oh, now I get it -- for some reason I hadn't seen the original post in this sub-thread, I think because Philip and I were posting at the same time.

The dynamic working in the case of the black woman being refused the mortgage is the fact that poor blacks moving into neighborhoods really do bring down property values (so for that matter do poor whites, it's just not so "obvious" - until they move in and start to trash the property). Even though this particular woman was a lawyer, the bank knew that this fact would be discounted because of what had been happening. [This actually speaks to the US marketplace; no one takes the long view and everything is about this quarter's balance sheet.] Anyway, class differences aren't quite as black and white as they sometimes appear [no pun intended].

but we digress; this is the stuff of political forums.

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