By Doug Miller
Lending institutions in California have foreclosed on African-American and Latino homeowners nearly twice as much as white property owners, according to a new study by the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL), indicating that banks likely targeted those ethnic groups to receive more expensive and financially toxic subprime mortgages mortgages during the decade of the housing boom.

Today a federal court in Washington, DC, prevented Louisiana from continuing to utilize a discriminatory formula as part of the federally-funded “Road Home” Program, which was designed by the Louisiana Recovery Authority and approved by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (“HUD”) to aid homeowners in their efforts to rebuild in the wake of devastating damage resulting from Hurricanes Rita and Katrina.

By The Editors
Has America forgotten there’s a Great recession going on? That more than 14 million workers who recently had jobs now don’t? And that more than 44 percent of them have been out of work for six months or longer – a circumstance which has laid the foundation for a permanent jobless class numbering in the millions?

By The Editors
African-American and Native American farmers, who’ve endured decades of discrimination from the federal government, rallied in Washington this week in an effort to get the Senate to finally approve payout of the billions of dollars they were awarded through the settlement of lawsuits nearly a decade

The funding formula used to provide grants to New Orleans residents whose homes were damaged or destroyed by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita very likely disadvantaged black homeowners because it was based on depressed property values that result from both current racial isolation and the city’s segregated past, a U.S. District Court judge has indicated.
As the [...]

By Stacey Patton
Since Louisiana has the highest rate of incarceration of any state in the country  –  of which 79 percent of its 39,000 inmates are black – it ’s no surprise to hear that BP is using prison labor to clean up the largest oil spill ever in U.S. history.

By The Editors
After weeks of deadlock in Congress, the Senate and House this week quickly passed legislation extending unemployment benefits to millions of Americans who’ve been out of work for six months or longer.

By Desiree Cooper
It’s interesting that while the black Civil Rights Movement looked to Gandhi as a model of social change, Dalits look to African-American militant movements.

By Stacey Patton
Now, as the country braces for the possibility of a double-dip recession, additional spells of unemployment, and yet another wave of home foreclosures, a recent report by the New York Times found that the bulk of those dumping their mortgages are rich people.

They call it “strategic defaults.”

By Lee A. Daniels
The nation’s unemployment rate in June declined slightly, as did the number of people counted as being out of work.

But no one’s happy about it.