February 6, 2025 • 28 mins
Brea Baker Talks Black Land Ownership, Reparations, New Book + More
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Yep, it's the one more dangerous, wanting to show the
Breakfast Club Charlamagne the God just hilarious, envyous out.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
But Lauren la Rossa is in and.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
As promised, her mama called up here and said, you
better have my baby up there to talk about that book.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Okay, Bria Baki is here.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
Thank you so much for having me, and thank you
mommy for making sure.
Speaker 4 (00:19):
That's why I said, it's mommy the manager. Mommy needs
to be the manager.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Your mama.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Fine, and I mean that respect, I mean that respectfully,
beautiful woman. Okay, no disrespect. Okay, yes, yes, yes, I'm
just saying. I'm just saying. Now Rooted, Sim is your
best friend. Sim works here at the Breakfast Club.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
How do you how to fall? You and Sim go back?
Speaker 3 (00:42):
We went to middle school together and like from then on,
we've just been locked in. We thought we were both
going to be in medicine, and now she's obviously up
here doing this and I'm writing books. So it worked
out exactly as supposed to be. But yeah, we've been
locked in for years.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
She's the one who gave me a copy of Rooted. Yes,
that was a while ago. How long ago? I don't even.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Remember, and she said he was pretending like you didn't
read it. I did read it, I know, but he
was playing with her, you know, because.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
I'm always playing with them.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
And because she didn't, she only gave it to me
wanted she It was two books she gave me, and
she kept asking me, did I read them?
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Did I read them?
Speaker 1 (01:13):
I read this one, yeah, because it was interested in
me because I'm from South Carolina. This happens a lot
in the low Country, and.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
Our families land is in North Carolina. So I was
peeping that.
Speaker 4 (01:22):
That's amazing.
Speaker 5 (01:23):
I didn't read it, but I'm just captivated by the title.
Speaker 4 (01:27):
What is it about?
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Thank you?
Speaker 4 (01:28):
Okay? So, in general, the book is about black.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
Land ownership, the fact that we owned more land one
hundred years ago than we do now. And I'm sure
the people in this room and people listening to know
land is where you really build wealth, like property, real estate,
that's where it goes. So the fact that we've been
losing land while White America has been continuing to get
these gains means that this racial wealth gap we keep
talking about is because of this land laws. So I
started writing this book because my family has land in
(01:53):
North Carolina. My grandfather passed away in twenty nineteen, and
on his deathbed, he was like, don't sell the land,
because that happens a lot of times. An older black
person passes on and they'd are sure if someone in
the next generation values it enough to keep it in
the family. And so it's just really important to us, Like, no,
we're not letting this go anywhere. That land means everything
to us. There's no price that we will accept for it.
(02:13):
But what we have now is still a fraction of
what we used to have, even like my great grandfather
owned and like, I'm a sixth generation Black landowner. So
the first person in my family to own land was
my great great great grandfather Louis Baker. He bought land
like ten years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed. And
so to go from that legacy to now, it's like,
how could I not value this? And unfortunately in this country,
(02:36):
black is kind of like they equate it with urban
so they think we only live in cities. But most
Black people live in the South, and most Black people
come from grandparents who lived in these rural areas but
were disconnected just around the time when we could have
made some money from it. So that's really what I
wanted the book to be, is like we need to
be champion in Black landownership, whether you're getting it on
your own, whether we fighting for reparations. But that needs
(02:58):
to be a conversation in our community because that's where
real equity comes from.
Speaker 6 (03:02):
I was gonna ask you, with all that history, how
do you feel about like landbanks and what they do today?
Speaker 4 (03:08):
Because there's like the pros of it.
Speaker 6 (03:09):
I think people are inclusion and people and get the
land easier, but then there's conds of like people feeling
like the landbanks only sell and like work with different people.
Certain people, certain developers like you kind of get closed
out if youn't have a certain amount of money.
