Latest / The Breakfast Club / Brea Baker Talks Black Land Ownership, Reparations, New Book + More
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Yep, it's the one more dangerous, wanting to show the
- 0:02Speaker 1: Breakfast Club Charlamagne the God just hilarious, envyous out.
- 0:05Speaker 2: But Lauren la Rossa is in and.
- 0:07Speaker 1: As promised, her mama called up here and said, you
- 0:10Speaker 1: better have my baby up there to talk about that book.
- 0:13Speaker 2: Okay, Bria Baki is here.
- 0:15Speaker 3: Thank you so much for having me, and thank you
- 0:17Speaker 3: mommy for making sure.
- 0:19Speaker 4: That's why I said, it's mommy the manager. Mommy needs
- 0:21Speaker 4: to be the manager.
- 0:24Speaker 2: Your mama.
- 0:24Speaker 1: Fine, and I mean that respect, I mean that respectfully,
- 0:28Speaker 1: beautiful woman. Okay, no disrespect. Okay, yes, yes, yes, I'm
- 0:34Speaker 1: just saying. I'm just saying. Now Rooted, Sim is your
- 0:38Speaker 1: best friend. Sim works here at the Breakfast Club.
- 0:40Speaker 2: How do you how to fall? You and Sim go back?
- 0:42Speaker 3: We went to middle school together and like from then on,
- 0:45Speaker 3: we've just been locked in. We thought we were both
- 0:48Speaker 3: going to be in medicine, and now she's obviously up
- 0:51Speaker 3: here doing this and I'm writing books. So it worked
- 0:53Speaker 3: out exactly as supposed to be. But yeah, we've been
- 0:54Speaker 3: locked in for years.
- 0:56Speaker 2: She's the one who gave me a copy of Rooted. Yes,
- 0:58Speaker 2: that was a while ago. How long ago? I don't even.
- 1:00Speaker 3: Remember, and she said he was pretending like you didn't
- 1:02Speaker 3: read it. I did read it, I know, but he
- 1:04Speaker 3: was playing with her, you know, because.
- 1:06Speaker 2: I'm always playing with them.
- 1:07Speaker 1: And because she didn't, she only gave it to me
- 1:09Speaker 1: wanted she It was two books she gave me, and
- 1:11Speaker 1: she kept asking me, did I read them?
- 1:12Speaker 2: Did I read them?
- 1:13Speaker 1: I read this one, yeah, because it was interested in
- 1:15Speaker 1: me because I'm from South Carolina. This happens a lot
- 1:19Speaker 1: in the low Country, and.
- 1:20Speaker 3: Our families land is in North Carolina. So I was
- 1:22Speaker 3: peeping that.
- 1:22Speaker 4: That's amazing.
- 1:23Speaker 5: I didn't read it, but I'm just captivated by the title.
- 1:27Speaker 4: What is it about?
- 1:27Speaker 2: Thank you?
- 1:28Speaker 4: Okay? So, in general, the book is about black.
- 1:31Speaker 3: Land ownership, the fact that we owned more land one
- 1:34Speaker 3: hundred years ago than we do now. And I'm sure
- 1:36Speaker 3: the people in this room and people listening to know
- 1:38Speaker 3: land is where you really build wealth, like property, real estate,
- 1:41Speaker 3: that's where it goes. So the fact that we've been
- 1:42Speaker 3: losing land while White America has been continuing to get
- 1:46Speaker 3: these gains means that this racial wealth gap we keep
- 1:48Speaker 3: talking about is because of this land laws. So I
- 1:50Speaker 3: started writing this book because my family has land in
- 1:53Speaker 3: North Carolina. My grandfather passed away in twenty nineteen, and
- 1:56Speaker 3: on his deathbed, he was like, don't sell the land,
- 1:59Speaker 3: because that happens a lot of times. An older black
- 2:01Speaker 3: person passes on and they'd are sure if someone in
- 2:03Speaker 3: the next generation values it enough to keep it in
- 2:06Speaker 3: the family. And so it's just really important to us, Like, no,
- 2:08Speaker 3: we're not letting this go anywhere. That land means everything
- 2:11Speaker 3: to us. There's no price that we will accept for it.
- 2:13Speaker 3: But what we have now is still a fraction of
- 2:16Speaker 3: what we used to have, even like my great grandfather
- 2:18Speaker 3: owned and like, I'm a sixth generation Black landowner. So
- 2:21Speaker 3: the first person in my family to own land was
- 2:23Speaker 3: my great great great grandfather Louis Baker. He bought land
- 2:27Speaker 3: like ten years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed. And
- 2:30Speaker 3: so to go from that legacy to now, it's like,
- 2:32Speaker 3: how could I not value this? And unfortunately in this country,
- 2:36Speaker 3: black is kind of like they equate it with urban
- 2:39Speaker 3: so they think we only live in cities. But most
- 2:41Speaker 3: Black people live in the South, and most Black people
- 2:43Speaker 3: come from grandparents who lived in these rural areas but
- 2:47Speaker 3: were disconnected just around the time when we could have
- 2:49Speaker 3: made some money from it. So that's really what I
- 2:51Speaker 3: wanted the book to be, is like we need to
- 2:53Speaker 3: be champion in Black landownership, whether you're getting it on
- 2:55Speaker 3: your own, whether we fighting for reparations. But that needs
- 2:58Speaker 3: to be a conversation in our community because that's where
- 3:00Speaker 3: real equity comes from.
- 3:02Speaker 6: I was gonna ask you, with all that history, how
- 3:05Speaker 6: do you feel about like landbanks and what they do today?
- 3:08Speaker 4: Because there's like the pros of it.
- 3:09Speaker 6: I think people are inclusion and people and get the
- 3:11Speaker 6: land easier, but then there's conds of like people feeling
- 3:13Speaker 6: like the landbanks only sell and like work with different people.
- 3:17Speaker 6: Certain people, certain developers like you kind of get closed
- 3:19Speaker 6: out if youn't have a certain amount of money.
- 3:20Speaker 4: So how do you feel about Labanik? Yeah, I think
- 3:22Speaker 4: some of I love that you brought that up.
