A review by kevinhu
Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

challenging informative reflective slow-paced

5.0

Taylor unearths a little known history on the predatory practices of the housing industry, under the auspices of fair housing and federal subsidies, on black folks (particularly black women, many of whom were single mothers) decimated by redlining and segregation in the 60s and 70s. Written with both journalistic rigor and in-depth research, she distills the racialized scaffolds that uphold the market forces of the housing industry (racial capitalism) and demythologizes 'homeownership' as panacea to social, political, economic ills. She coins the idea of 'predatory inclusion' to demonstrate segregation and exploitation does not stop once exclusion ends. In doing so, she helps us to think beyond the binary of inclusion/exclusion to critique the very conditions, practices, transactions, and effects that take place once included.

For someone who has always seen homeownership as a black box with its theater of actors – lenders, appraisers, speculators, etc – to the carousel of fees, to how risk is calculated, to the difference between public/private, this book was clarifying.

For those interested in how the language around housing was manipulated after the 1968 Civil Rights Act (eradication of housing discrimination in policy) to fair housing, urban renewal, and then finally to Nixonian austerity laws and Reagonian war against social welfare, this study offers essential context.