Speaker 4 (03:20):
So how do you feel about Labanik? Yeah, I think
some of I love that you brought that up.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
I feel like some of the landbanks are really good
and they're trying to get land in the hand of
black and Indigenous and like people who don't historically get
a chance. But in anything in this country, there's always
going to be people who are doing it and it's
like their way to get cheaper stuff to people who
really don't need the cheapest stuff, like they're already good.
But I do think that some people are doing it
in a really good way, where like like climate justice
(03:45):
conservation groups will give land to black and indigenous people
because like, you'll treat the lamb better than this company will, right,
you'll treat this lamb better than this private developer will.
But it's kind of rare to find these landbanks that
will do it in that way. But again, that's why
I'm a big champ in reparations, because landbanks could be
a form of reparations if you dictate that it has
to be going to black people and black families.
Speaker 4 (04:07):
Who come from this history.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
But if we all got to save up the money,
scrounge up the money to buy al it, I mean
it'll take forever for us to all become landowners in
that way because not everybody has the down payment money,
especially when you're talking acres that's not just a house, right, Like,
that's not just a condo. That's that's really going to
cost like ten k plus per acre that you want.
So if you want a lot and to have buildings
(04:29):
on it, it gets expensive. So I think the landbanks
are just a good way of making it more accessible
to people. They just got to make sure it's accessible
to the right people.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
You know, in the book, you talk about how reparations
is a racial and economic justice policy as well as
a climate imperative. So how do you outline the bunk
common myths about the difficulty of enacting reparations?
Speaker 2 (04:47):
But also too, I wonder why we got away from
wanting the.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
Forty acres right exactly, because that's where reparations came from,
was right after the Civil Wars, Like we want our
forty eights and a mute, and we still talk about that.
You know, Spike Lee has the production company, but it's
almost like we talk about forty acres and a mule
or reparations as pigs flying, Like, oh, that's never going
to happen. They never going to do that for us.
It's like, why are we defeating ourselves? We have to
demand it. To me, anyone in this country who believes
(05:13):
that slavery should not have happened should support reparations. It
should be that simple, because how you don't believe in slavery,
but you won't actually do anything to change it for
the people who are the descendants of not having benefited
from it. So to me, it's just that's one of
the biggest myths is it's just like, oh, it'll just
never happen, and it's like they give out money like
it's nothing all the time. Ukraine got the money that
(05:36):
should have been our reparations. Israel got the money that
should have been our reparations, like the Pentagon. So the
money is out there, they're just not given it to us,
and we have to start demanding our fair share of it,
especially because every election cycle they're coming around begging for
our votes.
Speaker 4 (05:51):
What are you offering in exchange? And why is reparation
such a bad word.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
And then the other thing that gets to used is
black celebrities actually are used as an excuse. Oh you
don't need reparations. You got to Oprah, you got Michael Jordan.
Black people are already making money. The fact that you
can name them means it's not widespread enough, right, Like
if I was saying, oh, white America has money, like
I think Chris Tucker or Chris Rock, one of them
has this like stand up where he's like, yeah, in
my neighborhood, it's like me and a bunch of black
(06:15):
comedians and then like.
Speaker 4 (06:20):
That crazy.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
So how come we have to be superstars to live
next door to a dentist and accountant or whatever. Like,
any black person should be able to access it the
same way that white people can. And the fact that
you have to be exceptional to get your fair share
in this country is ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
I want you to speak to the land thing for
reparations a little bit more, because you know, Aaron Magrude
had created this show called Black America and it was
an all history drama that black Americans had received the
southern states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama has reparations for
slavery and with that land they were able to shape
(06:56):
their freedom. And the show never came out, but it
was an idea that he had. How do you think
that would have played up?
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Oh yeah, it would have been major because those states
that you're talking about had predominantly black majority like populations,
so that's where black people were. So if you actually
like think, especially at that time, agriculture was the economy. Now,
you can make your money in a lot of different ways,
but back then you needed land to be able to
compete in any way. So if you didn't own the land,
you was a sharecropper, like, you're not making no money
(07:23):
that way, you barely make an even So I really
I think if those things had happened in the timeline
when it should have, it would have been monumental because
that's where most of us was.
Speaker 4 (07:32):
And there are some places where we saw that. There
was examples of.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
Former plantations that after the Civil War had been burned
to the ground. Confederate widows were like, I can't afford
to rebuild this. I'll just sell it for pennies on
the dollar to this Black people thinking I'm getting over
on them, But we always make a dollar out of
fifteen cents. And so you had these formerly enslaved people
turning their plantations into communities that were so vibrant, and
then when they see us doing well, they're like, way,
(07:56):
let me get that back from you actually, And that's
what happens in places like Tulsa, Wilmington, even Atlanta. Like
you had these predominant black communities that somehow, without having
their forty ecres and the mule, were able to figure
it out. And it's like even when we pick ourselves
up by our broup straps, they still waiting to take
that like wait, you wasn't supposed to do that. Well,
I didn't expect exact black wall streets.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
People don't talk about women's in North Carolina at all
at all.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
They when they talk about when they have those conversations
about things that they took from us.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
Yeah, and it needs to be talked about because actually,
and this is like something I talk about in the book,
there is like on paper.
Speaker 4 (08:28):
Proof of this.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
The folks in Tulsa went to the people in women
to because the Wilmington massacre happened in eighteen ninety eight
and Tulsa massa happened in nineteen twenty one. They literally
were like, teach us how you did that and learned it.
They did that too in Atlanta in nineteen oh six.
There was a massacre in Atlanta where they were like, hey,
black people are getting into positions of power here. We
got black politicians, black entrepreneurs, this is crazy. Oh, but
(08:52):
in Wilmington, they just figured out how to how to
get them out teach us. And so it was like
they were it was like a think tank for how
to be a white supremacist, Like, okay, teach us how
to get black.
Speaker 4 (09:01):
People out of here.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
And Tulsa became this like big example of it, and
it deserves to be because you still have survivors who
are going into court at like one hundred and five,
one hundred and six years old, trying to get there.
Just do We're not even just talking about descendants, right right, and.
Speaker 4 (09:17):
They and they got museums.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
And if you go through Tulsa in the in the
in the sidewalks, it'll tell you there used to be
a barber shop here and it was burned down in
nineteen twenty one. It used to be a dry cleaners here,
it was burned down in nineteen twenty So you know
exactly which businesses worth where. Why are you not giving
reparations to those direct like these were people who were
kids running for their lives when it was happening. But yeah,
(09:41):
Wilmington was definitely the blueprint. And I think people ignore
that because they don't want to be accountable, especially in
like the Carolinas. They don't want to be accountable to
the fact that, like, we did that here, and what
would it mean to have to give it back? What
would it mean to have to say sorry, I.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Read, I read, I read your book and I hear
you talking. You're so passionate about this, Like where did
that passion come from? Like it's one thing to know
about something, but to be passionate about it and wanted
to be your life's working.
Speaker 4 (10:09):
A way, and you're like a historian too. I appreciate
you and.
Speaker 5 (10:17):
I want to know how She like, yeah, well, I
will say, like I've always been very studious, so I
think I do have that memory for stuff like that.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
But my mom used to joke like, oh, we sent
you to Yale to be a doctor, you came back
a black panther.
Speaker 4 (10:30):
But it was it was horrible. I did not like it.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
Yeah, I mean, I think so growing up where Samantha
and I grew up in Long Island, but we're in
this like black and brown bubble. Everybody's kind of on
the same footing, Like I'm the lightest person in the
room in Long in that part of Long Island that
I'm in, going from that to Yale where I was, Like,
I remember growing up and thinking because by the time
I was conscious of it, I got a black president.
Speaker 4 (10:57):
Obama became president when I was in.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
Middle school, and so I'm thinking, like minority, that's an
out dirty term. I'm not a minority, like all I
see when I look around is black people. And then
I got to Yale and I said, oh, this is
where y'all were, Like there is this white majority and
the amount of wealth, Like you can't even wrap your
mind around how much money some.