- 3:23Speaker 3: I feel like some of the landbanks are really good
- 3:25Speaker 3: and they're trying to get land in the hand of
- 3:27Speaker 3: black and Indigenous and like people who don't historically get
- 3:29Speaker 3: a chance. But in anything in this country, there's always
- 3:32Speaker 3: going to be people who are doing it and it's
- 3:34Speaker 3: like their way to get cheaper stuff to people who
- 3:37Speaker 3: really don't need the cheapest stuff, like they're already good.
- 3:40Speaker 3: But I do think that some people are doing it
- 3:42Speaker 3: in a really good way, where like like climate justice
- 3:45Speaker 3: conservation groups will give land to black and indigenous people
- 3:49Speaker 3: because like, you'll treat the lamb better than this company will, right,
- 3:52Speaker 3: you'll treat this lamb better than this private developer will.
- 3:55Speaker 3: But it's kind of rare to find these landbanks that
- 3:57Speaker 3: will do it in that way. But again, that's why
- 3:59Speaker 3: I'm a big champ in reparations, because landbanks could be
- 4:01Speaker 3: a form of reparations if you dictate that it has
- 4:04Speaker 3: to be going to black people and black families.
- 4:07Speaker 4: Who come from this history.
- 4:08Speaker 3: But if we all got to save up the money,
- 4:11Speaker 3: scrounge up the money to buy al it, I mean
- 4:12Speaker 3: it'll take forever for us to all become landowners in
- 4:15Speaker 3: that way because not everybody has the down payment money,
- 4:17Speaker 3: especially when you're talking acres that's not just a house, right, Like,
- 4:20Speaker 3: that's not just a condo. That's that's really going to
- 4:23Speaker 3: cost like ten k plus per acre that you want.
- 4:26Speaker 3: So if you want a lot and to have buildings
- 4:29Speaker 3: on it, it gets expensive. So I think the landbanks
- 4:31Speaker 3: are just a good way of making it more accessible
- 4:33Speaker 3: to people. They just got to make sure it's accessible
- 4:35Speaker 3: to the right people.
- 4:36Speaker 1: You know, in the book, you talk about how reparations
- 4:38Speaker 1: is a racial and economic justice policy as well as
- 4:41Speaker 1: a climate imperative. So how do you outline the bunk
- 4:44Speaker 1: common myths about the difficulty of enacting reparations?
- 4:47Speaker 2: But also too, I wonder why we got away from
- 4:49Speaker 2: wanting the.
- 4:51Speaker 3: Forty acres right exactly, because that's where reparations came from,
- 4:54Speaker 3: was right after the Civil Wars, Like we want our
- 4:55Speaker 3: forty eights and a mute, and we still talk about that.
- 4:57Speaker 3: You know, Spike Lee has the production company, but it's
- 5:00Speaker 3: almost like we talk about forty acres and a mule
- 5:03Speaker 3: or reparations as pigs flying, Like, oh, that's never going
- 5:05Speaker 3: to happen. They never going to do that for us.
- 5:07Speaker 3: It's like, why are we defeating ourselves? We have to
- 5:10Speaker 3: demand it. To me, anyone in this country who believes
- 5:13Speaker 3: that slavery should not have happened should support reparations. It
- 5:16Speaker 3: should be that simple, because how you don't believe in slavery,
- 5:19Speaker 3: but you won't actually do anything to change it for
- 5:21Speaker 3: the people who are the descendants of not having benefited
- 5:25Speaker 3: from it. So to me, it's just that's one of
- 5:27Speaker 3: the biggest myths is it's just like, oh, it'll just
- 5:31Speaker 3: never happen, and it's like they give out money like
- 5:33Speaker 3: it's nothing all the time. Ukraine got the money that
- 5:36Speaker 3: should have been our reparations. Israel got the money that
- 5:38Speaker 3: should have been our reparations, like the Pentagon. So the
- 5:41Speaker 3: money is out there, they're just not given it to us,
- 5:44Speaker 3: and we have to start demanding our fair share of it,
- 5:47Speaker 3: especially because every election cycle they're coming around begging for
- 5:50Speaker 3: our votes.
- 5:51Speaker 4: What are you offering in exchange? And why is reparation
- 5:53Speaker 4: such a bad word.
- 5:54Speaker 3: And then the other thing that gets to used is
- 5:55Speaker 3: black celebrities actually are used as an excuse. Oh you
- 5:58Speaker 3: don't need reparations. You got to Oprah, you got Michael Jordan.
- 6:01Speaker 3: Black people are already making money. The fact that you
- 6:03Speaker 3: can name them means it's not widespread enough, right, Like
- 6:06Speaker 3: if I was saying, oh, white America has money, like
- 6:09Speaker 3: I think Chris Tucker or Chris Rock, one of them
- 6:11Speaker 3: has this like stand up where he's like, yeah, in
- 6:13Speaker 3: my neighborhood, it's like me and a bunch of black
- 6:15Speaker 3: comedians and then like.
- 6:20Speaker 4: That crazy.
- 6:21Speaker 3: So how come we have to be superstars to live
- 6:24Speaker 3: next door to a dentist and accountant or whatever. Like,
- 6:27Speaker 3: any black person should be able to access it the
- 6:29Speaker 3: same way that white people can. And the fact that
- 6:31Speaker 3: you have to be exceptional to get your fair share
- 6:33Speaker 3: in this country is ridiculous.
- 6:34Speaker 1: I want you to speak to the land thing for
- 6:37Speaker 1: reparations a little bit more, because you know, Aaron Magrude
- 6:40Speaker 1: had created this show called Black America and it was
- 6:43Speaker 1: an all history drama that black Americans had received the
- 6:50Speaker 1: southern states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama has reparations for
- 6:54Speaker 1: slavery and with that land they were able to shape
- 6:56Speaker 1: their freedom. And the show never came out, but it
- 6:58Speaker 1: was an idea that he had. How do you think
- 7:00Speaker 1: that would have played up?
- 7:01Speaker 3: Oh yeah, it would have been major because those states
- 7:03Speaker 3: that you're talking about had predominantly black majority like populations,
- 7:08Speaker 3: so that's where black people were. So if you actually
- 7:11Speaker 3: like think, especially at that time, agriculture was the economy. Now,
- 7:14Speaker 3: you can make your money in a lot of different ways,
- 7:15Speaker 3: but back then you needed land to be able to
- 7:18Speaker 3: compete in any way. So if you didn't own the land,
- 7:21Speaker 3: you was a sharecropper, like, you're not making no money
- 7:23Speaker 3: that way, you barely make an even So I really
- 7:26Speaker 3: I think if those things had happened in the timeline
- 7:28Speaker 3: when it should have, it would have been monumental because
- 7:30Speaker 3: that's where most of us was.
