Government
The Dramatic Racial Bias of Subprime Lending During the Housing Boom
Blacks and Latinos were more than twice as likely as comparable whites to receive such high-cost loans.
Through a strange kind of logic – the sort that makes sense if you're a large bank at the height of the housing boom – high-income black households were actually the perfect customers for subprime loans. Black communities had long been ignored by banks, creating a void in the market for anyone pedaling these relatively new financial products. And subprime loans, while risky, were tremendously profitable (for the banks) when the homeowners didn't foreclose, thanks to their higher fees and interest rates.
Give a black family that could probably qualify for a prime loan a subprime one instead, and the lender likely wins.