The Financial Wall

The Gantt Report

By Lucius Gantt

President Donald Trump said in his campaign to become Commander in Chief that Mexico would pay for his beloved wall on the United States southern border.

Now, Trump says if Congress doesn’t approve his plan to build an unnecessary and undesired wall with taxpayer dollars, the President will consider shutting down the United States government again and again!

Well, in my opinion, African Americans have had walls around Black neighborhoods ever since slavery days!

Today, the hood walls are more felt than seen. Walls in Black communities are not “big beautiful walls of concrete or reddish, rusted steel slats.

Black community residents in every state are kept confined by walls of red lines!

The walls that restrain residents of ghettos, barrios and predominately Black rural communities are financial walls!

Residents in red-lined communities, for the most part, stuck where they are and stuck how they are because banks, mortgage lenders and business loan officers suppress African American access to capital.

Instead of working with Black men, women and families to get them money to buy homes and finance businesses, financial institutions constantly try and figure out reasons and ways to not give Blacks financing.

It is not unusual for Blacks that have credit scores over 650, little or no credit card debt, sufficient incomes and normal credit payment histories to be denied loans for businesses, homes and properties.

Perhaps the number one reason Blacks are targeted for finance and loan denials is so-called late payments.

Every Black person that pays bills by check is late be-cause even if beast bankers receive payment days before the due date, the devilish financial companies will hold checks for up to seven days or more before processing or depositing the checks so they can charge Black customers late fees which results in billions of dollars in unearned income.

If your pay check is given to you on the first of the month and you hold the check for seven days, there is no way you can go to court and sue your employer for interest on your earning by suggesting that the pay check you got on the first was late because you didn’t cash the check the day you got the check.

No one can pull some BS like that but modern day money changers or beast bankers!

Let me tell you how good the loan life is for people with pale skin tones.

Some people can file for bankruptcy one day and walk into a bank with no money, no collateral, bo good credit score and get a $1,000,000 loan with only their signature!

If you know of a bank that will loan a Black man or woman large sums of money by getting their signatures, let me know where that banks is.

You don’t hear about that kind of transaction on Tom Joyner or Steve Harvey radio shows, see it on BET, TV One on the OWN Network or anywhere else in Hollywood! It won’t happen almost any place in the world if the borrower is Black.

A border wall has to be painted on occasion, it has to be repaired sometimes and constantly needs to be maintained to work as it was intended to.

A red line wall is oftentimes invisible to the community eye but can last forever if the red-lined communities can’t build and operate their own community banks and credit unions.

The politicians you love can get a high interest loan but they have little or no interest in calling their banker friends or bank lobbyists to assist you with obtaining financing.

The border wall is a bad idea but the financial wall that keeps people of color from participating in lending and other financial transactions is devastating to all communities governed by a racist and capitalist society.

Don’t let beast bankers, predatory lenders and financial crooks wall you out with red lines on a map that block your personal and community progress!