Douglas S. Massey: Segregation: The Invisible Elephant in the Foreclosure Debate

"The guilty parties in the foreclosure crisis are many: greedy homeowners, unscrupulous investors, lax underwriters, asleep-at-the-wheel regulators, sloppy mortgage servicers, and more. No doubt all share in the blame. But all these actors played their roles in a context of ongoing racial segregation that greatly facilitated the fraud, deceit, and exploitation that occurred at each stage of the lending process. Research by a variety of organizations ranging from the Federal Reserve to the Center for Community Change reveals that subprime loans were concentrated in, and specifically targeted to, low-income, minority neighborhoods. As a result, foreclosures have fallen heaviest on the most disadvantaged segments of society."