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The mood affiliation of this article is pretty shocking. Is racism at work in debt collection? Are debt collectors disproportionately ignoring bad debts owed by

The mood affiliation of this article is pretty shocking. Is racism at work in debt collection? Are debt collectors disproportionately ignoring bad debts owed by white people? Why would they do that - white supremacy is somehow overriding profit motive? This is a very odd question for the article to ignore. Another obvious question: why can't some greedy person go collect these debts and get rich? Is this a business opportunity? The article also chooses lots of odd base rates: "Most of MSD’s customers are white, but the suits were largely filed against residents of black communities..." - Isn't the relevant comparison to the number of delinquent customers in the aforementioned regions? "...even accounting for income, the rate of judgments was twice as high in mostly black neighborhoods as it was in mostly white ones." Why are they accounting for income, rather than accounting for the amount of bad debt? I don't quite understand what this article is attempting to claim. Can someone clarify it for me?

jquery 11y ago
Welcome to the bizzaro world of disparate impact politics. Equality under the law is the new oppression. Have you been under a rock the past couple years?
- icebraining 11y ago
  "In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread." -- Anatole France, Le Lys Rouge (1894)
  - jquery 11y ago
    You've turned a racial issue into an economic one. That's quite a moving of goalposts.
massysett 11y ago
"This is a very odd question for the article to ignore." It didn't ignore that question. It said that blacks have much lower net worth than whites, so they have fewer resources to draw on to pay bills than whites. "why can't some greedy person go collect these debts and get rich?" Because the debtors have little money to collect. You can't squeeze water from a rock. However, the article does point out that many of the plaintiffs have purchased the debt and are now collecting it, which would seem to qualify as the "greedy person" looking for the "business opportunity" that you mention. "I don't quite understand what this article is attempting to claim. Can someone clarify it for me?" The thesis is stated right in the headline and sub-headline.
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  Your first paragraph suggests that blacks are more delinquent than whites. Is that your intent? Or do you mean something else? Your second paragraph makes no sense. Do black people but not white people have money to pay debts? That would seem to contradict your first paragraph. Remember, I was asking (predicated on the idea that there is some unfairness) why people would collect debts owed by blacks but not whites. If the headline is the sole thesis, that's fine. I guess I thought the article was hinting at some kind of unfairness, rather than merely the fair application of debt collection processes being applied to disproportionately delinquent black people.
  - DanBC 11y ago
    Imagine poor white people and poor black people have similar levels of debt. Now imagine the poor black people are subjected to vastly more police stops and prosecution and fines (even though crime levels are similar). Those poor black people now have to pay money to courts or go to jail, which means they can't service the other debt, which means their debts are sold off to aggressive debt collectors.
    - yummyfajitas 11y ago
      If black people did commit crimes at a higher rate than whites, this might contradict your narrative... You also seem to be postulating a large amount of undetected and unprosecuted criminality among all populations. Why do you believe this is the case?

jquery 11y ago

Welcome to the bizzaro world of disparate impact politics. Equality under the law is the new oppression. Have you been under a rock the past couple years?

icebraining 11y ago
"In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread." -- Anatole France, Le Lys Rouge (1894)
- jquery 11y ago
  You've turned a racial issue into an economic one. That's quite a moving of goalposts.

massysett 11y ago

"This is a very odd question for the article to ignore." It didn't ignore that question. It said that blacks have much lower net worth than whites, so they have fewer resources to draw on to pay bills than whites. "why can't some greedy person go collect these debts and get rich?" Because the debtors have little money to collect. You can't squeeze water from a rock. However, the article does point out that many of the plaintiffs have purchased the debt and are now collecting it, which would seem to qualify as the "greedy person" looking for the "business opportunity" that you mention. "I don't quite understand what this article is attempting to claim. Can someone clarify it for me?" The thesis is stated right in the headline and sub-headline.

yummyfajitas 11y ago
Your first paragraph suggests that blacks are more delinquent than whites. Is that your intent? Or do you mean something else? Your second paragraph makes no sense. Do black people but not white people have money to pay debts? That would seem to contradict your first paragraph. Remember, I was asking (predicated on the idea that there is some unfairness) why people would collect debts owed by blacks but not whites. If the headline is the sole thesis, that's fine. I guess I thought the article was hinting at some kind of unfairness, rather than merely the fair application of debt collection processes being applied to disproportionately delinquent black people.
- DanBC 11y ago
  Imagine poor white people and poor black people have similar levels of debt. Now imagine the poor black people are subjected to vastly more police stops and prosecution and fines (even though crime levels are similar). Those poor black people now have to pay money to courts or go to jail, which means they can't service the other debt, which means their debts are sold off to aggressive debt collectors.
  - yummyfajitas 11y ago
    If black people did commit crimes at a higher rate than whites, this might contradict your narrative... You also seem to be postulating a large amount of undetected and unprosecuted criminality among all populations. Why do you believe this is the case?