COLLECTION: Math, Mortgages & Race

I think some of these have been posted in the math group before - but this is a nice collection of articles, infographics & lessons I had the occasion to pull together for my day job of late...

1. Whose Community Is This?

Mathematics of neighborhood displacement

BY ERIC (RICO) GUTSTEIN

The equation went up on the board as my 12th-grade “math for social justice” class silently and soberly stared at it.

150,000 – 291,000 = 92,000

I talked as I wrote: “You've paid $291,000 on a $150,000 mortgage, and you still owe $92,000. Check that math out. That's good math, let's look at that math: $150,000 minus $291,000 equals $92,000. (I pause for 20 seconds as students look and mumble to themselves and neighbors.) Think about that. Hey! You started with a 150, you paid 291, and you still owe $92,000. What's going on here?”

http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/27_03/27_03_gutstein.shtml

2. A Reading the World Mathematics Project: Mortgage Loans—Is Racism a Factor? Rico Gutstein

http://www.rethinkingschools.org/static/publication/math/racismInMo...

In this project, you will investigate mortgage rejection rates for African Americans, Latinos/as, and whites in Chicago (and nationally). The central question is: Given the data, is racism a factor in getting a mortgage in Chicago? You will read a newspaper article, analyze data, answer a number of questions, and write an essay arguing whether or not you believe racism is a factor, justifying your argument with mathematical data.

3. The Case for Reparations - http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-re...

This article in the Atlantic BLEW UP last year - after the intro it focuses on redlining in Chicago. The author Ta-Nehisi Coates won this year’s national nonfiction book of the year award and a MacArthur genius grant.

Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.

Locked out of the greatest mass-based opportunity for wealth accumulation in American history, African Americans who desired and were able to afford home ownership found themselves consigned to central-city communities where their investments were affected by the “self-fulfilling prophecies” of the FHA appraisers: cut off from sources of new investment[,] their homes and communities deteriorated and lost value in comparison to those homes and communities that FHA appraisers deemed desirable.

4. 40 Acres and a Mule Would Be at Least $6.4 Trillion Today—What the U.S. Really Owes Black AmericaRELATED INFOGRAPHIC (attached)

http://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/make-it-right/infographic-40-acre...

Slavery made America wealthy, and racist policies since have blocked African American wealth-building. Can we calculate the economic damage?

COLLECTION: Math, Mortgages & Race

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