Much like "thug" is the new "Nigger", so was "subprime" at the time, especially in the South. I actually heard "Subprime crisis, that's what we get for lending to Niggers" said plainly and openly in Texas at the time.
Most subprime loans weren't to black people, but that certainly wasn't the implication at the time. Just another case in our racist society of waging a class war, and making it a racial issue.
I was offered a ninja loan at the time myself, and I wasn't subprime. I wanted to buy in the boom, a first home. I budgeted a payment, and found a cheap condo in a slightly run-down complex in a nice neighborhood. I went for a loan for the $80k (almost exactly the budget I had made out). Got approved for $350k or something like that, with payments that were roughly the same as my income. It was obvious that the loan broker was wanting to write me a $350k loan, verify I had $5k in cash reserves, then 3 months later, he'd have sold the loan as AAA+ or whatever, when my cash reserves ran out, and I was left homeless and penniless, and someone else was on the hook for the default. There was no way I could take the loan at the approved amount and make payments. But that didn't stop him from trying.