Speaker 1: Right now, it's time for the way Black History Fact.
Speaker 1: In Today's Way Black History Fact is sponsored by Major
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Speaker 1: And today we're going to share from Black Enterprise Q. Actually,
Speaker 1: since it's whenever you want to take it or you
Speaker 1: want to grab it, all right, I'll get from Black Enterprise.
Speaker 1: A new book is set to unravel how the US
Speaker 1: stole six hundred billion dollars from Black Americans. Andrew W. Carl,
Speaker 1: a professor of history and African American Studies at the
Speaker 1: University of Virginia, but extensive research into his new book,
Speaker 1: which describes how US bureaucracies created the nation's ongoing racial
Speaker 1: wealth gap by implementing a system of highly unjust municipal
Speaker 1: and state taxes. Bloomberg reported the Black Tax, one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty years of theft, exploitation, and dispossession in America,
Speaker 1: share statistics, studies and tales of Black Americans being cheated
Speaker 1: out of land ownership and pushed into poverty by racist
Speaker 1: laws and practices dating back to the Jimcrow era. The
Speaker 1: book pairs personal stories with rich details about municipalities nationwide
Speaker 1: that use, complex tax collection, distribution to white land and
Speaker 1: property owners, and economic dynamic spanning over a century of
Speaker 1: US history. Starting in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
Speaker 1: unfair tactics were used to doubtedly disadvantage black landowners doubly Ooh,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. Disadvantaged black landowners by artificially inflating property value
Speaker 1: estimates for tax calculation, overcharging them for their land, and
Speaker 1: exploiting their inability to pay as a means to seize
Speaker 1: their properties. Examples include Anthony Fleming and JR. Rooks, two
Speaker 1: black men forced off their farmland by white supremacist mobs,
Speaker 1: who went on to establish a town with the goal
Speaker 1: of enabling Black Americans to own land. By nineteen eleven, Edmundson, Arkansas,
Speaker 1: encompassed thirty square miles of stores, a bank, a hotel,
Speaker 1: and a post office for black local black homeowners. However,
Speaker 1: twenty years later, the town was no more after white
Speaker 1: plantation owners plotted to seize the land by imposing taxes
Speaker 1: on the lots the Edmondson residents were unaware of. Once
Speaker 1: the residents failed to pay the taxes, they had no
Speaker 1: clue about the plantation owners seized the land. It was
Speaker 1: deeded over to one of the plantation owners who had
Speaker 1: concocted the scheme and demolished all the buildings in nineteen twenty, Hillary,
Speaker 1: I know, I just read over that like it was
Speaker 1: just a little footnote in history. But imagine how sad
Speaker 1: that is. In nineteen twenty, Hillary, Thomas Stewart Senior lost
Speaker 1: twenty four acres of land in a tax sill under
Speaker 1: dubious circumstances after the great great grandfather of George Floyd
Speaker 1: failed to pay eighteen dollars and eighty three cents in taxes.
Speaker 1: Losing the land forced the Stuart family into poverty. When
Speaker 1: looking at the eleven million acres of land taken away
Speaker 1: from Black Americans, it equates two three hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: six billion dollars in today's money, not to forget the
Speaker 1: millions and taxes black Americans have overpaid for over a century.
Speaker 1: From eighteen seventy to twenty twenty, black Americans were overtaxed
Speaker 1: by more than two hundred and seventy five billion dollars
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty three dollars. Karl doesn't just focus on
Speaker 1: the grim findings, but he does share possible solutions to
Speaker 1: making up for the last century of financial oppression against
Speaker 1: the black community. He suggests the establishment of a federal
Speaker 1: fiscal equity program that Mara's Canada's approach, where funds are
Speaker 1: allocated to local governments based on their needs. He also
Speaker 1: suggests introducing a universal home tax exemption for numerous Americans,
Speaker 1: especially lower income households or those residing in historically neglected areas.
Speaker 1: Another option would be to impose taxes on the wealthiest
Speaker 1: individuals in the US. The Black Tax one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty years of Theft, Exploitation and Dispossession in America is
Speaker 1: available now for thirty five dollars through the University of
Speaker 1: Chicago Press. So that's also a bob Ob get that
Speaker 1: book and read it.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 1: We're not making this stuff up, all right. I just
Speaker 1: don't like people in the comments say stuff like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's people intentionally ignore stories like this or pretend
Speaker 2: they didn't happen. Part of the reason why reparations is
Speaker 2: such a notorious subject is that people have to take
Speaker 2: certain accountabilities to then extend those reparations, and nobody wants
Speaker 2: to quote unquote feel bad, so they'd rather pretend these
Speaker 2: things never happen. And