Speaker 4 (11:15):
Of these people have. The institution.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
When I was at Yale, they had a twenty billion
dollar endowment, which is their investment portfolio sitting in a
bank account somewhere making money.
Speaker 4 (11:25):
Now, eight years.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
After I graduated, that is a forty five billion dollar endowment. Like,
it's so much money there, but you still try so anyway,
it was a very like radicalizing experience when you realize
there's people with enough money to completely change the lives
of people you grew up with, but they would never
open up their bank accounts to do it because their
job is to just keep collecting, collecting, collecting, and never
(11:47):
make it in service of anybody. So I would say
that was a big moment for me. And also, I'm
going to college at Yale when the Black Lives Matter
movement is popping off, when Occupy Wall Street is popping off,
So there's just a lot of conversations. Bernie Sanders is
talking about this top one percent, and it just has
you really thinking like I'm going to school with them though,
like that they're here and what.
Speaker 4 (12:05):
Do I want to do?
Speaker 3 (12:05):
So yeah, I just remember thinking I cannot sit in
nobody's lab for the next ten.
Speaker 4 (12:09):
Years while we're getting being killed in the streets.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
And then as I got older, because my grandparents are
from North Carolina, I felt like to me, activism was
the Black Panthers, was Angela Davis, was being in a
city with the bullhorn. But I had to realize growing
up that I had been kind of like downplaying the
activism of the South, that there are people who their
activism was buying land, holding onto it, employing people, giving.
Speaker 4 (12:31):
People a job, feeding themselves.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
Even now during the pandemic was the first time a
lot of people realize how dependent they are on somebody
else to eat. If the grocery store shelves are empty,
what are you going to do for your family? You
don't know how to grow nothing.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
That's what all the activism was. That's what the civil
rights you know, the movement was in the.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
South, right, it was all on the South, but it
was in southern cities though it was in Selma's, in
Birmingham's and Atlanta's but black people were as far as
like working class black people were in the Moonies, like
where my family is is still very rule.
Speaker 4 (13:00):
When we were kids going there, they didn't have no WiFi,
and I was like, I want to go home. I
don't want to be here.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
But you grow to appreciate it when you're like, but
they're breathing fresh air, they're drinking clean water, and it
just sounds so theoretical to an extent until eggs is
the price of eggs is going up, until they doing
recalls on chicken, and then all of a sudden people
want to talk about where's the farmers at? And then
you realize, like, oh, they've been fighting by themselves for
a really long time. So I really have to credit
my grandparents because it was after my grandfather died that
(13:27):
I was like, man, I wish i'd asked you more
questions while you were alive. And my grandmother was like,
I'm here, and I just sat there, asked her question
after question after questions. She's my research partner for the book.
She would take me around. You got to talk to
Uncle Ed and we gonna ask him these questions because
he remembers this better than me. And then I would
corroborate it by going into these different places to like, okay,
but where on paper can I find that that really happened?
(13:47):
And there are records out there, So I would say
to anyone who's thinking, like that's so cool that she
did that, talk to your elders, talk to your grandparents,
your great aunts and uncles like they're still if they're
still alive, talk to them. There's stuff that they've survived
and if through and things that they're probably like, yeah,
that got taken from us too.
Speaker 4 (14:03):
That's our story too.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
And with this reparations woman going, the more proof you
have of that, the more you can actually try and
get your land back. There are black families getting their
land back, and like it's happening in little pieces here
and there, but we can be that movement that brings
it together.
Speaker 5 (14:16):
And to your point, like you said, you know, you
don't even know. It takes like a pandemic or something
to happen where you'll be like, damn, like I don't
know how to I'm I can't go to the market.
How am I going to feed? And you know, how
am I going to buy food? And everything like that.
And it wasn't until I met my fiance. He was
told I used to cray jokes on all the time.
He was talking about farming. You know, we got this land,
(14:38):
let's grow this on. I'm like, grow, but he do
all of that.
