991B

For one of my courses, we as a class have a class blog. One of the purposes of this is for us students to begin to articulate ideas, and begin to write for a larger paper. As usual, I signed up to write one of the first posts, because I'm a front loader. It's also because I didn't want to have to compare myself to anyone else. All in all, it was a great exercise for me to start putting into words the ideas I have, and find a way to discuss them and also see if there is some research that can be done. Below is the beginning of my post, and a link to the rest of the post on the course blog, 991B (991B = the course number. We are very creative and titled the blog the number of the course).

Recently, the radio program This American Life broadcast a show, coupled with this longer online article from ProPublica, about the loan default rate of a community near St. Louis, Missouri. The program described the “problem at hand” for the community in St. Louis: a large and disproportionate number of African American households are defaulting on loan payments and experiencing wage garnishing. The larger issue that has led to this and will continue is what the writers of the show describe as “generations of discrimination leaving Black families with grossly fewer resources to draw on when they come under financial pressure.” What led to this situation was not what I at first initially suspected, discrimination by loan companies. It goes much deeper.

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