Redlining is an illegal practice used by bankers and insurance companies to delineate neighborhoods in which they refuse to invest or operate. Modern-day redlining is often fueled by harmful algorithms (what O’Neil calls “weapons of math destruction”). Bankers and insurers create their own ratings, or e-scores, to determine how worthy a person is of a loan or insurance policy based on proxy data about similar groups of people.
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Redlining Term Timeline in Weapons of Math Destruction
The timeline below shows where the term Redlining appears in Weapons of Math Destruction. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 9: No Safe Zone
...and insurance companies would start delineating neighborhoods that they wouldn’t invest in—this practice was called “redlining,” and it wasn’t outlawed until 1968. Yet redlining is still pervasive in U.S. society, and...
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Many WMDs that perpetuate redlining are found in the insurance sector. Insurance grew out of the predictive field of actuarial...
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