Tonight, I plan to have a conversation with NAACP President Ben Jealous about the disturbing partnership between the NAACP and Wells Fargo, the company accused of egregious amounts of predatory lending and home foreclosures in the African American community.  When I spoke with one of their representatives this afternoon, I was told that the organization is demanding transparency and accountability between themselves and Wells Fargo.  I made the simple point that there should also be transparency and accountability between the NAACP and the African American constituents that the organization professes to represent.  I do not know Ben well, but I interpret him to be a man of integrity.  But sometimes, an office, corporate money and an organizational machine can be bigger than the desires of one person.

I have a tremendous amount of faith in the NAACP, so my hope is that they will structure this arrangement in a way that makes sense.  As of right now, I am not quite comfortable with the way this all looks.  To date, what I’ve received from the NAACP is a list of principles of fair lending (which I invite you to read – I’ll share any other Wells Fargo-related documentation they send to me in the future) that one of their representatives claims that Wells Fargo has agreed to in principle.  The only problem is that it only matters if you agree to something in writing and you are very specific in exactly how you are going to fulfill your commitment.  What’s more is that getting Wells Fargo to agree to stop their predatory lending behavior is not the same as reminding them to actually rectify the damage done from crimes allegedly committed in the past.  No matter how much money Wells Fargo gives to the NAACP for financial literacy classes, that doesn’t help the senior citizen on the south side of Chicago who is homeless because of a predatory loan granted to her in 2006.   Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to steal billions of dollars and then simply promise that you won’t do it anymore? I need to know specifically how the broader community is going to be given access to remedies to correct the tens of billions of dollars in damage that was done over the past 5 years.

The article is below if you’d like to read it.

Dr. Boyce

Why is the NAACP Taking Money from Predatory Lender Wells Fargo?

According to the Federal Reserve, African-Americans were three times more likely to receive higher priced loan products than non-Hispanic whites in 2005 and 2006. More than half of the high-priced loans issued to African-Americans during 2006 are now at risk of foreclosure, being over 60 days past due. Black home ownership, which had seen dramatic gains in the early part of the decade, hit a sharp decline as a result of the foreclosure crisis. We have started to move backward.

One of the alleged culprits in this multi-billion dollar scandal is a company called Wells Fargo. Wells Fargo has been sued by state and local governments around the nation for allegedly engaging in massive amounts of predatory lending, which has devastated black and brown communities everywhere. Terrible bank loans, combined with widespread unemployment in the black community, have served to destroy hundreds of billions of dollars in wealth in a matter of months.

You can imagine my shock when I learned that Wells Fargo, the company accused of squashing the financial security of millions of African-Americans, is now listed as one of the title sponsors of the NAACP’s annual convention this July.

Not only is such a partnership unacceptable on the surface, there are quite a few reasons for many of us to be skeptical of an organization (the NAACP) that drops a lawsuit against a company and soon after has the company appearing as a major donor. Not a good look for the NAACP, a group that is already accused of having sold itself to corporate America, arguably becoming socially impotent in the process.

When blogger Faye Anderson brought the Wells Fargo sponsorship to my attention, I didn’t automatically buy into the hype. I didn’t and do not want to believe that the NAACP would sell itself to a company accused of being one of the greatest vultures in the African-American community since the advent of slavery. I don’t know Ben Jealous personally (we’ve only crossed paths), and it’s not that I am important enough for the NAACP to acknowledge (I’m just a lowly professor with a big mouth), but I remain hopeful that they can provide a thorough explanation for what might turn out to be quite an embarrassing debacle. Black people deserve a chance to know what in the heck is going on.

Partnering with Wells Fargo is not a problem in itself, since it may be the case that the company is working with the NAACP to improve its way of doing business. That’s a good idea, but the question becomes whether the suspicious bank needs to make right with the NAACP, or instead find redemption with the millions of African-Americans who lost their homes. Another star-studded gala or extravagant NAACP Awards show does nothing for those who’ve become homeless or bankrupt because of the predatory lending practices allegedly committed by Wells Fargo. That’s like a child molester hurting 200 kids in the neighborhood and then being granted sainthood by the local priest. The NAACP’s fiduciary responsibility to protect the interests of the black community must play a role in the nature and transparency of the Wells Fargo settlement. They can’t get around this fact.

I am not standing with the Tavis Smiley campers who want to attack NAACP President Ben Jealous — or anyone who participated in the meeting with President Obama last month. There are some who stand to cast instant judgment on the nature of this partnership, presuming the very worst at first glance. I believe this is wrong.

But the NAACP must do the following in order to make things right with this deal they’ve made with Wells Fargo: