The racist roots of Black land loss

By 1910, Black farmers had managed to buy 16 million acres of farmland in the United States in 1910 (still only 1.8 percent of U.S. farmland total, at the time), but thanks to more than a century of subsequent discrimination, they own even less today: as of 2017, just 2.9 million acres, or 0.32 percent.

While the USDA has previously made some attempts to redress that discrimination, those efforts were always limited in scope and blunted even further after they became the target of conservative political activists. Now, with federal agencies being instructed to scrub references to DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion), acknowledging that discrimination — let alone correcting it — may be a thing of the past.

That makes sharing the lived experiences of Black farming families more important than ever. On this episode of “What You’re Eating,” we talk with writer and activist Brea Baker about her book, “Rooted: The American Legacy of Land Theft and the Modern Movement for Black Land Ownership,” which explores this country’s history of violent and racist land theft through the story of her own family’s experience.