Credit Opportunities, Race, and Presumptions: Does the McDonnell Douglas Framework Apply in Fair Lending Cases

Congress has recognized that [i]n a credit oriented society such as ours, impediments to sources of credit based on extraneous factors such as race, color, religion, age, sex, marital status, and the like, have a deleterious effect on both the individual victims of discrimination, and on the economy as a whole. 2 Minority borrowers feel the impact of credit discrimination. They make me feel like I was wasting my time. Like I wasn\u27t worthy of being a home owner. 3 Lenders often do not realize what they have done. The discrimination in mortgage lending with which I\u27ve become familiar is not necessarily malicious or abusive. Indeed, in many cases, it\u27s often unconscious. It, nevertheless, has been found to exist and is generally embodied in some sort of unfounded reluctance to engage in mortgage lending in certain neighborhoods