Rebecca Marchiel on Redlining, Financial Deregulation, and the Urban Reinvestment Movement
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism Podcast14 Feb 2021

Rebecca Marchiel on Redlining, Financial Deregulation, and the Urban Reinvestment Movement

The history of red-lining is one increasingly well-known within and beyond the academy. In the 1930s, as part of an attempt to shore up the struggling economy by underwriting home mortgages, the government's Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC), developed a series of guidelines and criteria for assessing the risk of lending in urban areas. HOLC criteria drew heavily on the racial logics employed by lenders, developers, and real estate appraisers. Thus, "A-rated" neighborhoods, those associated with the least risk for banks and mortgage lenders, tended to be exclusively white. While, "D"-rated areas, deemed the most-risky, included large numbers of black and/or other non-white residents. These neighborhoods were color-coded red on HOLC maps, hence the term red-lining. They were often denied home loans.

HOLC and redlining had a dramatic effect on American cities with consequences lasting to the present day. Yet, the image of the HOLC's color-coded maps suggests a more static relationship between lending and urban America than actually existed. In today's episode, Rebecca Marchiel tells a more complex and nuanced story of white and black community activists who engaged with the federal government and banks in an effort to expose redlining—in its multiple forms—and imprint their own "financial common sense" on banking. In doing so, she undercuts notions that the reality depicted in HOLC's maps was set in stone by the 1960s, when residents in Chicago's West Side first became suspicious that they had become victims of red-lining, while at the same time revealing the alternative models of financing proposed by community activists in the urban reinvestment movement.

Avsnitt(125)

Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff on Muskism

Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff on Muskism

For those in the Global North, the twentieth century was the Fordist century—an era of mass production and mass consumption. But as Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff argue in their new book, there's ano...

1 Apr 53min

Jessica Levy on the Strange Career of Black Empowerment

Jessica Levy on the Strange Career of Black Empowerment

Today, we welcome Jessica Levy, co-host of Who Makes Cents, onto the program—not as an interviewer, but as a guest. She's here to talk about her remarkable new book, Black Power, Inc: Corporate Americ...

4 Mars 42min

Sean Vanatta Joins for a Banking Mega-Pod

Sean Vanatta Joins for a Banking Mega-Pod

To many, banking remains largely invisible—a hidden circulatory system that allocates capital and credit throughout the economy. If it's worth paying any attention to at all, it's only in moments of c...

2 Feb 48min

Sven Beckert on a Global History of Capitalism

Sven Beckert on a Global History of Capitalism

Popular histories tend to locate capitalism's origins in Europe, only later moving outward to other parts of the globe. Not so says historian Sven Beckert. Capitalism, he argues, was born global, forg...

4 Jan 39min

Mike Glass on the Surprisingly Precarious Postwar Suburbs

Mike Glass on the Surprisingly Precarious Postwar Suburbs

Few historical tableaus are more iconic than the midcentury suburbs of Long Island. I can see it now: rows of identical houses, subsidized by federal spending, inhabited by white middle-class heterono...

9 Dec 202542min

Rudi Batzell on Racialized Working-Class Politics in the U.S. and British Empires

Rudi Batzell on Racialized Working-Class Politics in the U.S. and British Empires

This month's episode offers a fresh perspective on an old debate. Jettisoning outdated modes of analysis that emphasize race vs. class, guest Rudi Batzell illuminates the materialist underpinnings of ...

5 Nov 202549min

Leigh Claire La Berge on Why Capitalism Might Be A Joke

Leigh Claire La Berge on Why Capitalism Might Be A Joke

If you work at a so-called laptop job, there are moments every day when your work feels silly, pointless, absurd, even fake. What if you wrote an entire book that tried to inhabit and analyze that ver...

1 Okt 202536min

Bench Ansfield on Arson-for-Profit, Insurance Brownlining, and the Bronx

Bench Ansfield on Arson-for-Profit, Insurance Brownlining, and the Bronx

Arson - which frequently involves the destruction of property - and business are not typically thought to be compatible. Indeed, there is a whole industry - the insurance industry - whose stated busin...

9 Sep 202539min

Populärt inom Samhälle & Kultur

podme-dokumentar
en-mork-historia
p3-dokumentar
gynning-berg
svenska-fall
mardromsgasten
aftonbladet-krim
skaringer-nessvold
creepypodden-med-jack-werner
rattsfallen
hor-har
spar
killradet
aterforeningen-en-podcast-med-thorsten-och-richard-flinck-av-sigge-eklund
flashback-forever
vad-blir-det-for-mord
historiska-brott
rss-mer-an-bara-morsa
rysarpodden
sanna-berattelser