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Redlining
"Redlining” is a practice of denying loans, jobs, health care, banking and other services to people of certain ethnic groups and neighborhoods that have vastly limited the ability of those groups to build wealthy and thriving neighborhoods. Community activists in Chicago coined the phrase to describe “the practice of marking a red line on a map to delineate the area where banks would not invest. During the heyday of redlining these areas were most frequently minority inner city neighborhoods,” according to Wikipedia. The practice has traditionally targeted poor, inner-city neighborhoods: “This meant that ethnic minorities could secure mortgage loans only in certain areas, and it resulted in a large increase in the residential racial segregation and urban decay in the United States.”
During the Civil Rights Movement, Congress made an effort to stop redlining by passing the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which forbids redlining based on race, religion, gender, familial status, disability, or ethnic origin, and the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, which requires banks to apply the same lending criteria in all communities.
Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan and other Republicans vowed to overturn such anti-redlining laws as part of their southern strategy campaigns to lure white voters to the Republican Party. The practice continued through the end of the century, and even into the 21st century in some cases.
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