Civic Cipher 041622 Are Black People Overcharged for Housing? (Part 2)

them gas prices man. But yeah, housing obviously is something that we need to talk about, and I think that, uh, this is National Fair Housing Month or the anniversary of the Fair Housing Acts, so I definitely want to talk about that as well, and a few other things that are worth sticking around for. So stay tuned. But first we are going to talk about how to become a

better ally. Bye by So I'll start us off. This one comes from inside themagic dot net, which I know doesn't sound like the most reputable of sources, but I can assure you there are other reputable sources I just like the way this was written. We're going to talk about Disney become a better ally. How about that Disney with all the racist cartoons and all the They've had

a long road right to get where they are. But it just shows that, you know, there's a there's a redemption arc in the story here.

QIA and racial minorities. Disney Corporate President Gary Buke says quote, as the mother of one transgender child and one pan sexual child, she supports having many, many, many lgbtqi A characters in our stories and wants a minimum of fifty percent of characters to be lgbtquia and racial minorities. Now, the interesting thing here is there are a lot of people who feel like Disney is being too woke and they try to attack Disney. I found this in this

article and I just want to share it. Normally I don't do this, but I think it makes an excellent point. So there's a Twitter user, we'll shout her out. It's at Lori Hirip says, quote she wants fifty percent of characters to be LGBTQUI A plus and racial minorities. This is the US perspective. Forty two percent of the US is not white, five point six percent of the US is openly LGBTQI A plus, and Disney is a global company. Around eighty four percent of the world is not white.

Around ten percent of the world is lgbtq IA plus and fifty movie representation is fair. So shout out to them for becoming a better ally. Now you're a homeowner. Indeed, I'm a homeowner. It's kind of a good time to be a homeowner. Yeah, it's tough time to be in the market. Oh no, no, not at all, not at all. We did a story this might have been about a year ago. Man, it's crazy how we're reminiscing so much

the show. But you know, this goes to show you that these are this is the path we have to walk. We can't do an episode or pass a piece of legislation and then everything changes overnight. This is you know that we're in this for the long game. But we did do an episode where we talked about whitewashing. I believe a home. I have some notes here a little later, so I'll touch on it a bit more. But effectively, what it was is black people listing their house for

sale or sorry, getting the appraisals on their house. That was what it was, and it would appraise at whatever dollar amount, and then they would go through and take all their pictures of their family and replace it with pictures of a white family, and then have a white woman or man meet the appraiser at the house, and then lo and behold, the appraisals shot up in value. So we did this story before, but now we're going to talk about renting as well. So I'm going to

read a bit. This comes from CBS News. The author is Christopher J. Brooks. I got this on April thirteenth. Black and Hispanic Americans are paying extra money to secure rental housing in the US compared to compared with whites, according to Zillo. For those who don't know, Zilo is kind of an app that helps you find a rental I believe, and also if you want to buy a house, I have the Zillo app on my phone. It's actually

pretty cool, all right. In a report this week, the real estate data firm said that, regardless of race, Americans paid an average of seven hundred dollars in security deposits when renting an apartment, Yet renters of color paid seven hundred and fifty dollars, while white renters paid six hundred. White renters typically paid fifty dollars for a rental application fee, while black Americans paid sixty five. Hispanic applicants paid eighty dollars,

and Asian Americans paid one hundred dollars. People of color also typically must submit more rental applications in order to find a place to live, as well as pay more in related fees than white renters. Zillo concluded. Zilo attributed the higher fees and number of housing applications for renters of color partially to their noting that they tend to

be two years younger than the median white renter. White Americans also are more likely to rent in rural areas and in the Midwest, which are typically cheaper, but racial disparities and rental costs also suggest many landlords often violate federal law, said Dan Carbett of Housing Opportunities Made Equal, a nonprofit in upstate New York that fights housing discrimination.

