this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2023

177 points (96.8% liked)

News

23618 readers

3870 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil

Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.

2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.

Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.

3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.

Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.

4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.

Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.

5. Only recent news is allowed.

Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.

6. All posts must be news articles.

No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.

7. No duplicate posts.

If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.

8. Misinformation is prohibited.

Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.

9. No link shorteners.

The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.

10. Don't copy entire article in your post body

For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

177

Navy Federal rejected more than half of black applicants for mortgages (www.cnn.com)

submitted 1 year ago by Yamainwitch to c/news

17 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I'm not super happy with the lack of supporting data, just colorful graphs and a lot of emotional anecdotes but there is a clear disparity that I think warrants greater investigation. I love the credit union movement and was shocked to read this article. I would love to hear your opinions lemmings!

top 17 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] [email protected] 51 points 1 year ago (1 children)

With respect to data, there does seem to be a damning amount of it in the CFPB dataset they analyzed for the article. The fact that approvals were this disproportionate even when accounting for “income, debt-to-income ratio, property value, downpayment percentage, and neighborhood characteristics” is alarming. Specifically with respect to income, approval for lowest-quartile whites exceeded that of highest quartile blacks. Yes, credit score was not available in the dataset, but we know it doesn’t fully explain the gap because of its frequency as a cited reason for denial, and reliance on credit doesn’t really do much to dig NFCU out of this hole IMO.

I’m tempted to agree with the authors assessment that the use of automated tools by the underwriters is a likely contributor. Use a tool trained on historically racist data and practices, and that’s what you’ll get more of.

[–] NOT_RICK 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

We have a saying at work regarding data, “garbage in, garbage out”. If they’re using clearly racist historical data they deserve this shitstorm. They really should have known better

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's a rather old and common concept. GIGO

[–] NOT_RICK 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You’re not wrong, work’s just the first place I heard it

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

As long as you're not a software engineer with a decade of experience in, I ain't shook.

If you are, then I am not mad at you- just whoever was supposed to teach or mentor you.

[–] corroded 9 points 1 year ago (5 children)

How would a bank or credit union even know what racial background a loan applicant comes from? I have a mortgage, and I've had auto loans and personal loans in the past. Not once did I ever see a bank employee face-to-face, even for my mortgage.

A suppose the sound of a person's voice or their name could give some clues on certain occasions.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In the US lots of forms have race or ethnicity input fields. It always baffles me as a European. Like how is that relevant, except for discrimination.

[–] zigmus64 17 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I think the logic is to track data like this… I’ve never understood it either though…

[–] Speculater 6 points 1 year ago

We're tracking the data to prove we're going to do what you said we're going to do.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Very much for this. In schools in decent states the students self identity. That is then used to look for over representation in suspension or expulsion.

How else can mathematically prove bias or discrimination?

Individually, the ethnicity is known or presumed by staff but without it being known systemically it can't be addressed systemically.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

It's easier to ask for it upfront and ban companies from using than try and reconstruct the data to analyze after the fact. There scale of discrimination was so severe in housing the government forces this information to be collected and reported for all applications, because it's easier to detect the discrimination that way. There's also penalties for not submitting the race or ethnicity on enough applications.

[–] bassomitron 14 points 1 year ago

Creditors have access to your entire life in the background. So even if your loan application doesn't have race/ethnicity on it, your credit file sure as hell does.

[–] netburnr 11 points 1 year ago

Equfax knows a whole lot about you, more than just your race.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

They run your information against a number of services when you apply for a loan. That data is 100% available to them. Source: I work with this data daily.

[–] cybervseas 7 points 1 year ago

Like the author says this is probably due to how automated systems were trained. They weren't made to be racist, but based on certain traits are more likely to reject, and that ends up making them discriminate against black applicants. I'm thinking: neighborhood, street, schools attended, stuff like that.

[–] Potatos_are_not_friends 5 points 1 year ago

Systemic racism strikes again!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

They tried to make their decisions too clever. The analysis of personal background beyond basic measures is a problem. That additional analysis is where biases breed.