The BobboSphere: Don't believe everything you think.

In late August of 2005, Hurricane Katrina ravaged the US Gulf Coast killing nearly 2000 people and flooding 80% of the City of New Orleans. Entire neighborhoods disappeared under water and many people were trapped on rooftops or in the New Orleans SuperDome for days.

The working class areas in and around New Orleans were the hardest hit, especially the 9th Ward which was largely Black. Today, nearly 3 years later, many people have not been able to return to their homes and the City of New Orleans is using the catastophe as an opportunity to gentrify the city, drive out thousands of its former citizens and insure huge profits for the real estate industry at the expense of the city's displaced residents.

The hurricane may have been a weather disaster, but the rebu­ilding of New Orleans is a human disaster of cold-blooded ethnic cleansing.

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Now an economic hurricane is ravaging all of working class America, especially communities of color. Entire neighborhoods are at risk as banks foreclose subprime mortgages, people are thrown out into the street and boarded up homes sink into disrepair.

What kind of nation do we live in when thousands of people are homeless, but our housing "industry" is emptying out houses?

According to United for a Fair Economy:

The subprime-mortgage crisis will cost black and Hispanic homeowners up to $256 billion - the worst financial hit for minorities in modern U.S. history, a new study finds.

“The dream that Martin Luther King Jr. once spoke of has been foreclosed,” Boston-based United for a Fair Economy wrote in a report set for release to coincide with today’s 79th anniversary of King’s birth.

Analyzing previously released research on the subprime meltdown, the report projected blacks will lose $71.5 billion to $121.6 billion on high-cost mortgages taken out in the past eight years. Hispanics will forfeit another $75.8 billion to $128.9 billion.

You can download the entire 56 page report here

In the bad old days, nightriders in white sheets armed with guns would drive people of color from their homes. Now it's well dressed, well coiffed people in white collars armed with briefcases. And just to show how racially enlightened we are today, they drive out white folks too. I suppose some people would call that progress.

As Woody Guthrie used to sing, "Some will rob you with a six gun...and some with a fountain pen."

But the even the bad old days weren't all bad. When faced with foreclosures, Depression Era farmers would attend foreclosure sales and with stony expressions, shotguns and pitchforks, dare anyone to bid more than a penny. In Depression Era cities, the Unemployed Councils would gather up the neighbors and block evictions with their bodies and their their anger.

Maybe it's time to give Wall Street and their friends a little history lesson.

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