Viewpoint: Minorities a convenient scapegoat for U.S. financial woes

www.baltimoresun.com ^ | September 28, 2008 | Cynthia Tucker

[Publius804]

Viewpoint: Minorities a convenient scapegoat for U.S. financial woes

By Cynthia Tucker September 28, 2008

In the midst of a severe financial crisis - a meltdown fueled by clueless homebuyers, greedy lenders and money-grubbing financiers - some observers have decided to blame "minorities" for the mess. Though wiser heads have proclaimed the emergency too serious for partisan gamesmanship, some in the conservative commentariat still can't resist playing the race card.

Several days ago, Neil Cavuto, host of Fox News' Your World, proclaimed, "Loaning to minorities and risky folks is a disaster."

On WorldNetDaily, a compendium of loopy half-truths, pundit Drew Zahn declared that "when federal regulators demanded parity between racial groups in lending, the only way to achieve a quota would be to begin making intentionally bad lending decisions."

The conservative National Review Online trotted out a favorite whipping boy, the Community Reinvestment Act, claiming that the legislation was the result of "racially inflammatory campaigns" that forced banks to "make mortgages available to people without much in the way of income, assets or credit."

Why would anyone inject skin color into a debate over credit?

There is certainly no evidence to support this claptrap. Federal regulators have never "demanded parity between racial groups in lending." Not ever.

The CRA - designed to stop banks from "redlining," or withholding loans from entire neighborhoods - has long been under attack by conservatives, but for entirely different reasons.

[yldstrk]

Lending to deadbeats is cause for getting your business closed. Big news flash

[Oldexpat]

You can put lipstick on a sub-prime, but it is still sub-prime.

[hershey]

Ah, that big brain, Cynthia Tucker. She’s absolutely clueless.

[sickoflibs]

I was going to post this but you saved me the trouble.

[HammerOfTheDogs]

I didn’t know financially unstable people had a specific race.

[DonGrafico]

Well I guess the word has gotten out about the government’s role in all this. Now the Democrat press resorts to start shaming people for noticing the obvious. Some things never change.

[DonGrafico]

Well I guess the word has gotten out about the government’s role in all this. Now the Democrat press resorts to shaming people for noticing the obvious. Some things never change.

[sickoflibs]

Here is OUR problem politically :

“The White House bragged on programs to make borrowing easy, including an initiative to allow the Federal Housing Administration to insure mortgages for first-time homebuyers without a down payment. The administration touted a record increase in homeownership, and Alan Greenspan dismissed the idea of a housing bubble. “

Just like we were winning in Iraq in 2005-2006 Bush took credit for this, now he gets no credit, and all the blame. Now it looks like he wants taxpayers to bail out the rich. Political disaster.

[anniegetyourgun]

The vast majority of mortgage defaulters are caucasian. Am I a racist for pointing that out?

[Tenacious 1]

There is certainly no evidence to support this claptrap. Federal regulators have never "demanded parity between racial groups in lending." Not ever.

I guess it is ok for democrats to mince words for their own cause.

Maybe the term minorities is what is giving them heartburn. Whenever the story concerns class envy politics, it is the impoverished minorities that are victims of all institutions and programs.

I don't disagree with the author that "minorities" aren't to be blames. But I do vehemently disagree that anyone else has suggested they are. It was activist groups that started pushing "the right" to own a home. It was politicians that espoused some ambitious goal to have "every American" living in their own home.

It was the government that pushed policies to encourage bad lending in the interest of helping the "little guy" be able to afford their own home. Call the group that was the recipient of these policies and programs what ever you want. This is the segment of the population that received loans that they were risky. This is the segment that was the beneficiary of the government push and institutional enablers that have now created victims of the same.

Let's not call them minorities. Let's call them the poor.

[Poison Pill]

The term “socio-economic” exists for a reason. The next time the author is driving through Chevy Chase on her way to a cocktail party, she should count the number of payday loan stores and pawn shops she sees.

[junta]

Bush has got an encyclopedia’s length collection of speeches pandering to the get minorities into houses regardless of the credit risk. I guess now the raging children of the left will forget this?

[freekitty]

Of course they are. It is the job of the community organizers such as Obama to whip them into frenzies of non thinking hate for agendas of others.

[BilLies]

Cynthia Tucker's column runs in my local liberal “news”paper. She is there to give the “community” support as does Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post. They never have seen a “poverty pimp” they did not like and support. Any criticism, actual or implied, about blacks characterized by the appellation "RACIST".

[johnny7]

Cynthia throws up a bullsh•t screen when the truth starts to come out... the racism charges and threats of violence will come tomorrow.

[silverleaf]

Why would anyone inject skin color into a debate over credit?

Well, the BallSun COULD ask Barney Frank that question except, that train done left the station a looong time ago

[Anti-Bubba182]

Cynthia Tucker

Cynthia Tucker

"..Tucker was born in 1955 in Monroeville, Alabama in the age of segregation; she did not attend an integrated school until she was a junior in high school. She then attended Auburn University and pursued double major of English and journalism and wrote for the student newspaper, The Plainsman. After graduation in 1976, she applied for a job at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC) where she was hired as a reporter. In 1980, she left Atlanta and the AJC for a job at the The Philadelphia Inquirer. Shortly thereafter, Tucker decided she wanted to be a foreign correspondent in Africa, but the Inquirer felt she was too inexperienced for the assignment. Tucker set out on her own, traveling around Africa and freelancing for six months. Realizing she had had enough of the experience, she returned to Atlanta where she was rehired as a columnist by the AJC.[1].."

[UCANSEE2]

First, I think the author is a clueless idiot. But, every dog gets a bone once in a while.

It’s not just one particular race.

It’s not just at the bottom of the income brackets.

It’s not just home loans, it’s credit in all areas of our economy.

It’s the rise in fuel prices.
It’s the loss of jobs to foreign markets.
It’s the loss of jobs in industries like the MSM.
It’s a combination of many reasons, and it isn’t going to be easy to fix.