Systemic racism takes many forms,
not the least of which is land theft. Simply
put, Black people have lost a staggering
amount of property over the years, land they
owned, worked and cultivated through hard
work, made a living from, supported their
families with and passed down to generations
coming after them. But in a nation already
built on the stolen land, Black people have
had their property pulled from underneath
them. And it continues to this day.
Since the
beginning of the 20th century, Black
farmers have lost millions of acres of
land - over 90% - as a result of systemic
racism, government action, deception and
threats of violence and lynching. In 1920,
there were 1
million Black farmers,
representing 14% of farmers and owning 15
million acres of land.
Since that time, Black farmers lost 11
million acres, and today they own only 1%
of the farmland in America. Chalk it up to
years of systemic discrimination by the
USDA - which treated Black farmers
unfairly and excluded them from farm loans
and programs, - foreclosures, and the
Great Migration of Black folks from the
South to the urban centers of the North.
In
California, Los Angeles County has moved
to return a $75 million oceanfront
property that was seized from a Black
family by eminent domain in 1924, part of
a racially-motivated plan by the city to
remove Black families from the area. Black
people had turned Manhattan
Beach to a
popular resort where Black people could
get away. The Black residents faced racial
harassment and Ku Klux Klan arson.
Eventually, the city condemned the area in
1924, seized the land through eminent
domain - when the government takes private
property for public use and compensates
the owner - and claimed a public park
would be built on the land.
This, as
the Gullah-Geechee people
of the Sea Islands of North Carolina,
South Carolina, Georgia and Florida have
lost most of their land to development,
luxury resorts, golf courses and upscale
enclaves - and because of property laws
that disadvantage them. Facing threats to
their land from climate
change, hurricanes and rising sea levels,
Black folks in the Sea Islands and
Lowcountry are hoodwinked and bamboozled
by gentrification and corporate
interlopers. Families have held the ancestral
land for generations through a form of
communal land ownership known as heirs’
property. Under
the system, numerous heirs may each own a
percentage share of a parcel of land, without
a
will, clear
title or paperwork, with the property
passed down through oral tradition.
Developers and corporations may entice
individual family members to sell their
share, in effect becoming a part-owner of
the land themselves and possibly forcing
an auction or sale of the land.
The issue
of land loss facing Gullah-Geechee people
was touched upon in the recent Netflix
docuseries High on
the Hog: How African American
Cuisine Transformed America, which
examines Black culinary history. In the
series, artist and cultural
preservationist Gabrielle
E.W.
Carter shared
that the state of North Carolina seized
part of her family farm to build a
highway, displacing her relatives in the
process.
When one considers the racial
wealth gap between Black and white
households, part of the problem is land
ownership. In a capitalist society, Black
people have been unable to build
generational wealth from the land that was
stolen from them. A crime is taking place
right before our eyes, and we must
understand this if we hope to find a
solution.
