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