Bruce Orenstein visited Chicago recently to screen his latest documentary, The Color Tax.
On February 8, filmmaker and Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity Artist-in-Residence Bruce Orenstein presented The Color Tax: Origins of the Modern Day Racial Wealth Gap at the Illinois Institute of Technology. The forty-minute film, one of five episodes that Orenstein is producing as part of his Shame of Chicago project on the history of housing segregation there, tells the story of how a long-standing system of predatory home contract sales stole hard-earned wealth from the pockets of Chicago’s Black families, denying these families the equity-building mortgages that were given to their White counterparts.
The event was sponsored by the Chicago Southside Film Festival.
Days later, Orenstein presented a screening at Providence Bank and Trust in Chicago. In addition to Orenstein and community leaders, the panel discussion that followed featured Dr. Clinton Boyd, Jr., who is currently a postdoctoral associate at the Cook Center.
Click here to learn more about The Color Tax and the Shame of Chicago project.