Times must be hard for the SCLC:

At the end of June, as the subprime mortgage crisis was driving the economy into a tailspin, Charles Steele Jr., the president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), took to the op-ed page of the Washington Post to decry the devastating effect the meltdown was having on minority homeowners. But rather than support currently pending measures to better regulate the credit markets, the leader of one of the nation’s oldest civil rights groups instead attacked them. Steele was particularly upset about a Federal Reserve proposal that would crack down on subprime credit cards—high-interest cards marketed to people with bad credit.

Steele rose to the card issuers’ defense, invoking his group’s founder, Martin Luther King Jr., and claiming that any move to regulate the cards would deny minorities access to much-needed credit. [ . . .] The argument was an odd one coming from a civil rights group. Most consumer groups believe that the subprime industry is largely predatory, and rife with abuses that disproportionately affect minorities. But Steele’s op-ed makes a lot more sense when you consider a detail the Post at first left out: In August 2007, the SCLC formed a partnership with CompuCredit, a subprime credit card issuer and payday lending company.

[ . . . ]

While the civil rights group has been lauding its corporate partner, the federal government has taken a slightly different view of CompuCredit’s contributions to economic empowerment. Last month, the Federal Trade Commission sued the company for unfair and deceptive trade practices, as well as violating the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. The FTC alleged that CompuCredit bilked consumers out of at least $217 million through a scheme in which consumers paid so much in fees that they rarely had any credit available on the company’s Visa cards. The CompuCredit cards are better known as “fee harvesting” cards—that is, credit cards sold to people in dire financial straits that have high interest rates, low credit balances, and lots and lots of fees for people who generally can’t afford them.

Nice job, Mr. Steele.