Speaker 4 (14:43):
I'm sorry, that's why you got to bring that up.
Speaker 5 (14:49):
Yes, but he is, yes, but well but yes, he's
still he's saying that, like, YO, got all this land,
less less, less, grow everything, what are we gonna do?
Speaker 4 (15:00):
And I'm like, dang, you's not like the movie.
Speaker 5 (15:02):
Let's not leave the world, but it's the real it's
rain and you have to.
Speaker 3 (15:07):
You have to do that, and if you wait until
you need it, it's too late. You have to learn
the skill before you need it. And I'm actually glad
that you did bring it up because I will say,
like black people, historically, we are the ones who were
forced to work this land. So the fact that we're
so far removed from what it means to work this
land is like systematic. It's intentional because when we were
working the land, we were doing it forcibly, with no pain.
(15:29):
The moment we could start making money for it is
like actually we we could find somebody else to do.
It's like wait a second, now, we don't know how
to do it. But I really think that like Mexican Americans,
Chicanos in California, like they're they're in a similar boat.
They're the ones picking strawberries out in California with the
will fires. It's crazy, well what you want to call it,
(15:51):
in the same situation where it's like they want us
to work the land when they can profit off of it.
And then the moment that we start to be entrepreneurial
and get our own arms off the ground, all of
a sudden, it's like, actually, I got a machine that
can do that. Actually I got some like I could
take advantage of an immigrant community and they can do
it because I don't want to pay you your fair share.
So we got to be able to own our own
land to decide what actually happens on it.
Speaker 4 (16:13):
How do you go ahead?
Speaker 6 (16:15):
How do you feel like what's happening right now with
Trump and like DEI and the mass deportation, Like do
you feel like that's going to remove us as black
people or just people of color from things or do
you feel like it's going to make us trying to
figure out the roots and the land like all that more,
Like what do you think is of O do you predict?
Speaker 3 (16:29):
Honestly, I feel like it's gonna be a little bit
of both. He's definitely eliminating our ability to do this
through the federal government, Like people who are working for
the USDA trying to make change in this agency that
has historically discriminated against us are now not being able
to do that work. Anything that's in the guise of
equity or justice for us is oh, we don't need
that program actually anymore.
Speaker 5 (16:49):
So.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
I think though, that that's going to make us turn
and do other things to bring back the Black panthers.
They were the main ones saying, listen, they're not feeding
our people. We gonna feed our people. They're not educating us,
we'll educate us. They're not providing us healthcare. We gonna
open the clinic. And I think sometimes it's not like.
Speaker 4 (17:04):
You're wishing for the situation.
Speaker 3 (17:06):
We don't want a Trump administration, but sometimes it's like
the juxtaposition, the contrast of him, that orange man in
the office doing this makes us more creative and innovatively
say I'm not gonna wait around because I don't got
four years. We don't got four years to wait, And
we see in this literally in our family group chat,
They're like, I'm only shopping and breeze backyard from now
on until they get this land thing together. But it's
like for real, though, Like what if we were all
(17:28):
growing something and we could just afford to say, let's
share what we're growing. You growing potatoes and tomatoes and cumbers,
so I'm gonna come to you for that. I got
the chicken, so we provide the eggs. So and so
got this so they can provide. Like what if that
was the thing, or for those who don't live in
a place where they have the land to do it,
if you find the black farmers because in New York State,
we're downstate, but there's.
Speaker 4 (17:47):
So many farms upstate.
Speaker 3 (17:48):
Yeah, like what does it mean to find the black
farmers upstate and shop from them because they're still growing,
they still got their land. So I think it's gonna
make us remember that we can be autonomous, we can
be doing things for ourselves. And a lot of those
programs at the Black Panthers started, the federal government was.
Speaker 4 (18:04):
Like, oh, we're gonna do that too. Y'all doing a
free breakfast program.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
We're gonna do that, y'all doing educating your young people
will do a head start, Like the government learns that
what black people do will benefit everybody, and so they
will pick it up later.
