Racism in economy

Racism in economy

English for Intercultural Communication

Victor Moreno Arribas

The United States of America is known as the country of freedom, but the economic power that this country obtained in such a sort time of history is thanks to the black african american slaves as John Steinbeck describes in “Of Mice and Men”, a very common reading in the American Literature course during the high school. In those days work was needed for the automobile factories like Ford to grow, but also needed in the countryside, both depend on the slavery for making money during the Great Depression period.

Nowadays, the rich white powerful americans have developed an economic system that avoid the economic grow of african american families, this system is called Systematic racism. As always , is all related around the banks. The banks wanted to offer loans to those that are going to give back the money with some interest rate in between. To give back the money, your family needs to be wealthy and the easiest way to get wealth in USA is via house value and college graduation. During a long time, being a white person was  a requirement to be accepted in an american university, therefore black people was consider as people that could not be wealthier with the past of the years, since the members of that kind of families were not graduating.

As a solution for the banks to decide which persons to give loans, the government started a system called REDLINING that consisted in dividing the different neighborhoods depending in their income. So if two children live in New York City but in two different neighborhood, one of them is born in a neighborhood of white families and the other kid in a neighborhood of black families. The white kid will go to a wealthier school that is maintained with more public taxes and the other kid will be educated in a worse school that get much less public money to pay the teachers and all the material.

So the banks started to give bigger loans to low income white families and lower loans to high income black families. The difference was moreless for every $100 in loans for a white family, the black family will only get $5, that such a big difference.

Actually, for a black name person is harder to get a job than for a white name person. The unemployment rate is twice for black people than for white people.

To conclude, systematic racism is a group formed by wealth, incarceration, representation and education.

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