- 7:32Speaker 4: And there are some places where we saw that. There
- 7:34Speaker 4: was examples of.
- 7:35Speaker 3: Former plantations that after the Civil War had been burned
- 7:37Speaker 3: to the ground. Confederate widows were like, I can't afford
- 7:40Speaker 3: to rebuild this. I'll just sell it for pennies on
- 7:42Speaker 3: the dollar to this Black people thinking I'm getting over
- 7:45Speaker 3: on them, But we always make a dollar out of
- 7:47Speaker 3: fifteen cents. And so you had these formerly enslaved people
- 7:51Speaker 3: turning their plantations into communities that were so vibrant, and
- 7:54Speaker 3: then when they see us doing well, they're like, way,
- 7:56Speaker 3: let me get that back from you actually, And that's
- 7:58Speaker 3: what happens in places like Tulsa, Wilmington, even Atlanta. Like
- 8:01Speaker 3: you had these predominant black communities that somehow, without having
- 8:05Speaker 3: their forty ecres and the mule, were able to figure
- 8:07Speaker 3: it out. And it's like even when we pick ourselves
- 8:09Speaker 3: up by our broup straps, they still waiting to take
- 8:12Speaker 3: that like wait, you wasn't supposed to do that. Well,
- 8:14Speaker 3: I didn't expect exact black wall streets.
- 8:16Speaker 2: People don't talk about women's in North Carolina at all
- 8:18Speaker 2: at all.
- 8:18Speaker 1: They when they talk about when they have those conversations
- 8:21Speaker 1: about things that they took from us.
- 8:22Speaker 3: Yeah, and it needs to be talked about because actually,
- 8:25Speaker 3: and this is like something I talk about in the book,
- 8:26Speaker 3: there is like on paper.
- 8:28Speaker 4: Proof of this.
- 8:29Speaker 3: The folks in Tulsa went to the people in women
- 8:32Speaker 3: to because the Wilmington massacre happened in eighteen ninety eight
- 8:35Speaker 3: and Tulsa massa happened in nineteen twenty one. They literally
- 8:39Speaker 3: were like, teach us how you did that and learned it.
- 8:42Speaker 3: They did that too in Atlanta in nineteen oh six.
- 8:44Speaker 3: There was a massacre in Atlanta where they were like, hey,
- 8:46Speaker 3: black people are getting into positions of power here. We
- 8:48Speaker 3: got black politicians, black entrepreneurs, this is crazy. Oh, but
- 8:52Speaker 3: in Wilmington, they just figured out how to how to
- 8:54Speaker 3: get them out teach us. And so it was like
- 8:56Speaker 3: they were it was like a think tank for how
- 8:58Speaker 3: to be a white supremacist, Like, okay, teach us how
- 9:01Speaker 3: to get black.
- 9:01Speaker 4: People out of here.
- 9:02Speaker 3: And Tulsa became this like big example of it, and
- 9:06Speaker 3: it deserves to be because you still have survivors who
- 9:08Speaker 3: are going into court at like one hundred and five,
- 9:10Speaker 3: one hundred and six years old, trying to get there.
- 9:12Speaker 3: Just do We're not even just talking about descendants, right right, and.
- 9:17Speaker 4: They and they got museums.
- 9:18Speaker 3: And if you go through Tulsa in the in the
- 9:21Speaker 3: in the sidewalks, it'll tell you there used to be
- 9:24Speaker 3: a barber shop here and it was burned down in
- 9:27Speaker 3: nineteen twenty one. It used to be a dry cleaners here,
- 9:29Speaker 3: it was burned down in nineteen twenty So you know
- 9:31Speaker 3: exactly which businesses worth where. Why are you not giving
- 9:35Speaker 3: reparations to those direct like these were people who were
- 9:38Speaker 3: kids running for their lives when it was happening. But yeah,
- 9:41Speaker 3: Wilmington was definitely the blueprint. And I think people ignore
- 9:45Speaker 3: that because they don't want to be accountable, especially in
- 9:47Speaker 3: like the Carolinas. They don't want to be accountable to
- 9:50Speaker 3: the fact that, like, we did that here, and what
- 9:53Speaker 3: would it mean to have to give it back? What
- 9:55Speaker 3: would it mean to have to say sorry, I.
- 9:58Speaker 1: Read, I read, I read your book and I hear
- 10:00Speaker 1: you talking. You're so passionate about this, Like where did
- 10:03Speaker 1: that passion come from? Like it's one thing to know
- 10:05Speaker 1: about something, but to be passionate about it and wanted
- 10:08Speaker 1: to be your life's working.
- 10:09Speaker 4: A way, and you're like a historian too. I appreciate
- 10:14Speaker 4: you and.
- 10:17Speaker 5: I want to know how She like, yeah, well, I
- 10:20Speaker 5: will say, like I've always been very studious, so I
- 10:23Speaker 5: think I do have that memory for stuff like that.
- 10:25Speaker 3: But my mom used to joke like, oh, we sent
- 10:27Speaker 3: you to Yale to be a doctor, you came back
- 10:29Speaker 3: a black panther.
- 10:30Speaker 4: But it was it was horrible. I did not like it.
- 10:37Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think so growing up where Samantha
- 10:40Speaker 3: and I grew up in Long Island, but we're in
- 10:41Speaker 3: this like black and brown bubble. Everybody's kind of on
- 10:44Speaker 3: the same footing, Like I'm the lightest person in the
- 10:46Speaker 3: room in Long in that part of Long Island that
- 10:49Speaker 3: I'm in, going from that to Yale where I was, Like,
- 10:52Speaker 3: I remember growing up and thinking because by the time
- 10:54Speaker 3: I was conscious of it, I got a black president.
- 10:57Speaker 4: Obama became president when I was in.
- 10:58Speaker 3: Middle school, and so I'm thinking, like minority, that's an
- 11:02Speaker 3: out dirty term. I'm not a minority, like all I
- 11:04Speaker 3: see when I look around is black people. And then
- 11:06Speaker 3: I got to Yale and I said, oh, this is
- 11:07Speaker 3: where y'all were, Like there is this white majority and
- 11:11Speaker 3: the amount of wealth, Like you can't even wrap your
- 11:14Speaker 3: mind around how much money some.
