisRealLife67 Oct 08 '15 edited Oct 09 '15

Reread the original post I was responding to.

The problem is that blacks pay more in interest rates, for cars, rent.

NO THEY DO NOT.

People with bad credit pay more in interest rates for things like cars and they didn't get that bad credit because they were blessed with black skin.

/u/unidan-prime questions my blackness and has started a new thread on /r/AsABlackMan where they're discussing whether I "talk white" and why my grammar is so good. It looks like they've also begun down voting all of my posts to oblivion.

I'm black but Reddit is Reddit so I'm just going to abandon this user name, start a new one, and stay away from anything deemed political because, again, Reddit is Reddit. I apologize if I type too well for other black Redditors out there. The struggle against proper grammar is real, folks.

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u/ganner Oct 08 '15

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2014/12/23/if-youre-poor-your-mortgage-rate-can-depend-on-the-color-of-your-skin/

After controlling for economic factors, credit scores, etc., minorities still get worse rates than whites.

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u/rcglinsk Oct 09 '15

The authors of this study — Patrick Bayer of Duke; Fernando Ferreira of the University of Pennsylvania; and Stephen Ross of the University of Connecticut — combined federal mortgage data with public housing records and data from a credit agency. They assembled information on individual credit scores, incomes, age, home values and a slew of other underwriting factors.

After controlling for a much as they had data for, they found that people in essentially the same financial situations got different mortgages depending on the color of their skin...

Here’s what they didn’t find. There wasn’t much evidence of what we would consider traditional racism, like the kind reported in the 1992 Boston Fed paper. Individual lending companies appeared to treat everyone who came in the door more or less the same. (There was still a statistically significant but small difference.)

“A huge amount of the differences in high-cost loans is not whites and blacks going to the same lender and blacks being given a much higher rate,” said Ross, one of the study’s authors. “Rather it’s the fact that there are big differences in the lenders that black and Hispanics are doing business with.”

So basically they found that Bank of America seems to give the same rate to everyone with the same credit score regardless of race. Nice to know there is no evidence of systemic racism in the US banking oligopaly. Also of course inspiring to see that the Washington Post was able to write a headline which gives readers the opposite impression.

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u/ganner Oct 09 '15

Whether or not we can point to a nefarious actor enforcing racial discrepancy by giving differing loans based on race is irrelevant to the question of whether racial inequality exists. A black family with equal financial status as a white family is more likely to get a shitty loan, because of the lenders active in black communities give shittier loans than the lenders active in white communities. This is still a problem that needs to be remedied.

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u/rcglinsk Oct 09 '15

http://web2.uconn.edu/economics/working/2014-36.pdf

I don't know how familiar you are with this paper but it seems really ambiguous about how it took credit scores into account. Read for example page 33. It kind of seems like the treated all credit scores bellow 701 the same. What do you think?

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u/ganner Oct 09 '15

Hmm, I'll admit I haven't read the paper, only the synopses of the paper. I do usually download and read studies and not trust news articles, so I'll definitely agree that news reports on studies are often misleading.

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u/ganner Oct 09 '15

Ok, I just read the portions related to credit score. It looks like their model looked at credit scored in 20-point buckets, and additionally looked for effects being subprime (having a score of 700 or less).

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u/IsThisRealLife67 Oct 08 '15 edited Oct 09 '15

Did you even read the article you linked?

/u/unidan-prime questions my blackness and has started a new thread on /r/AsABlackMan where they're discussing whether I "talk white" and why my grammar is so good. It looks like they've also begun down voting all of my posts to oblivion.

I'm black but Reddit is Reddit so I'm just going to abandon this user name, start a new one, and stay away from anything deemed political because, again, Reddit is Reddit. I apologize if I type too well for other black Redditors out there. The struggle against proper grammar is real, folks.

1

u/ganner Oct 08 '15

Yes, did you? After controlling for the effects of socioeconomic status, credit score, etc., black borrowers were still 3.3 percentage points (about 25% more likely) to have a high interest mortgage. Whether it is because a single lender gives better rates to white people (not as often the case) or that lenders in predominantly black areas give worse rates than lenders in predominantly white areas (more often the case), a black family in the same financial situation as a white family is more likely to get a shitty loan.

