“This has been a 30-plus year journey,” Congresswoman Jackson Lee declared. “We had to take a different approach. We had to go one by one to members explaining this does not generate a check.” Congresswoman Jackson Lee said this week that there’s now enough votes in the House for passage of the historic piece of legislation.
Although many officials have called for a ‘return to normal’, millions of small businesses and communities need something new instead. In Black America especially, the ‘old normal’ never delivered equitable access to wealth-building opportunities as those that well-served served much of White America. Instead, a lengthy history of public policies designed to create and sustain a burgeoning middle class systemically excluded Blacks and other people of color.
This subject of land restrictions is of special interest to me. My husband, Clark Parker, Sr., tells a fascinating account of our own property ownership. We can therefore easily relate to covenants, deeds and restrictions research project, especially since he is an accomplished real estate expert and builder of multimillion homes, condominiums, schools and other real estate structures.
Even now, Trump and his campaign have specifically sought to have officials toss out all votes cast in heavily African American populated cities like Atlanta, Detroit, and Milwaukee. It is a tactic used since, during, and after Reconstruction: disenfranchise Blacks and the poor.
President Trump wants to paper over the living wound of racism. He’s issued Executive Orders and established a new national commission designed to whitewash our history—and deny the daily reality of being Black in America. He actively appeals to white supremacists and fans the flames of hatred and division in our country, because he thinks it benefits him politically. He ignores the most basic job of every president: the duty to care for all of us, not just those who voted for him.
“I got started in the African American community. I got involved in the Civil Rights Movement when I was a kid. I helped de-segregate a movie theater, that kind of thing,” Biden noted. “I was the only guy who worked in the projects on the East Side who was White. That’s how I got started, and the Black community is the community that, as we say, brung me to the dance. That’s how I got elected.”
The Community Reinvestment Act was enacted in 1977 as a direct response to redlining, an unethical practice whereby banks and other lending institutions made it extremely difficult, if not impossible, for residents of poor, inner-city communities to borrow money, get a mortgage, take out insurance or access other financial services. Redlining did not take into consideration an individual’s qualifications or creditworthiness.
The OCC hopes stakeholders will carefully review the proposed changes and submit comments so that a final rule can be issued in the first half of 2020.
