I took a graduate level City Planning course in 1969, taught by Alex Garvin. For a number of weeks, the class examined & debated the issue of neighborhood “red-lining” by banks in NYC. “Red-lining” refers to the practice of outlining the area in red on a map to mark the region as disqualified in advance from mortgage loans owing to a statistical analysis of incomes, employment rates, education, race, et cetera.

Of course, not a single person in the class had ever worked as a loan officer for a financial institution, so none of us had the slightest notion of the standards that banks and loan associations were required by law to follow in issuing loans. It was sufficient for most of the students to know that the neighborhoods being “red-lined” were predominantly black, while the loan institutions were predominantly white. This PROVED that the whole business was the result of NOTHING beyond white bigotry and racism. So most of the folks in the class favored FORCING the banks to extend loans to residents of any and all neighborhoods. (Mr. Garvin in my recollection was neutral in the discussions, as it was all “theoretical” at the time.)

In fact, this is more or less the same thinking that prompted the U.S. government to pressure loan institutions to make mortgage loans available to minorities and other people who would never have qualified under earlier guidelines. That was starting back in the term of Mister James Earl Carter, thank you so very much. Anyone who claims the current mortgage mess is in any way the responsibility of the Bush administration is sadly, pathetically ignorant of practices that have been going on for many decades before he thought of running for any office.