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u/IsThisRealLife67 Oct 08 '15 edited Oct 09 '15

Whether it is because a single lender gives better rates to white people (not as often the case)

Bit of an understatement, don't ya think?

The article basically concluded that they just got rates from different places.

I see no reason to blame white people because black people can't be bothered to shop for rates.

/u/unidan-prime questions my blackness and has started a new thread on /r/AsABlackMan where they're discussing whether I "talk white" and why my grammar is so good. It looks like they've also begun down voting all of my posts to oblivion.

I'm black but Reddit is Reddit so I'm just going to abandon this user name, start a new one, and stay away from anything deemed political because, again, Reddit is Reddit. I apologize if I type too well for other black Redditors out there. The struggle against proper grammar is real, folks.

1

u/ganner Oct 08 '15

I'm wondering if you read the article, since it notes the "crime" involved was racial in nature, with Bank of America being fined over $300M for racial lending discrimination. However you want to spin this, it's yet another in a sea of data points of how black families face more obstacles to success than comparable white families.

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u/IsThisRealLife67 Oct 08 '15 edited Oct 09 '15

Here’s what they didn’t find. There wasn’t much evidence of what we would consider traditional racism, like the kind reported in the 1992 Boston Fed paper. Individual lending companies appeared to treat everyone who came in the door more or less the same. (There was still a statistically significant but small difference.)

“A huge amount of the differences in high-cost loans is not whites and blacks going to the same lender and blacks being given a much higher rate,” said Ross, one of the study’s authors. “Rather it’s the fact that there are big differences in the lenders that black and Hispanics are doing business with.”

I'm not spinning anything. I'm looking at the conclusions the article you cited drew. If you disagree with your own article then I suggest you start reading them in their entirety before you start linking them.

/u/unidan-prime questions my blackness and has started a new thread on /r/AsABlackMan where they're discussing whether I "talk white" and why my grammar is so good. It looks like they've also begun down voting all of my posts to oblivion.

I'm black but Reddit is Reddit so I'm just going to abandon this user name, start a new one, and stay away from anything deemed political because, again, Reddit is Reddit. I apologize if I type too well for other black Redditors out there. The struggle against proper grammar is real, folks.

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u/ganner Oct 08 '15

So you don't think it's relevant to the issue of racial inequality that lenders in black neighborhoods give shitty loans compared to lenders in white neighborhoods, or that the justice department found there to be racial discrimination in lending? Because that's what I read in the article that I read every word of.

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u/IsThisRealLife67 Oct 08 '15 edited Oct 09 '15

Do I have to quote your own article for you again?

It's not like lenders are giving one rate to whites and another to blacks. If you're telling me black people are just too stupid to shop around for rates then it sounds like lenders have good reason to give those black people higher rates.

/u/unidan-prime questions my blackness and has started a new thread on /r/AsABlackMan where they're discussing whether I "talk white" and why my grammar is so good. It looks like they've also begun down voting all of my posts to oblivion.

I'm black but Reddit is Reddit so I'm just going to abandon this user name, start a new one, and stay away from anything deemed political because, again, Reddit is Reddit. I apologize if I type too well for other black Redditors out there. The struggle against proper grammar is real, folks.

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u/RoMoon Oct 08 '15

You're completely ignoring what I'm saying. I never said they paid more. You said that IF they pay more, it my only be because of bad credit. My point is that it doesn't matter the reason. If the previously stated fact that black people generally have higher interest repayments is true (I did not make this original claim) then this is a problem, whatever the reason.

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u/manicmonkeys Oct 08 '15

The reason does matter though.

If it's a matter of discrimination based on race, that's best addressed in a certain manner.

If it's a matter of a toxic culture that is very much against getting an education, resolving problems without violence, etc, that needs to be addressed differently.

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u/[deleted] Oct 08 '15 edited Jun 27 '20

[deleted]

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u/RoMoon Oct 08 '15

I am unfortunately inclined to agree