- 11:15Speaker 4: Of these people have. The institution.
- 11:17Speaker 3: When I was at Yale, they had a twenty billion
- 11:19Speaker 3: dollar endowment, which is their investment portfolio sitting in a
- 11:23Speaker 3: bank account somewhere making money.
- 11:25Speaker 4: Now, eight years.
- 11:26Speaker 3: After I graduated, that is a forty five billion dollar endowment. Like,
- 11:29Speaker 3: it's so much money there, but you still try so anyway,
- 11:32Speaker 3: it was a very like radicalizing experience when you realize
- 11:36Speaker 3: there's people with enough money to completely change the lives
- 11:39Speaker 3: of people you grew up with, but they would never
- 11:42Speaker 3: open up their bank accounts to do it because their
- 11:45Speaker 3: job is to just keep collecting, collecting, collecting, and never
- 11:47Speaker 3: make it in service of anybody. So I would say
- 11:49Speaker 3: that was a big moment for me. And also, I'm
- 11:51Speaker 3: going to college at Yale when the Black Lives Matter
- 11:54Speaker 3: movement is popping off, when Occupy Wall Street is popping off,
- 11:57Speaker 3: So there's just a lot of conversations. Bernie Sanders is
- 11:59Speaker 3: talking about this top one percent, and it just has
- 12:01Speaker 3: you really thinking like I'm going to school with them though,
- 12:03Speaker 3: like that they're here and what.
- 12:05Speaker 4: Do I want to do?
- 12:05Speaker 3: So yeah, I just remember thinking I cannot sit in
- 12:07Speaker 3: nobody's lab for the next ten.
- 12:09Speaker 4: Years while we're getting being killed in the streets.
- 12:12Speaker 3: And then as I got older, because my grandparents are
- 12:14Speaker 3: from North Carolina, I felt like to me, activism was
- 12:18Speaker 3: the Black Panthers, was Angela Davis, was being in a
- 12:21Speaker 3: city with the bullhorn. But I had to realize growing
- 12:23Speaker 3: up that I had been kind of like downplaying the
- 12:26Speaker 3: activism of the South, that there are people who their
- 12:28Speaker 3: activism was buying land, holding onto it, employing people, giving.
- 12:31Speaker 4: People a job, feeding themselves.
- 12:33Speaker 3: Even now during the pandemic was the first time a
- 12:35Speaker 3: lot of people realize how dependent they are on somebody
- 12:37Speaker 3: else to eat. If the grocery store shelves are empty,
- 12:40Speaker 3: what are you going to do for your family? You
- 12:41Speaker 3: don't know how to grow nothing.
- 12:43Speaker 2: That's what all the activism was. That's what the civil
- 12:44Speaker 2: rights you know, the movement was in the.
- 12:46Speaker 3: South, right, it was all on the South, but it
- 12:48Speaker 3: was in southern cities though it was in Selma's, in
- 12:50Speaker 3: Birmingham's and Atlanta's but black people were as far as
- 12:54Speaker 3: like working class black people were in the Moonies, like
- 12:57Speaker 3: where my family is is still very rule.
- 13:00Speaker 4: When we were kids going there, they didn't have no WiFi,
- 13:02Speaker 4: and I was like, I want to go home. I
- 13:03Speaker 4: don't want to be here.
- 13:04Speaker 3: But you grow to appreciate it when you're like, but
- 13:06Speaker 3: they're breathing fresh air, they're drinking clean water, and it
- 13:08Speaker 3: just sounds so theoretical to an extent until eggs is
- 13:13Speaker 3: the price of eggs is going up, until they doing
- 13:15Speaker 3: recalls on chicken, and then all of a sudden people
- 13:17Speaker 3: want to talk about where's the farmers at? And then
- 13:19Speaker 3: you realize, like, oh, they've been fighting by themselves for
- 13:21Speaker 3: a really long time. So I really have to credit
- 13:24Speaker 3: my grandparents because it was after my grandfather died that
- 13:27Speaker 3: I was like, man, I wish i'd asked you more
- 13:28Speaker 3: questions while you were alive. And my grandmother was like,
- 13:30Speaker 3: I'm here, and I just sat there, asked her question
- 13:33Speaker 3: after question after questions. She's my research partner for the book.
- 13:36Speaker 3: She would take me around. You got to talk to
- 13:37Speaker 3: Uncle Ed and we gonna ask him these questions because
- 13:40Speaker 3: he remembers this better than me. And then I would
- 13:42Speaker 3: corroborate it by going into these different places to like, okay,
- 13:44Speaker 3: but where on paper can I find that that really happened?
- 13:47Speaker 3: And there are records out there, So I would say
- 13:49Speaker 3: to anyone who's thinking, like that's so cool that she
- 13:51Speaker 3: did that, talk to your elders, talk to your grandparents,
- 13:54Speaker 3: your great aunts and uncles like they're still if they're
- 13:56Speaker 3: still alive, talk to them. There's stuff that they've survived
- 13:59Speaker 3: and if through and things that they're probably like, yeah,
- 14:02Speaker 3: that got taken from us too.
- 14:03Speaker 4: That's our story too.
- 14:04Speaker 3: And with this reparations woman going, the more proof you
- 14:07Speaker 3: have of that, the more you can actually try and
- 14:08Speaker 3: get your land back. There are black families getting their
- 14:11Speaker 3: land back, and like it's happening in little pieces here
- 14:14Speaker 3: and there, but we can be that movement that brings
- 14:16Speaker 3: it together.
- 14:16Speaker 5: And to your point, like you said, you know, you
- 14:18Speaker 5: don't even know. It takes like a pandemic or something
- 14:20Speaker 5: to happen where you'll be like, damn, like I don't
- 14:24Speaker 5: know how to I'm I can't go to the market.
- 14:27Speaker 5: How am I going to feed? And you know, how
- 14:28Speaker 5: am I going to buy food? And everything like that.
- 14:31Speaker 5: And it wasn't until I met my fiance. He was
- 14:33Speaker 5: told I used to cray jokes on all the time.
