File: powell final for Darby 800 Created on: 3/15/2009 12:55:00 PM Last Printed: 4/3/2009 10:11:00 AM DENVER UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW [Vol. 86.Obama utility district has challenged the application of this section to itself, arguing that Congress did not take sufficient account of more than four decades of progress toward racial equality, proven by the recent election of the nation’s first black president.71 Does this historic moment mean that the central justification for the VRA has now dissipated? It might be easier to adopt a conservative approach and question the VRA in its entirety than attempt to show that this is one of the instances in which race still matters. Perhaps the issue will be decided by Chief Justice Roberts, who opposed efforts to expand the voting rights law in 1982 as a young lawyer in the Reagan administration, and who currently and clearly challenges governmental use of racial classifications.72 Even if post-racial liberals can make an argument for maintaining the VRA, or addressing racial isolation in schools or neighborhoods, such an exercise is likely to be seen as inconsistent with the more fundamental position that race does not matter. Of course we could take a more nuanced position that race matters more under some circumstance and not others. And of course this is right, but it flies in the face of our attraction to simplistic answers and our eagerness to be done with race, a position that is markedly less concerned with extant racial conditions. Today the country faces a housing and credit crisis that disproportionately impacts Blacks and Latinos.73 But they remain largely invisible except for the occasional blaming of those communities for taking out loans they could not afford. We know that these communities that have been under-capitalized since World War II, when affirmative action was white.74 With little residential or commercial lending from mainstream banking institutions for decades, isolated communities of color were prey for high-cost credit institutions that face little competition.75 Things have indeed changed since World War II. We could not have had a Black President a decade ago, let alone in the 1940s. Conscious racial attitudes have greatly improved. But it would be wise for us to remember the euphoria after the Brown v. Board of Education deci71. Nw. Austin Mun. Util. Dist. No. One, v. Mukasey, No. 06-1384 (D.D.C. May 30, 2008) (opinion withdrawn from bound volume because it has been amended). 72. Adam Liptak, Supreme Court Takes Voting Rights Case, N.Y. TIMES, January 10, 2009, at A13. 73. U.S. DEP’T OF HOUS. & URBAN DEV., UNEQUAL BURDEN: INCOME AND RACIAL DISPARITIES IN SUBPRIME LENDING IN AMERICA (2000). 74. See powell, supra note 2, at 355; see generally KATZNELSON, supra note 22. 75. CHRISTY ROGERS, A KIRWAN INSTITUTE REPORT: SUBPRIME LOANS, FORECLOSURE, AND THE CREDIT CRISIS: WHAT HAPPENED AND WHY?—A PRIMER, (Kirwan Inst. for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, Ohio State Univ., Dec. 2008), http://4909e99d35cada63e7f757471b7243be73e53e14.gripelements.com/publications/foreclosure_a nd_race_primer_dec_2008.pdf. See also Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Staff Analysis of the Relationship between the CRA and the Subprime Crisis, at 8 (Nov. 21, 2008) (table demonstrating that that only 6% of banking institutions within the CRA assessment area gave high-priced loans to lower-income individuals).