For example, some housing providers can sidestep fair housing laws by charging higher application fees for people with subpar credit scores, which tends to disproportionately affect lower income renters. Real quick to any surprises here so far, anything jump out of you is like, Wow, I couldn't have possibly imagined that. Sadly, no, my friend, you know what, while I'm here, I want

to share a quick story. When I was about seventeen years old, I got a job at a place called Brown and Brown Nissan, and my job was to sell ex Terras and Maximas and Frontiers and Centras. Two people. You know, people would come in on the lot after we sent out like the Sunday paper. They'd come in and say, hey, you have one of these cars. I want a blue one. I want it for this price. They'd walk on the lot. I was the person that would go and greet them and say, all right, let's

go check out your car. I'd get the keys, take them on a test drive the whole bit car salesman. And as I've shared on the show many times, you know, I've always been this version of myself. I was very fortunate and that I was raised by. My father was a minister, very educated minister. He had earned his doctorate, and he knew who he was. He stood in the middle of his blackness, and he stood in the middle of his faith, and he taught his son to stand in the middle of his blackness, in the middle of

his faith. I found something out while I was working there that troubled me. It still troubles me to this day. Nissan was guilty of charging higher interest rates to black people who bought cars from them across the board, all things being equal, if you had more melanin, you paid more an interest on your car loan. They had to eat that and we all knew it. And then guess who didn't work at Brown and Brown Nissan anymore. Now

that wasn't Nissan Corporate that handled all the financing. But still one of those things that just kind of eats at you, you know, and you know, for me, I carry this burden with me. At some point I pray that I won't have to carry it anymore. But I carry this burden with me which tells me that I need to make sure that I'm working with someone who is white and not working for someone who is white.

And I'll break that down because I know that's that might be a lot to hear, but working for somebody is it Kind's a there's a power in that relationship that I don't like if they say the wrong thing, if they do the wrong thing. They might be the most well intentioned person in the world, right but if they say the wrong thing, you know, it just hits the ear a little funny. And I owe it to the ancestors, you know, for those people that don't have

those connections, that haven't read the story. I know I sound crazy, but I owe it to people who lived hard and short lives, whose bodies are buried in the ground right here where I am right here to not get pushed around, bossed around, forced around by someone who doesn't appreciate my worth as a human being. And so it's those relationships where I feel like I'm working with

someone where I tend to flourish. I feel like I'm working for someone that will be a short lived arrangement, you know, not to say that I haven't had you know that in my life, because I have, you know, But I say that to say that, this brown and brown Nissan story, it just made me. It made my stomach turn because I sold cars to black women who had kids, who were excited to get a CenTra E CenTra as the small Nissan, you know, a basic entry

level car. They were excited to get a Center. I sold that car to that woman and she drove it to the South Side and parked it in front of her house. And for the next six months she was all the way on kept it blotched. I know that. And she was paying more for that car, unfairly paying more for that car. And I was a link in that chain, and I couldn't stomach it, and I didn't

work there anymore. Right, But I'm telling you that so that you know how I relate to this housing story, how black people are charged more for the same things. And it's not a matter of like could we afford it or anything like that. It's just a hurtful thing. It was a hurtful thing because we were talking about a couple of dollars here and there. That's not going

to make or break anybody, you know what I mean? Overall, Yes, if we're talking about the whole population, then sure, yeah, you're extracting or Black folks as a population are losing a degree of wealth, you know. But individual households, you know, going from fifty dollars to sixty five dollars doesn't make or break anymore. But what it does to you psychologically is way more profound. And remember this was over twenty years ago when I was selling these cars, a brown

and brown Nissan. So me reading this when I was preparing for today's show, lets me know that even though we've come so far in the past twenty years, we've elected a black president, right, you know, we've we've done a lot in the past twenty years, and then there's still so much further to go. There's so many other things we have to deal with. I'd almost rather it be a car than a house. I wish you can get a used car maybe, or even you know, buy

private owner. You know, these application fees or you get the point. I'll continue. Bias in housing persists in part because people who may be subject to discrimination often do not report it, adding that victims often never discover they are paying higher fees or face a higher rate of rejection than white renters. Anyone who paid more money for housing during an unequal application process can sue the provider and have the money refunded. Corbett said, However, that often

involves a lengthy, expensive court battle. Now, before I finish this, Q, I want to get your thoughts.

of our lives. Someone has to write out policy like that, or they have to in some sort of gathering or rate policy like that, and everyone present has to be okay with it for it to go further. And that's

the part that's even more disturbing. We try to pretend that we're better as a society and we've made all this progress, but people have to come together in groups and agree to make these kind of decisions and are able to go home to their families, their wives, their kids, their husbands, and smile and look themselves in the mirror and be okay with the idea that, yes, I'm going to make life more difficult for these people based exclusively

on the way that they look. And this indoctrination and this way of thinking has been a truth for tens of millions of people, for the entire for the entirety

of their family lineage. And we're thinking as we go over those statistics about the percentages of the world that are not white, and let you know why they hold on so tight to those positions of power so they can continue to push forward these ways of thinking and keep themselves with the most leverage so that they can continue to minimize, marginalize, punished, segregate, make life less pleasurable for people that look like you and I and our kids.

