In Philadelphia, whites received 10 times as many conventional mortgage loans as African-Americans during 2015 and 2016, even though the two groups reside in the city in roughly equal numbers.

Banks have subverted the purpose of the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, which was supposed to get them to lend and invest more, and open more branches, in low- and moderate-income areas. This was to correct decades of damage the federal government caused by encouraging lenders to ignore black areas until the passage of the federal Fair Housing Act in 1968. The Reveal study found that affordable mortgages issued in historically black neighborhoods to comply with the reinvestment act were going to white newcomers instead of longtime black residents. This has accelerated a pattern of gentrification that forces out black residents.

These problems are rampant throughout the United States. Three years ago, for example, a striking study commissioned by the city of Richmond, Va., found that black applicants were less likely to receive home purchase loans or refinance loans regardless of their incomes.

Upper-income black people were even more likely to be denied loans, as compared to similarly situated whites, than lower income black people were to their white counterparts. This underscored yet again that African-Americans cannot escape economic discrimination simply by becoming wealthier, especially when financial institutions persist in punishing them for living in majority minority neighborhoods. A destructive bill pending in the Senate would deepen this problem by exempting 85 percent of banks from reporting mortgage data that allows regulators and fair housing groups to ensure that home loans are being issued in a nondiscriminatory way.

By denying African-American families mortgage credit, the financial industry also denies them the opportunity to accumulate household wealth — part of the reason that white median family net worth is nearly 10 times that of black families. Beyond that, the decision to withhold credit from minority neighborhoods has turned too many of them into hollowed-out areas with high poverty, failing schools, lower property values and a markedly worse quality of life.