, Columnist
Black Poverty Is Rooted in Real-Estate Exploitation
A new study in Chicago shows how the dream of homeownership was converted into a poverty trap.
There’s a reason.
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One question is -- or should be -- central to any assessment of the state of America: Why, more than a century and a half after slavery ended, does the typical black family remain so much poorer than the typical white family?
A new study on housing in Chicago illustrates a big part of the answer: Generation after generation, the U.S. system of real-estate finance has enriched whites at the expense of blacks.