As I frequently say, there is always more than one thing happening.No, I think you (and he) are both confused about what redlining is. Redlining was always about the profit motive.
In 1935, the Federal Home Loan Bank Board (FHLBB) asked the Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) to look at 239 cities and create "residential security maps" to indicate the level of security for real-estate investments in each surveyed city. "Type D" neighborhoods were outlined in red and were considered the most risky for mortgage support.
They weren't outlined in red because black people lived there. They were outlined in red because of financial risk. That means they could legally charge more interest, because the loans were riskier. But what was made illegal was not serving those areas.
Because of the overall racist nature of whites in those years, businesses did not want to be known as associating with blacks, regardless of the economic capacity of those blacks. White neighborhoods did not want black residents, regardless of the economic capacity of those blacks.
Because of the overall racist nature of whites in those years, black residential areas were commonly deprived of city services and residential zoning protection, which certainly brought down property values regardless of the economic capacity of the blacks living in them.
So, yes, they could make an economic argument to withhold business from those areas, but it was all still based on underlying racist policies. More than one thing was happening, so more than one thing was true.
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