'American Casino': How Our Nation's Financial Sector Became a Massive and Unregulated Gambling Operation

Well, originally, whole areas of the population, specifically African Americans and other minorities, were "red-lined." There would literally be a red line around areas on realtors' maps. And you don't make a loan to people living inside those lines. Because they weren't part of the credit system.

So when they started hawking these subprime loans, there were these markets ... I mean, people in inner-city Baltimore or other American cities, or minority areas around the country ... they were hungry for credit. They had never had access to loans.

So suddenly they were being offered these loans, they were being sold loans. But not prime loans like, you know, white people got. But subprime loans, i.e. loans that had predatory rates of interest or balloon payments. And that's what John Rellman, who is a very great civil rights lawyer, discusses in the film; he describes this as reverse red-lining. And as you say, says it's the civil rights issue of the 2000s.