Sometimes it makes me really angry. Days like today just makes me really sad.

we don't realize it. You know what I mean. This is if that's the application for you, that's the application for you, sixty five dollars shut you know, so be it. But then when you find out on the back end, oh that's what you went up to, you don't you just rather like imagine feeling that way, you know, we we we we didn't get a chance to really delve into the story. But we have mentioned on the show before the way people who own airbnbs will treat black

renters when they want to rent the Airbnb. If they find out that the renter is black, they'll cancel the reservation, do all this sort of stuff. And there's been there was, you know, reported a lot of discrimination on Airbnb, right, so much so that Airbnb had to kind of step in and do their best to prevent their users from

you know, behaving that way. And then it just kind of gives you a glimpse into the world because you know, in our day to day lives, it doesn't feel like these people hate us, so there's enough of them to really make a difference. We go to the grocery store, We raise our kids, you know, we you know, I go to my son's school and I wave it all the parents there and they're all nice, and the teachers and you know, all different color people. We get along great.

You know. This is the way that I think the world works. And then you end up having to deal with these sobering statistics and the sobering reality where it's like, deep down somewhere, there's a good number of people who really harbor some strange feelings, and they're based off of what, you know, prejudices that are you know, centuries old, that are untrue. They're based in racism, you know. And then it's so hard for people to challenge themselves because of

cognitive dissonance. Is so hard for people to even know, you know, that they're the ones doing the wrong. It's hard for people to be the bad guy in their own story, right, And so this is a glimpse into a reality that you know, unless you're a black person or a Hispanic person, you know, this might not ever be a real thing for you. So you might not ever have to feel it in addition to feeling every

single other thing. You know, we watched Katanji Brown Jackson get berated over all kind of nonsense, you know, we got Yeah to a person like us, it's like, well, shoot, how how much more perfect can you be than perfect? What? What? What do you? What? What is there? You know, this is not the first time we've seen this. We saw it with Obama. We you know, we've seen this sort

of thing happen. But it just and and and to be fair, she made it so we're good, we got you know, we're okay, you know what I mean, it's a happy time. We're not. We're not. It's all not doom and gloom. But it just serves to remind us of exactly what it takes and how difficult and how

unfair it is. You know, it's possible now because it's been proven to be possible, But just because it's possible doesn't mean and it's likely probable any of those things, And so we're still left with more or less the same reality we've always lived in. I'm sorry I cut you.

moved the finish line. Okay, that's not what we meant. We meant you shouldn't do this, and you shouldn't do that. And it doesn't matter how great of an orator you are, what Ivory League school you attended.

anniversary of the Fair Housing Act. The landmark law was signed in the law on April eleven, nineteen sixty eight, by President Lyndon B. Johnson. The Fair Housing Act prohibits housing discrimination because of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, disability, and familial status. Noticed race was first, and I did cover that in my other show, Our Daily Story. If you want to check that out on iHeart Podcasts. I'd highly recommend it if you're interested in pursuing fair housing

or you know someone they're dealing with that. And I do want to also put some names with a couple of stories for the show that we talked about last time the appraisers came out to do the whitewashed houses. Those stories. There was an Indianapolis woman, her name was Carlotte Duffy. She was one of the women who whitewashed her house, got a friend to a white friend to stand in change all the pictures around, and got more money out of her house. And then there was a

Bay Area family Tanisha Tate Austin and Paul Austin. I want to say their names because they both were stories that we talked about on the show and they had to go through that in order for us to be able to talk about it and kind of put some breathe, some life into that. But yeah, these are real things

that really happened to real people every day. And for those of you listening to this show, it's not lost on us that you are doing your best to learn how to become a better brother, sister, or whatever to Black people, and we are going to keep that same energy when it comes to doing the same for you. Now it's time for the Way Black History effect. This one comes from With's hisstory dot Org I talk about Ruby Bridges. She is a very special person to me.

