How Land Theft Decimated Black Communities

The underlying trend that shows up throughout Toni Morrison’s “Sula” is the reality that whenever white people decide they don’t want land, they are able to manipulate Black people onto those scraps; and when White people decide they want land that Black people are on, they use the legal system to make those whims a reality.

In a country where land and its resources are commodities, the exclusion and expulsion of Black and Indigenous people from the land economy has been an act of financial warfare. Take the fact that Black Americans own less than 1% of U.S. farmland, or that Indigenous households have approximately eight cents of wealth for every White household’s dollar. It’s important that we remember and reiterate that racial wealth gaps are not accidental, nor to be blamed on an alleged lack of ambition or work ethic.