With the recent economic crisis in the USA, stories of homes lost to foreclosure are increasingly common. In this paper, we attempt to connect this present day problem to its historical roots in racial oppression. We examine 2004 data from the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act database for racial disparities in lending. We find that African Americans are less likely than European Americans to receive loans from regulated lenders. We also find that regardless of lender type and income level, African Americans are more likely than European Americans to receive high priced loans. We argue that these racial differences in access to quality loans that allow for the acquisition of assets through home ownership are part of a historical trend of whiteness as property and undeserved enrichment and unjust impoverishment.

Objectives. This article examines the effect of community organizing on the likelihood that minority borrowers pursue home mortgage credit from regulated lenders. Methods. Governance perspectives suggest that community organizations exert significant influence on policy outcomes. We use logistic regression with interaction terms to test the effect of community organizing on the lending outcomes of minority borrowers. We use a matched control sample of cities, drawing on 2004 loan data from two midwestern cities similar in racial and economic composition but with different histories of organizing around the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). Results. We find differential effects based on an applicant's race or ethnicity. Overall, African-American applicants are less likely to pursue mortgage credit for home ownership from regulated lenders than their white, non-Hispanic counterparts. However, African Americans seeking mortgage credit in a city with a history of CRA organizing are more likely to apply to regulated lenders than their racial counterparts in a city without CRA organizing. However, while organizing reduces the disparities between white and African-American applicants, a gap still remains. Conclusion. African-American borrowers living in cities with a history of community organizing around CRA appear more likely to pursue mortgage credit from traditional, regulated lenders, suggesting that governance matters.Economic theories largely rooted in public choice theory have been applied to analyze the impact of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) of 1977 (Barr, 2004), evaluate the ability of CRA to increase or decrease efficiency in lending markets (Benston, 1997;Lang and Nakamura, 1993), and its ability to increase access to credit from traditional lending institutions for historically disadvantaged borrowers. Although insight from these analyses provides relevant policy information, analyses rooted in these perspectives adopt a traditional approach to policy analysis, one that assumes policies are implemented by a neutral administrative state in line with static,

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