- 14:35Speaker 5: He was talking about farming. You know, we got this land,
- 14:38Speaker 5: let's grow this on. I'm like, grow, but he do
- 14:43Speaker 5: all of that.
- 14:43Speaker 4: I'm sorry, that's why you got to bring that up.
- 14:49Speaker 5: Yes, but he is, yes, but well but yes, he's
- 14:53Speaker 5: still he's saying that, like, YO, got all this land,
- 14:56Speaker 5: less less, less, grow everything, what are we gonna do?
- 15:00Speaker 4: And I'm like, dang, you's not like the movie.
- 15:02Speaker 5: Let's not leave the world, but it's the real it's
- 15:06Speaker 5: rain and you have to.
- 15:07Speaker 3: You have to do that, and if you wait until
- 15:09Speaker 3: you need it, it's too late. You have to learn
- 15:11Speaker 3: the skill before you need it. And I'm actually glad
- 15:13Speaker 3: that you did bring it up because I will say,
- 15:15Speaker 3: like black people, historically, we are the ones who were
- 15:18Speaker 3: forced to work this land. So the fact that we're
- 15:20Speaker 3: so far removed from what it means to work this
- 15:22Speaker 3: land is like systematic. It's intentional because when we were
- 15:26Speaker 3: working the land, we were doing it forcibly, with no pain.
- 15:29Speaker 3: The moment we could start making money for it is
- 15:31Speaker 3: like actually we we could find somebody else to do.
- 15:33Speaker 3: It's like wait a second, now, we don't know how
- 15:34Speaker 3: to do it. But I really think that like Mexican Americans,
- 15:37Speaker 3: Chicanos in California, like they're they're in a similar boat.
- 15:40Speaker 3: They're the ones picking strawberries out in California with the
- 15:42Speaker 3: will fires. It's crazy, well what you want to call it,
- 15:51Speaker 3: in the same situation where it's like they want us
- 15:54Speaker 3: to work the land when they can profit off of it.
- 15:56Speaker 3: And then the moment that we start to be entrepreneurial
- 15:59Speaker 3: and get our own arms off the ground, all of
- 16:00Speaker 3: a sudden, it's like, actually, I got a machine that
- 16:03Speaker 3: can do that. Actually I got some like I could
- 16:05Speaker 3: take advantage of an immigrant community and they can do
- 16:07Speaker 3: it because I don't want to pay you your fair share.
- 16:09Speaker 3: So we got to be able to own our own
- 16:11Speaker 3: land to decide what actually happens on it.
- 16:13Speaker 4: How do you go ahead?
- 16:15Speaker 6: How do you feel like what's happening right now with
- 16:16Speaker 6: Trump and like DEI and the mass deportation, Like do
- 16:20Speaker 6: you feel like that's going to remove us as black
- 16:23Speaker 6: people or just people of color from things or do
- 16:24Speaker 6: you feel like it's going to make us trying to
- 16:25Speaker 6: figure out the roots and the land like all that more,
- 16:28Speaker 6: Like what do you think is of O do you predict?
- 16:29Speaker 3: Honestly, I feel like it's gonna be a little bit
- 16:31Speaker 3: of both. He's definitely eliminating our ability to do this
- 16:34Speaker 3: through the federal government, Like people who are working for
- 16:37Speaker 3: the USDA trying to make change in this agency that
- 16:39Speaker 3: has historically discriminated against us are now not being able
- 16:42Speaker 3: to do that work. Anything that's in the guise of
- 16:45Speaker 3: equity or justice for us is oh, we don't need
- 16:48Speaker 3: that program actually anymore.
- 16:49Speaker 5: So.
- 16:49Speaker 3: I think though, that that's going to make us turn
- 16:52Speaker 3: and do other things to bring back the Black panthers.
- 16:54Speaker 3: They were the main ones saying, listen, they're not feeding
- 16:56Speaker 3: our people. We gonna feed our people. They're not educating us,
- 16:59Speaker 3: we'll educate us. They're not providing us healthcare. We gonna
- 17:01Speaker 3: open the clinic. And I think sometimes it's not like.
- 17:04Speaker 4: You're wishing for the situation.
- 17:06Speaker 3: We don't want a Trump administration, but sometimes it's like
- 17:09Speaker 3: the juxtaposition, the contrast of him, that orange man in
- 17:12Speaker 3: the office doing this makes us more creative and innovatively
- 17:15Speaker 3: say I'm not gonna wait around because I don't got
- 17:18Speaker 3: four years. We don't got four years to wait, And
- 17:20Speaker 3: we see in this literally in our family group chat,
- 17:21Speaker 3: They're like, I'm only shopping and breeze backyard from now
- 17:24Speaker 3: on until they get this land thing together. But it's
- 17:26Speaker 3: like for real, though, Like what if we were all
- 17:28Speaker 3: growing something and we could just afford to say, let's
- 17:32Speaker 3: share what we're growing. You growing potatoes and tomatoes and cumbers,
- 17:34Speaker 3: so I'm gonna come to you for that. I got
- 17:36Speaker 3: the chicken, so we provide the eggs. So and so
- 17:38Speaker 3: got this so they can provide. Like what if that
- 17:40Speaker 3: was the thing, or for those who don't live in
- 17:42Speaker 3: a place where they have the land to do it,
- 17:43Speaker 3: if you find the black farmers because in New York State,
- 17:45Speaker 3: we're downstate, but there's.
- 17:47Speaker 4: So many farms upstate.
- 17:48Speaker 3: Yeah, like what does it mean to find the black
- 17:50Speaker 3: farmers upstate and shop from them because they're still growing,
- 17:53Speaker 3: they still got their land. So I think it's gonna
- 17:56Speaker 3: make us remember that we can be autonomous, we can
- 17:58Speaker 3: be doing things for ourselves. And a lot of those
- 18:02Speaker 3: programs at the Black Panthers started, the federal government was.
- 18:04Speaker 4: Like, oh, we're gonna do that too. Y'all doing a
- 18:06Speaker 4: free breakfast program.
- 18:07Speaker 3: We're gonna do that, y'all doing educating your young people
- 18:10Speaker 3: will do a head start, Like the government learns that
- 18:12Speaker 3: what black people do will benefit everybody, and so they
- 18:16Speaker 3: will pick it up later.
- 18:17Speaker 4: But we can't wait around for them.
