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 $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, and 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.
