Bank of America (BoA) is by far the largest bank in the U.S. As such, they occupy a position of leadership within the banking industry. But does that also mean that they treat all Americans equally? As New American Media reports, a new study raises serious questions about whether BoA is fulfilling its “equal opportunity” mission properly:

The study, issued last week, examined Bank of America’s pattern of bank branches against its top two competitors in Buffalo, Chicago, Detroit, New York, Philadelphia, and St. Louis—cities ranked by the U.S. Census Bureau among the top-ten most-racially segregated in the country.

Two key findings of the study, “Shut Out of The American Dream: How Bank of America is Systematically Underserving Communities of Color and Harming Low-Income Families with Questionable Practices,” revealed Bank of America fails to locate bank branches in majority minority neighborhoods regardless of the proportion of area residents who are minority and Bank of America is more likely to be the mortgage lender for a white borrower than for a black American in all the cities examined.

In four of the six cities, Bank of America ranked last in locating bank branches in majority minority neighborhoods and was twice as likely to lend to white mortgage applicants than to black mortgage applicants in Detroit and Chicago, the study also shows. . . .

“The more we look at the practices of the biggest banks, the worse things we uncover,” Stephen Lerner, Assistant to the President, SEIU, said in a statement. “Here’s a bank that is already using its size and market dominance to drive up fees and interest rates on working people—and now it’s trying to grow even bigger. If a bank is going to be this big and this powerful it should have responsibilities to the communities in which it operates.”

As scholars who study residential segregation will readily tell you, unfair and discriminatory lending practices have been at the heart of much of the segregation that African Americans have endured and continue to endure in regard to trying to move out of poor neighborhoods. Now we learn that the nation’s largest lender, Bank of America has been engaged in a different kind of discrimination.

Apparently, it’s too much to ask this country’s financial institutions to help disadvantaged groups become self-sufficient. Instead, lenders like Bank of America apparently continue to treat customers differently, based on the color of their skin.