The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together (One World Essentials)

by Heather McGhee

in which the borrower convinces the lender to lend too much.” With this banker-as-victim tale, the casting was familiar: undeserving and criminal people of color aided and abetted by an untrustworthy government. A conservative member of the U.S. Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC), Peter Wallison, wrote a vitriolic dissent of the commission’s conclusion that the crisis was the result of insufficient regulation of the financial system. Calling that conclusion a “fallacious idea,” he claimed that “the crisis was caused by the government’s housing policies,” specifically a set of policies called “Affordable Housing Goals.” Banks, he said, “became the scapegoat.” And so many pundits blamed the Community Reinvestment