- 18:19Speaker 1: So I want us to learn that what we do
- 18:21Speaker 1: will benefit us. You know, when you talk about the
- 18:23Speaker 1: black pants is you got to talk about the Nation
- 18:25Speaker 1: of Islam. You gotta talk about Marcus Goarvey movement. They've
- 18:27Speaker 1: been teaching us to do for self whatever. Yeah, that
- 18:30Speaker 1: should have never not been our model.
- 18:32Speaker 3: But I mean talk about the moment that we're in now.
- 18:34Speaker 3: Marcus Garvey's movement was killed because they deported him. He
- 18:37Speaker 3: was Jamaican and they said, let's find him in anything
- 18:40Speaker 3: we can catch him in. They got him on mail
- 18:42Speaker 3: fraud or something like that, something like what harm is
- 18:44Speaker 3: he doing?
- 18:45Speaker 4: But we're seeing that now.
- 18:46Speaker 3: It's like in the name of we're deporting criminals. No,
- 18:48Speaker 3: you're deporting people who are working, who are keeping food
- 18:51Speaker 3: on our table. And so we have to be really
- 18:54Speaker 3: vigilant too, Like we got to build stuff out and
- 18:55Speaker 3: we got to defend the programs are building and make
- 18:57Speaker 3: sure that it can't be dismantled so easily.
- 19:00Speaker 4: And sometimes I feel like social.
- 19:01Speaker 3: Media makes it very easy for us to bite away
- 19:05Speaker 3: our own Like you see black people building a movement,
- 19:07Speaker 3: and there's more critique in the common section than offers
- 19:10Speaker 3: of help, and we got to be willing to actually
- 19:12Speaker 3: from us too, you know, Like I saw that would
- 19:14Speaker 3: blms more people.
- 19:15Speaker 4: I'm mad at the end. I'm like, wait, but what
- 19:17Speaker 4: if we like we can do more together? Yeah, we
- 19:20Speaker 4: do more together.
- 19:21Speaker 1: I wanted to ask you about Yale, right, because were
- 19:23Speaker 1: you always a political science major or was everything that
- 19:25Speaker 1: was going on in the world at the time did
- 19:27Speaker 1: that make you?
- 19:27Speaker 4: That made me political science?
- 19:29Speaker 3: I actually entered yellow physics major and pre med and
- 19:32Speaker 3: then I switched sophomore year and like never looked back
- 19:35Speaker 3: and was political science.
- 19:36Speaker 4: Yeah.
- 19:37Speaker 3: It's just like I mean, especially at Yale, like you
- 19:40Speaker 3: see now a lot of the people doing this stuff
- 19:41Speaker 3: Jade Vance Yale grad Like, so I'm looking around, like
- 19:44Speaker 3: which one of y'all is going to be I'm protesting
- 19:46Speaker 3: one day, like because I know it's gonna be one
- 19:48Speaker 3: of y'all, but like that's where it is. So it's like,
- 19:51Speaker 3: in essence, it's like my job as a Yell alum
- 19:54Speaker 3: is to be a traitor to what the other alum
- 19:56Speaker 3: is about to do and to resist them full force
- 19:58Speaker 3: because they're built. These institutions are built to consolidate power,
- 20:03Speaker 3: and they only want people who are going to keep
- 20:05Speaker 3: power in the same places. And I'm really all about like, No,
- 20:07Speaker 3: I want the power, the information that I've gotten from Yale.
- 20:10Speaker 3: I want to siphon it away and bring it to us,
- 20:13Speaker 3: like for more of.
- 20:14Speaker 4: Us to know this. And I love that through the book, like.
- 20:16Speaker 3: People will say, oh, yeah, like my grandparents did have
- 20:18Speaker 3: this land, or maybe I don't come from a family
- 20:20Speaker 3: that had land in this country, but I want to.
- 20:22Speaker 3: I want to be the generation that starts that. And
- 20:25Speaker 3: what's the path to it? Oh, I got to put
- 20:26Speaker 3: my land in a trust so that it doesn't ever
- 20:28Speaker 3: get taken after I pass away.
- 20:30Speaker 4: Like that.
- 20:30Speaker 3: It takes information to get there, and we got to
- 20:33Speaker 3: get into those rooms and bring the information back out
- 20:35Speaker 3: with us and not get stuck in the room thinking
- 20:37Speaker 3: I'll be the only one in there. Like No, it
- 20:39Speaker 3: probably would have been easier to graduate Yale and try
- 20:42Speaker 3: and just be a doctor who did it on her
- 20:43Speaker 3: own and whatever the case may be. But and not
- 20:45Speaker 3: to shape I mean, we also need black doctors.
- 20:47Speaker 4: We need all of that.
- 20:48Speaker 3: Yeah, but I also was just like, we need people
- 20:50Speaker 3: to like speak truth to power, and I wanted.
- 20:52Speaker 4: To be one of those people.
- 20:53Speaker 1: I just got two more questions because you know, just
- 20:55Speaker 1: she got to prove Around ten forty five in the book,
- 20:59Speaker 1: you talk about returning equity to dispossess people can heal
- 21:03Speaker 1: both the land and our nation soul. What are some
- 21:06Speaker 1: things we can do to make that happen? And why
- 21:08Speaker 1: do you feel that way?
- 21:09Speaker 4: Yeah?
- 21:09Speaker 3: So I feel that way because America is obsessed with
- 21:12Speaker 3: getting up. We want to be postracial. We want to
- 21:14Speaker 3: be post racial. You cannot do that without addressing the problem.
- 21:17Speaker 3: And one thing that I've noticed is like, I think
- 21:19Speaker 3: there's a lot of people in America who don't understand
- 21:22Speaker 3: black anger. And to me, it's like, but if you
- 21:24Speaker 3: address the issue, I might have nothing to be angry about.
- 21:27Speaker 3: But when I was in Detroit for the book tour,
- 21:30Speaker 3: I was talking about this and eminent domain especially, and
- 21:33Speaker 3: there was an older black woman in the audience who
- 21:35Speaker 3: was like, Yeah, when I was a kid in the sixties,
- 21:37Speaker 3: they came through our middle class community and took the
- 21:39Speaker 3: whole community. It was like a hundred families. There so
- 21:42Speaker 3: many black owned businesses took the whole community through eminent domain,
- 21:45Speaker 3: didn't build anything in.
