Summary of Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor's Race for Profit

By IRB Media

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#1 In August 1967, the House of Representatives rejected a bill to exterminate rats in the inner city, and in response the protestors chanted We want a rat bill! at progressively higher volumes. The previous attempt at passing the bill had not been simply voted down but ridiculed in the process.

#2 During the Watts rebellion, a reporter interviewed two Black teenagers about why the riots had happened. One explained where he and his family lived: We live in a two-bedroom apartment. The rent is too high and rats, they are big. You open the back door and one of them jumps over your foot from the back porch. But we still have to live there.

#3 In 1966, a Chicago baby was killed by a rat while sleeping in his crib. More than a thousand African Americans gathered on Chicago’s West Side in protest.

#4 The urban vermin trope symbolized the degradation of Black urban life in the United States. It was a product of repeated reports by African American media about the conditions in cities, which were largely ignored by mainstream explanations that blamed the housekeeping and hygiene of individual families.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: May 2, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822500747

IRB Media

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Insights on Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor's Race for Profit

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 6

Insights from Chapter 7

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

In August 1967, the House of Representatives rejected a bill to exterminate rats in the inner city, and in response the protestors chanted We want a rat bill! at progressively higher volumes. The previous attempt at passing the bill had not been simply voted down but ridiculed in the process.

#2

During the Watts rebellion, a reporter interviewed two Black teenagers about why the riots had happened. One explained where he and his family lived: We live in a two-bedroom apartment. The rent is too high and rats, they are big. You open the back door and one of them jumps over your foot from the back porch. But we still have to live there.

#3

In 1966, a Chicago baby was killed by a rat while sleeping in his crib. More than a thousand African Americans gathered on Chicago’s West Side in protest.

#4

The urban vermin trope symbolized the degradation of Black urban life in the United States. It was a product of repeated reports by African American media about the conditions in cities, which were largely ignored by mainstream explanations that blamed the housekeeping and hygiene of individual families.

#5

By 1960, 60 percent of Americans were homeowners, and homeownership on a mass scale became a foundation on which the American economy could grow and flourish. But the housing was not evenly distributed.

#6

By mid-century, the condition of Black neighborhoods was a reflection of the tenants living in them. The dilapidated state of Black neighborhoods was used as proof that African Americans were not fit to own property.

#7

While the FHA made it easier for white Americans to buy homes, it made it much more difficult for African Americans to buy homes, as their properties were often valued differently and they were excluded from many of the programs available to white homeowners.

#8

The FHA’s exclusion of African Americans from mortgage protections reflected the worst of racial pseudoscience, including the presumption of Black inferiority and a consequent detriment to property values.

#9

The FHA began as an agency intent on expanding homeownership to lower-income families, but its policies would eventually be used to exclude African Americans.

#10

The FHA worked to expand homeownership among lower-income families, and did so by reducing the down payment and