I hate these kinds of articles. There are thousands of reasons why this gentleman was denied a loan for redevelopment of these properties, and it is just taken as a truism that it must be racism. The article doesn't even attempt to justify this view, and simply expects the reader to take it at face-value.

This is serious stuff. If there is institutional racism, then we need to stamp it out. You cannot be frivolous with these accusations. And the problem with this case, there's nothing you can do. You can't even inundate the bank with calls to stop their racism, because they didn't even bother doing any investigative reporting to see if the bank is following some sort of stated or unstated racist policy - so you have no facts to stand on. The article doesn't say it, but it is clear as day that there is a lot of risk in redevelopment of these properties. For one thing, nobody has done it yet. There is a reason why these properties are abandoned and nobody took a flyer on their redevelopment. Maybe it is oversight by existing real estate developers, but maybe they know something you don't. Locally, there is a building, in a prime location, that has stood abandoned for years - turns out though the building and land is cheaper, redevelopment would mean doing an environmental cleanup that was ostensibly cost-prohibitive. The city didn't even want to reposes it even though they could (the property owned lots of bank taxes).

It's irresponsible journalism to do this.

>Properties in black areas are priced 23% lower than in white areas, says Andre Perry

As always, whenever a line like this is presented, the reader is invited to assume that the reason for that is racism. Is that true though? I have no doubt that this fact is true as stated, but no effort has been done to explain 'why' this fact is. It could be the case that banks are racist (and even in that case, there are multitude of modalities for racism so you still need to do the legwork), but it could be a thousand other reasons. And it is important to know.

>They compared my eight historic properties to farmland 14 or so miles away, and they compared my buildings to an abandoned car wash.

I mean, yes, I believe it. Banks are weird like this. They are banks. They don't understand the nuances of the business you're in. My farmer friend got denied a loan (and even used farm collateral) for replacement of a machine to aide in drainage tiling because it wasn't deemed a farm-centric operation by the Farm Credit bank (or something like that). To be fair, he did use the tile machine to contract out the service as a side-gig but that's a distinction without meaning. Farmers always have side-hussles that fund farm operations.

>JP Morgan Chase, the largest bank in the US, launched its Advancing Black Pathways programme just over a year ago.

I don't know anything about the program, but if it is debt-based (as opposed to investment for equity), then I have mixed feelings, because debt is the fastest way for a new business to go underwater. Starting a business is hard enough, and when you have debt hanging over you, it makes it so much harder to survive because business is cyclic - you have bad quarters and good quarters, and debt will inflate a bad quarter and put a damper on the good quarters.