<p>Great post, Fast Lane. As I stated earlier, if you impose "financial cut-offs" for this so-called socioeconomic affirmative action, basically your entire black freshman class (at least 70%) does not qualify and is more likely to be denied admittance. These colleges realize that society will still discriminate against us even if we share similar or superior credentials. Only 15% of Africans-Americans hold a bachelor's degree compare to 34% whites and 40% Asians! Blacks are ALSO underrepresented in college (it will be a miracle if colleges can be at least 7% black in a population where we are 12% nationally.) Only a tiny fraction of blacks hold a college degree!</p>
<p>Ronlivs, Asian-Americans are OVERREPRESENTED group in college admissions and campuses. As much as I hear from Asians b*tching about affirmative action, socioeconomic does not help the groups in greatest needs: blacks, hispanics and native americans. There have also been studies where socioeconomic AA only benefits whites and Asians (look at California and Texas and observe their college ethnic breakdown). URM students like me who need financial assistance, yet don't make the financial cut-off, avoid schools like that for colleges that are based upon need-based aid and race-based affirmative action. These schools are STRIVING to include as many URMs as possible since they believe in diversity, including more URM students.</p>
<p>Right now, the last piece of Jim Crow all blacks are still dealing with today is insurance and bank/mortagage loan fraud. There is no reason black families regardless of their income must pay higher rates because they happen to live in a black neighborhood. A black family with no road history might be paying $4000 in car insurance, where a white family that has DUI or speeding points on their road history might be paying less. How is that even fair? I swear these companies are trying to bankrupt blacks. </p>
<p>"Racial minorities and neighborhoods containing large numbers of minority residents are discriminated against in the provision of property insurance. This is a systematic reality, not an anecdotal occurrence. In studies by fair housing councils, insurance commissioners, academics, and others throughout the United States, residents of minority communities have been discouraged while residents of predominantly white neighborhoods have been encouraged to do business with insurance agents. Whether or not this discrimination is intentional, traditional industry practices adversely affect racial minorities and undermine the redevelopment of urban communities.
ACORN recently found homeowners insurance offered by major insurers in fourteen cities to be far more readily available to upper-income and white suburban communities than to lower-income, integrated, or predominantly non-white central-city neighborhoods. These gaps could not be attributed merely to insurance companies experiencing greater loss in predominately non-white, poor areas. In St. Louis, one of the cities included in the ACORN study, the Missouri Insurance Commissioner found that residents of lower-income black areas paid $6.15 per thousand dollars of coverage, compared to just $4.70 in lower-income white communities, even though the loss ratio was higher in the white neighborhoods. "
<a href="http://www.nhi.org/online/issues/79/isurred.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.nhi.org/online/issues/79/isurred.html</a></p>
<p>"Casasanta claims that Nationwide's Commercial Underwriters told him that they did not want any "Detroit business." The underwriters then instructed him to prepare a list of commercial insurance accounts that had what they called "Detroit exposure." </p>
<p>Over the past several years, Nationwide, a company with 43,000 agents and more than ten million policies, has been under scrutiny in Kentucky and around the nation after charges of redlining were issued by fair housing groups. In 1996, the Lexington Fair Housing Council in Kentucky sued Nationwide, alleging that the company had refused or avoided selling homeowner's policies to Black testers. The Lexington Fair Housing Council says that its tests show that Nationwide offered to sell policies in mainly white neighborhoods, but not in integrated or predominately Black neighborhoods in Fayette County. </p>
<p>In 1995, the National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA) audited the practices of Nationwide and Allstate Insurance Companies in several cities across the country. NFHA claimed that Blacks who tried to get homeowners insurance were discriminated against more than half of the time. Nationwide denied the claims. NFHA has since asked the Justice Department to investigate the company. </p>
<p>The Toledo Fair Housing Center in Toledo, Ohio filed suit against Nationwide in 1993 claiming that Nationwide quoted unjustifiably high rates in Black neighborhoods, made coverage unavailable to Black households, charged higher rates in African-American neighborhoods, refused to insure properties worth less than $40,000 to $50,000 in Black neighborhoods while not applying the same rule in white neighborhoods, and cancelled or refused to renew policies already in place in African-American neighborhoods. (Keep in mind, Detroit is 82% black).
<a href="http://www.fairhousing.com/index.cfm?method=page.display&pagename=advocate_february97_page1%5B/url%5D">http://www.fairhousing.com/index.cfm?method=page.display&pagename=advocate_february97_page1</a></p>
<p>In its study of the insurance industry's performance in urban areas, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners collected data on the cost and type of policies sold in 33 metropolitan areas in 20 states. The study is considered the most comprehensive ever done on the subject. After statistically ruling out other factors, the NAIC study found that only 57.6 percent of the houses in high-minority, low-income areas were insured at all, compared with 81.5 percent in white, high-income areas.
<a href="http://wjcohen.home.mindspring.com/usnclips/redline.htm%5B/url%5D">http://wjcohen.home.mindspring.com/usnclips/redline.htm</a></p>
<p>And you wonder why it is so hard for blacks to accumulate wealth in this nation...</p>