You're projecting the current onto the past. It was a problem, but it wasn't the show stopper it would be today. Not having access to credit wasn't as big a deal when there weren't subsidized credit products and you therefore weren't competing with people who had artificial access to cheap money.
The reason minority communities exist is because those people were wealthy enough to own land, have businesses, etc. And this was before the modern idea of a home or business as a leverage investments so when they bought homes or started businesses they mostly did it where people like them were, not where a bunch of snobbish white people who hated them were (because that's where the best investment growth potential is).
Pretty much every discernible ethnic group in the history of the US has made an upward march from generally poor to more or less the same as average. There are two exceptions, native americans and blacks. And the latter was poised to do so in the 1960s. Much has been written about both so I don't feel the need to opine here.
Yeah, society was racist AF back then and imparted a lot of glass ceilings and certainly kept certain groups a little more down, but the past wasn't simply like the present but with more racism.
The reason minority communities exist is because those people were wealthy enough to own land, have businesses, etc. And this was before the modern idea of a home or business as a leverage investments so when they bought homes or started businesses they mostly did it where people like them were, not where a bunch of snobbish white people who hated them were (because that's where the best investment growth potential is).
Pretty much every discernible ethnic group in the history of the US has made an upward march from generally poor to more or less the same as average. There are two exceptions, native americans and blacks. And the latter was poised to do so in the 1960s. Much has been written about both so I don't feel the need to opine here.
Yeah, society was racist AF back then and imparted a lot of glass ceilings and certainly kept certain groups a little more down, but the past wasn't simply like the present but with more racism.