Credit scores actually help minorities.
The system didn’t really kick off in the US until 1989, which I’d guess is more recent than most realize. Until then, you had a sit-down with the bank officer and explained your need. How well do you think THAT went over for black people?
When you apply for credit, the creditor has no clue about race. (Your name can be an indicator. LOL, ask this white boy about getting trashed resumes until I dropped my “black” middle name. 🙄) You’re an anonymous number, all they care about. How in the world could you conflate that with racism?
So, if anything, credit scores clearly work against racism. You could argue that they hurt poor people, and you would be somewhat correct. But lenders aren’t exactly clamoring to loan money to the destitute. In a perfect world, your credit score reflects your ability to repay the loan.
Yes, absolutely this.
Do people think that if they didn’t have a credit score, banks would just freely give loans to anybody? Nah, man, without credit scores, they judged you by your reputation in the community (and if you were black, you probably didn’t share the same ‘community’ with the banker) or else on how much they trusted you. You can imagine how that would go for black people.
And when you got rejected, it wasn’t “ahh well better pay my bills on time for a couple years then try again”, you were just shit outta luck.
And before bank loans (which is another thing people are commonly against) you literally had to have a rich relative, or take loans from a rich person on ridiculous terms.
Credit scores can be pretty annoying when you’re getting started, but they’re a pretty reasonable way for anybody to demonstrate that they can be trusted with money. And they’re a lot better than the old system (still current in much of the world) of: are you already rich or from a rich family? No? Well fuck you then.
Im glad you have found success with your credit score experiance.
On the other hand, Heres a paper reflecting on a few studies showing how credit scores can poorly affect minority communities.
In Cuyahoga County, there are significant disparities in credit health across neighborhoods. Communities of color have the lowest median credit scores, the highest percentage of individuals with subprime credit scores, and the highest share of individuals having debt in collections. On the other hand, majority white communities have the highest median credit scores, lowest percentage of individuals with subprime credit scores, and lowest share of individuals having debt in collections. These disparities are reflected in access to mortgages, mortgage denial rates, and arguably shape access to rental housing. Relying on credit scores and credit histories to determine access to rental housing and mortgages disparately impacts communities of color and helps exacerbate existing inequalities in the region.
And further
In practice, the reliance upon credit scores in evaluating borrowers and tenants disproportionately disadvantages communities of color, perpetuating another cycle of economic and housing injustice.
Credit scores are an improvement over white bankers deciding who gets loans. But they’re not an improvement over black-owned banks deciding who gets loans. The whites bombed Black Wall Street and then added a less bad (but still bad) alternative.
Of course it’s odd. Most people don’t see those “two steps back” (white bankers) as connected to the “one step forward” (credit scores from white bankers) because of this gap.