- 21:46Speaker 4: Its place for fifty years. It was just vacant. And
- 21:49Speaker 4: what that does to a person?
- 21:50Speaker 3: She said, her uncle owned three properties in that neighborhood,
- 21:54Speaker 3: and she was like, what it did to my uncle.
- 21:56Speaker 3: When you spend your whole life savings building this out
- 21:59Speaker 3: and watch the government take it? Why would that make
- 22:02Speaker 3: me want to be an upstanding citizen? How can I
- 22:04Speaker 3: go from that and want to be like I can't
- 22:06Speaker 3: even be around it, Like it would make my skin
- 22:08Speaker 3: crawl to be around people thinking like you did this
- 22:11Speaker 3: to me and like it, you know, and as a
- 22:13Speaker 3: man as a provider, thinking like wow, like I did
- 22:16Speaker 3: everything the way they told me I'm supposed to do,
- 22:18Speaker 3: and they still took it, and they said it's one
- 22:20Speaker 3: hundred percent legal, and there's nothing I can do about
- 22:22Speaker 3: it that will make you angry for a lifetime. So
- 22:25Speaker 3: if y'all tired of black people being angry, do the
- 22:27Speaker 3: thing to make its not angry.
- 22:28Speaker 4: I promise you.
- 22:29Speaker 3: If they started giving out reparations, legalizem like there's I
- 22:33Speaker 3: ain't got nothing to I'm.
- 22:33Speaker 4: Gonna be on my land doing my own thing.
- 22:35Speaker 3: I don't got no beef, go and do what you
- 22:37Speaker 3: gotta do and like, but if you don't address the problem,
- 22:39Speaker 3: it's always going to be there.
- 22:41Speaker 4: So how we get there? There are only I believe
- 22:43Speaker 4: New York.
- 22:44Speaker 3: State is the third state to have established a commission
- 22:47Speaker 3: and a task force for actually exploring what reparations would
- 22:50Speaker 3: look like. California already already has one, Illinois has one.
- 22:53Speaker 3: There's some cities, like there's a city in North Carolina
- 22:57Speaker 3: that is also building it out. But it's very locally
- 22:59Speaker 3: happening right now, and we have to support those things.
- 23:02Speaker 3: So for those who are in New York, you can
- 23:04Speaker 3: support that and why the number four reparations dot org
- 23:07Speaker 3: New York for Reparations dot org, and you can learn
- 23:10Speaker 3: more about how to support that movement, because I think
- 23:12Speaker 3: we have to. We have to stop acting as if
- 23:14Speaker 3: it's never gonna happen, and we have to make it happen.
- 23:16Speaker 3: There's a global movement right now for reparations. It's not
- 23:18Speaker 3: just us in America. You got African nations saying I
- 23:22Speaker 3: want my stuff back and I don't want to be
- 23:23Speaker 3: a part of the Commonwealth no more. You got places
- 23:25Speaker 3: in the Caribbean saying yeah, actually, I don't acknowledge the
- 23:28Speaker 3: British crown no more, and we want to be there's
- 23:30Speaker 3: this movement happening. Give us our stuff back from the Museians,
- 23:32Speaker 3: give us our art back, give us our jewels back.
- 23:34Speaker 3: We got to get our wealth back too, and we
- 23:36Speaker 3: can't wait for I hope it happens. No, we got
- 23:39Speaker 3: to work for it to happen, and in the meantime
- 23:42Speaker 3: be doing everything you can to get you a little
- 23:43Speaker 3: piece of land.
- 23:44Speaker 4: So that's really where I'm at.
- 23:45Speaker 3: I think there's also another organization, where is my land
- 23:49Speaker 3: dot org. They had a successful campaign. If people are
- 23:52Speaker 3: familiar with the Bruce's Beach in California, oh yeah, yeah, So
- 23:55Speaker 3: there was like a the Bruce family had built a
- 23:58Speaker 3: hotel and a resort on the beachfront in it in
- 24:00Speaker 3: like the thirties, and their land was taken through eminent domain.
- 24:04Speaker 3: The city did absolutely nothing with it, and in twenty twenty,
- 24:06Speaker 3: a brilliant organizer named Kavan Ward was like, I'm tired
- 24:09Speaker 3: of Californians acting like they're better than the rest of
- 24:11Speaker 3: the country, and y'all have racism right in your backyard
- 24:13Speaker 3: and until y'all give this black family their land back,
- 24:15Speaker 3: like you have no moral authority to be telling nobody
- 24:18Speaker 3: else from anywhere else anything. And that family got their
- 24:22Speaker 3: land back, twenty million dollars worth of land back, so like,
- 24:24Speaker 3: it is possible, but we have to support it. So
- 24:26Speaker 3: I would say some of the easiest ways are eminent
- 24:28Speaker 3: domain reversals because you don't need a President Trump to
- 24:31Speaker 3: sign off on nothing. All she had to do was
- 24:32Speaker 3: go to Los Angeles County and say, hey, this happened
- 24:34Speaker 3: in this county. Y'all signed off on that. Now y'all
- 24:37Speaker 3: can sign off to give it back. They have dozens
- 24:39Speaker 3: of campaigns going around, so you can sign their petitions,
- 24:41Speaker 3: you can donate to support them. There's a lot of
- 24:43Speaker 3: people trying to do this work and they're kind of
- 24:44Speaker 3: doing it by themselves or they're building these coalitions and
- 24:47Speaker 3: they don't have a lot of visibility.
- 24:48Speaker 4: So for people who are.
- 24:49Speaker 3: Saying, wow, I've never even heard of this stuff, like, yeah,
- 24:51Speaker 3: just look it up New York for reparations, see what
- 24:53Speaker 3: the California Task Force is doing. And if you're listening
- 24:56Speaker 3: from another state and they don't have that, y'all should
- 24:59Speaker 3: and you don't have to. It's not like you're starting
- 25:01Speaker 3: it from scratch. The blueprint is already elsewhere. Say, how
- 25:03Speaker 3: did New York do it? Can we learn from them?
- 25:05Speaker 3: How did California do it? Can we learn from them?
- 25:07Speaker 3: And how can we start getting landbad for you?
