Mon 17 Mar 2008
A group of 15 leading American mortgage lenders is being accused of racism over the way in which the banks lent money to black customers.
The mortgage banks - including Washington Mutual, Bear Stearns and JP Morgan Chase - are all named in a lawsuit filed by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
NAACP has recently filed paperwork to speed up the class-action lawsuit, in which it alleges that the banks steered black borrowers into taking predatory sub-prime loans.