Benefits all people

Thursday March 27, 2008 - 11:39AM EDT

So I read a headline about the federal government cracking down on shady lending practices because of the recent credit crisis. Well shit this is a problem that never needed to happen. Those damn shady lending practice have been going on for the better part of a century or more twisted in the clutches of institutionalized racism. But it was pretty much ignored so the banks got away with such things and it just become standard fare to screw over black people. Now that they have been doing it for so long it was second nature to extend such practices to anyone in those lower socioeconomic rungs that blacks have such disproportionate representation in. However this time the capture not only blacks but a whole bunch of other people and suddenly those people added up to a significant economic effect. Where in the past such consequences would be localized within black neighborhoods. So now that not only black people got hosed but everyone else it is suddenly a problem to be fixed. If the government and banks themselves hadn't allowed the practices to go on in the first place with blacks and others the discriminated against then the practice wouldn't exist as such a normal thing and would have been a matter of policy not to do such things.

This is what some people mean  when they say that improving the situation of blacks doesn't just benefit them it benefits all people.