- 25:08Speaker 1: Have you been paying attention to what's going on in
- 25:10Speaker 1: places like Chicago? Like you know, we had a ma
- 25:13Speaker 1: homegirl zo up here and she's been talking about how
- 25:15Speaker 1: the Chicago Housing Authority has stolen so much land, including
- 25:18Speaker 1: her mother's property.
- 25:19Speaker 2: Have you paid attention to that.
- 25:20Speaker 3: I didn't specifically hear about her campaign, but I have
- 25:23Speaker 3: heard about this happening in Chicago because yeah, in urban
- 25:25Speaker 3: community just happens too, whether it's through eminent domain or
- 25:27Speaker 3: they'll take a blighted property.
- 25:29Speaker 4: But it's a difference.
- 25:30Speaker 3: If a home own it is abandoned, the land under
- 25:32Speaker 3: it should still belong to whoever owned that. They should
- 25:36Speaker 3: never be taking the land from someone, even if they say, hey,
- 25:38Speaker 3: we got to tear down this house and build something up,
- 25:40Speaker 3: better cool, do that on my land for me, right,
- 25:42Speaker 3: like if you shouldn't be taking my land. And also
- 25:45Speaker 3: in Chicago, I think they were doing pretty good work
- 25:46Speaker 3: about the fact that homeowners, like if a black homeowner
- 25:50Speaker 3: is saying, oh, I'm trying to sell my house, how
- 25:51Speaker 3: much is it worth? Their houses are being appraised for
- 25:54Speaker 3: like six figures less than what a white family is.
- 25:57Speaker 3: Like if you took down all the pictures of your
- 25:59Speaker 3: black family your house and then try to sell it,
- 26:01Speaker 3: they would value it more. So they are people trying
- 26:03Speaker 3: to shift that policy, shift tax codes.
- 26:06Speaker 4: Why are we paying more taxes in.
- 26:08Speaker 3: Communities that have worse schools, worse roads, no infrastructure. So
- 26:12Speaker 3: there's a lot of people trying to attack us from
- 26:13Speaker 3: different areas. And I think it's all important, Like not
- 26:15Speaker 3: everybody needs to move to a farm and grow something,
- 26:18Speaker 3: but everybody deserves a piece of land with at least
- 26:20Speaker 3: the backyard in the back there's enough to go around.
- 26:22Speaker 3: If Bill Gates didn't have all of it, could we
- 26:24Speaker 3: could all afford to have a nice piece of something.
- 26:27Speaker 3: And this scarcity mindset they try to teach us is
- 26:30Speaker 3: we have to push back against like this idea that
- 26:32Speaker 3: even sometimes what I see is they try to pit
- 26:34Speaker 3: our groups together against one another, where when I start
- 26:37Speaker 3: talking about reparations, someone's like, well, actually it's all indigenous land.
- 26:41Speaker 4: Well there's enough.
- 26:42Speaker 3: For us all to have some Indigenous folks should have
- 26:44Speaker 3: their land back too. Black people should have some land, Latinos,
- 26:48Speaker 3: whether they are coming as workers on, Like, there's enough
- 26:51Speaker 3: for all of us to have something. And in this
- 26:52Speaker 3: richest country in the world, why are we accepting, Oh,
- 26:55Speaker 3: there's not enough to go around. I just don't believe that.
- 26:58Speaker 3: I don't believe that, and I'm not going to ever
- 27:00Speaker 3: believe that. And so, actually, to the point of New
- 27:01Speaker 3: Yorker's for reparations, there's a collective. I'm a part of
- 27:04Speaker 3: Bliss Black liberation, Indigenous sovereignty, and we're trying to be
- 27:07Speaker 3: in solidarity with one another and say, hey, they can.
- 27:10Speaker 4: Never pit me against you.
- 27:11Speaker 3: I want you to have land too, and I want
- 27:13Speaker 3: me to have lant to and both of our answers acknowledge,
- 27:15Speaker 3: like there's enough for us to get this, get to
- 27:18Speaker 3: it together. We don't got to fight over it, because
- 27:20Speaker 3: while we're fighting over it, they vacationing on their Wyoming ranch.
- 27:25Speaker 4: They in Hawaii with it.
- 27:26Speaker 3: They everywhere own the land, and we're fighting for two
- 27:28Speaker 3: acres over here.
- 27:29Speaker 4: I'm not here for that. There's enough for all of
- 27:31Speaker 4: us to go around.
- 27:32Speaker 2: I got one. Well, I think we can do it.
- 27:35Speaker 2: That I did have one last question that was good.
- 27:37Speaker 4: I appreciate you.
- 27:38Speaker 1: Bria Baker rooted the American legacy of land theft and
- 27:41Speaker 1: the modern movement for black land ownership is out right now.
- 27:44Speaker 2: We can they get at you, Bria.
- 27:45Speaker 4: Listen.
- 27:46Speaker 3: You can follow me at Freckled while Black on social media.
- 27:49Speaker 3: I also have a website Bria Baker dot com and
- 27:51Speaker 3: the book is in stores everywhere. Don't buy it from
- 27:53Speaker 3: Amazon though we boycotting them too. Just about to ask you,
- 27:57Speaker 3: what is your book on Amazon? It is on Amazon,
- 28:00Speaker 3: is on Target, but we boycotting both of those places
- 28:02Speaker 3: right now.
- 28:03Speaker 1: Your Instagram name right so you can find it there.
- 28:09Speaker 4: I might be off of them too, so that's why
- 28:11Speaker 4: I said the website breaker dot com. That's want to
- 28:13Speaker 4: use it listen, you know, just.
- 28:16Speaker 3: But there's black bookstores everywhere. Get it from a black bookstore.
- 28:19Speaker 3: If you're like I don't want to go in person,
- 28:20Speaker 3: bookshop dot org will let you buy it from a
- 28:22Speaker 3: local bookstore and make sure that your money is going
- 28:24Speaker 3: to someone who also wants to see us win. Because
- 28:26Speaker 3: buying a book about black land from a company that
- 28:28Speaker 3: don't want to see you own no land is a
- 28:30Speaker 3: little crazy.
- 28:31Speaker 1: But listen.
- 28:31Speaker 3: You gotta get it. Get it where you gotta get it.
- 28:34Speaker 3: You gotta get it.
- 28:35Speaker 2: It's in Target too and Walmart. Right the Breakfast Club