Bill Clinton, elected in 1992, made this mission his own. Starting in the summer of 1994, he crusaded against the dearth of private housing credit in poor, black, urban neighborhoods. He used the term “redlining,” which described the practice, illegal for decades and subjected to intense federal scrutiny since the Fair Housing Act of 1968, of systematically denying credit to black neighborhoods. The word would have meant little to Clinton’s white supporters, but it was part of the basic vocabulary of the civil rights movement. It imparted to blacks the incendiary accusation that the lower
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