NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/alt/discrimi/5485

Internet Message Format | 1993-01-02 | 5.2 KB

Xref: sparky alt.discrimination:5485 soc.culture.african.american:13390 misc.education:5612
Path: sparky!uunet!spool.mu.edu!yale.edu!yale!mintaka.lcs.mit.edu!ai-lab!life!isbell
From: [e-mail] (Charles L Isbell)
Newsgroups: alt.discrimination,soc.culture.african.american,misc.education
Subject: Boston Globe October 9 1992 (Was: Institutional racism in education)
Date: 2 Jan 93 19:17:27
Organization: MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
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In-reply-to: [e-mail]'s message of Thu, 31 Dec 1992 22:17:12 GMT

[e-mail] (Terry Parks) writes:
|Charles Isbell [me, writing about a study on mortgage loans]:
|>I read about this particular study in the Boston Globe.  Why don't you
|>try calling and asking about it?  I'm sure they'll help you.  I also
|>recall reading about it in the New York Times.

[Terry deletes a bit about a claim she reproduces below, to which I replied:]
|>Can you document this or are you making it up?

|The "study" examined over 5.3 million mortgage applications and did not
|find one where an applicant was denied a mortgage because of their
|race. The "study" did find that a poor applicant was more often denied
|a mortgage than a wealthy applicant and that more of the Blak applicants
|in the "study" were poor than wealthy. The "study" reported that
|poor Blak and Caucasian applicants being denied mortages and
|wealthy Blak and Caucasian applicants being granted mortages demonstrated
|a racial bias by the mortgage lenders because more of the people who
|applied to them for mortgages who were Blak were poor than wealthy.
|Now the "study" claimed to factor out the income factor by only
|comparing the rejection rates for people with the same income. This
|"same" income was determined by grouping applicants about the
|median family income and those with less income and those with more
|income. So three income ranges were used, with everyone within each
|range being declared by the "study" as having the same income. So
|in the first group, applicants with annual incomes of $8,000 and $2,000
|had the "same" income and in the third group, applicants with annual
|incomes of $500,000 and $50,00 had the "same" income. The same flaw
|exists with the second group but not to these illustrated extremes.

[Terry then tries to be funny and writes:]
|I read about this particular study in the Boston Globe.  Why don't you
|try calling and asking about it?  I'm sure they'll help you.  I also
|recall reading about it in the New York Times.

Well, you still haven't documented it.  I, on the other hand, offer
this:

-----
info taken from the Boston Globe Friday October 9 1992:

"Study shows racial bias in lending"

A landmark study released Thursday shows that banks in Greater Boston
discriminate against Black and Hispanic mortage applicants, offering
the most damning evidence to date of racial hurdles facing minority
homebuyers.

The study from the Federal Reserve Bank of Bostn concluded that
minorities are roughly 60% more likely to be denied a mortage than
whites even when they are equally creditworthy.

Bankers have criticizes similar reports in the past for not taking
into account important financial factors in lending decisions, but
industry leaders accepted the new study.

The new report, the first of its kind in the nation considers 39
criteria that go into mortage decisions, such as credit and employment
history, total debt and net worth.  Bankers said that the absence of
those factors from earlier reports made conclusions suspect.

Although the study focused on Greater Boston, the authors said they had
no reason to beleive the findings would be different elsewhere in the
country.

Researchers found that *80%* of all applicants, regardless of race,
have some flaw that could disqualify them.  That means it is in the
hands of individual bankers to decide whether the bulk of would-be
homebuyers receive loans.

"Given the same imperfections, whites seem to enjoy a general
assumption of creditworthiness that Black and Hispanic applicants do
not" said Alicia Munnell who presented the report along with the
president of the Boston Fed, Richard Syron.
-----

I'll ask you again Terry:  can you document your claim of doctored
studies by the govt where 500,000 is the same as 50,000?  I've got you
a paper, a date and I even typed in parts of the article.

Your turn.


--
Peace.
              "The main thing I like about New Yorkers is that they understand
               that their lives are a relentless circus of horrors, ending in
               death.  As New Yorkers we realize this, we resign ourselves to
               our fate, and we make sure that everyone else is as miserable as
               we are.  Good town."
                                    -Kyle Baker, Why I Hate Saturn
                                   -\--/-
    Don't just adopt opinions     |  \/  |       Some of you are homeboys
          develop them.           |  /\  | but only I am The Homeboy From hell
                                   -/--\-