I just love her story. This is a story that I didn't know a lot of these, you know, I kind of learned them right around the time I'm gonna get these off. But I've known about Ruby Bridges for some time. And the good thing about Ruby Bridges is she's still alive, still breathing. So shout out to her for even that. This is some recent Black history But it'll sound like a way Black History fact, because I

guess in effect it is. I'll read. At the tender age of six, Ruby Bridges advanced the cause of civil rights in November nineteen sixty when she became the first African American student to integrate an elementary school in the South. Born on September eighth, nineteen fifty four, Bridges was the oldest of five children for Lucille and Abon Bridges farmers in Tylertown, Mississippi. When Ruby was two years old, her parents moved their family to New Orleans, Louisiana, in search

for better work opportunities. Ruby's birth year coincided with the U. S. Supreme Court's landmark ruling in Brown versus the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, which ended racial segregation in public schools. Nonetheless, Southern states continued to resist integration, and in nineteen fifty nine, Ruby attended a segregated New Orleans kindergarten. A year later, however,

a federal court ordered Louisiana to desegregate. The school district created entrance exams for African American students to see whether they could compete academically at the all white school. Ruby and five other students passed the exam. Her parents were torn about whether to let her attend the all white William France Elementary School, a few blocks from her home.

Her father resisted, fearing for his daughter's safety. Her mother, however, wanted Ruby to have all the educational opportunities that her parents had been denied. Meanwhile, the school district dragged its feet, delaying her admittance until November fourteenth. Two of the other students decided not to leave their school at all. The other three went to the all white McDonough Elementary School. Ruby and her mother were escorted by four federal marshals

to the school every day that year. She walked past crowds screaming vicious slurs at her. She's six, my son is seven. Undeterred, She later said she only became frightened when she saw a woman holding a black baby doll in a coffin. She spent her first day at the principal's office. Due to the chaos created as angry white parents pulled their children from school, ardent segregationists withdrew their

children permanently. Barbara Henry, a white Boston native, was the only teacher willing to accept Ruby, and all year she was a class of one. He would be eight lunch alone, and sometimes played with her teacher at recess. She never missed the day of school that year. I want to talk about Barbara Henry one day. That's what I want to do, become a better ally. Shout out to Barbara Henry.

All right, I'm gonna switch gears here. If this comes from Wikipedia, I know that's not the most scholarly source, but I think it fits right here. It's important for me to share, and then we'll go back to the women's History dot Org blurb. The Bridges family suffered for their decision to send her to William France Elementary. Her father lost his job as a gas station, attended the grocery store, the family shop that would no longer let

them shop there. Her grandparents, her grandparents all right, grandparents who were sharecroppers in Mississippi, were turned off their land, and Avon and Lucille Bridges separated. Bridges has noted that many others in the community, both black and white, showed support in a variety of ways. Some white families continue to send their children to France despite the protest. A neighbor provided her father with a new job, and local people babysat watched the house's protectors and walked behind.

to do about her, got her taken care of. So we put our money where our mouth is. We'll tell that story later, all right, or you can look it up hashtag lunch bag and Nayla in a e Lah. It's documented on YouTube if you want to check out the story anyway, back to Women's History dot org. While some family supported her bravery and some northerners sent money to aid her family, others protested throughout the city. The Bridge's family suffered for their courage in oh Sorry. Over time,

other African American students enrolled. Many years later, Ruby's four nieces would also intend. In nineteen sixty four, artist Norman Rockwell celebrated her courage with the painting of that first day entitled The Problem We All Lived With. Ruby graduated from a desegregated high school, became a travel agent, married, had four sons. She was reunited with her first teacher, Henry, in the mid nineteen nineties. For a time, the pair

did speaking engagements together. That was Barbara Henry by the way. Ruby later wrote about her early experiences in two books and received the Carter G. Woodson Book Award a lifelong activist for raciality equality. In nineteen ninety nine, Ruby established the Ruby Bridges Foundation to promote tolerance and create change through education. In two thousand, she was made an Honorary Deputy Marshal in a ceremony in Washington, d C. There's a way black history fact. What you got for mEq

deep thought? The word tolerance right.

your questions, any topics you like us to cover. You'll find all our social media It's at Civic Cipher. Of course. You can download this in any previous episodes and you can make a donation. The show is growing. We'd like to welcome watching all of our affiliates. I heard. We really do appreciate you giving us a chance. Hopefully we'll make a difference together. We don't something special here and yeah That'sut'll do it until next week, y'all.