Speaker 4 (18:17):
But we can't wait around for them.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
So I want us to learn that what we do
will benefit us. You know, when you talk about the
black pants is you got to talk about the Nation
of Islam. You gotta talk about Marcus Goarvey movement. They've
been teaching us to do for self whatever. Yeah, that
should have never not been our model.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
But I mean talk about the moment that we're in now.
Marcus Garvey's movement was killed because they deported him. He
was Jamaican and they said, let's find him in anything
we can catch him in. They got him on mail
fraud or something like that, something like what harm is
he doing?
Speaker 4 (18:45):
But we're seeing that now.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
It's like in the name of we're deporting criminals. No,
you're deporting people who are working, who are keeping food
on our table. And so we have to be really
vigilant too, Like we got to build stuff out and
we got to defend the programs are building and make
sure that it can't be dismantled so easily.
Speaker 4 (19:00):
And sometimes I feel like social.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
Media makes it very easy for us to bite away
our own Like you see black people building a movement,
and there's more critique in the common section than offers
of help, and we got to be willing to actually
from us too, you know, Like I saw that would
blms more people.
Speaker 4 (19:15):
I'm mad at the end. I'm like, wait, but what
if we like we can do more together? Yeah, we
do more together.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
I wanted to ask you about Yale, right, because were
you always a political science major or was everything that
was going on in the world at the time did
that make you?
Speaker 4 (19:27):
That made me political science?
Speaker 3 (19:29):
I actually entered yellow physics major and pre med and
then I switched sophomore year and like never looked back
and was political science.
Speaker 4 (19:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
It's just like I mean, especially at Yale, like you
see now a lot of the people doing this stuff
Jade Vance Yale grad Like, so I'm looking around, like
which one of y'all is going to be I'm protesting
one day, like because I know it's gonna be one
of y'all, but like that's where it is. So it's like,
in essence, it's like my job as a Yell alum
is to be a traitor to what the other alum
is about to do and to resist them full force
(19:58):
because they're built. These institutions are built to consolidate power,
and they only want people who are going to keep
power in the same places. And I'm really all about like, No,
I want the power, the information that I've gotten from Yale.
I want to siphon it away and bring it to us,
like for more of.
Speaker 4 (20:14):
Us to know this. And I love that through the book, like.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
People will say, oh, yeah, like my grandparents did have
this land, or maybe I don't come from a family
that had land in this country, but I want to.
I want to be the generation that starts that. And
what's the path to it? Oh, I got to put
my land in a trust so that it doesn't ever
get taken after I pass away.
Speaker 4 (20:30):
Like that.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
It takes information to get there, and we got to
get into those rooms and bring the information back out
with us and not get stuck in the room thinking
I'll be the only one in there. Like No, it
probably would have been easier to graduate Yale and try
and just be a doctor who did it on her
own and whatever the case may be. But and not
to shape I mean, we also need black doctors.
Speaker 4 (20:47):
We need all of that.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
Yeah, but I also was just like, we need people
to like speak truth to power, and I wanted.
Speaker 4 (20:52):
To be one of those people.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
I just got two more questions because you know, just
she got to prove Around ten forty five in the book,
you talk about returning equity to dispossess people can heal
both the land and our nation soul. What are some
things we can do to make that happen? And why
do you feel that way?
Speaker 4 (21:09):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (21:09):
So I feel that way because America is obsessed with
getting up. We want to be postracial. We want to
be post racial. You cannot do that without addressing the problem.
And one thing that I've noticed is like, I think
there's a lot of people in America who don't understand
black anger. And to me, it's like, but if you
address the issue, I might have nothing to be angry about.
But when I was in Detroit for the book tour,
(21:30):
I was talking about this and eminent domain especially, and
there was an older black woman in the audience who
was like, Yeah, when I was a kid in the sixties,
they came through our middle class community and took the
whole community. It was like a hundred families. There so
many black owned businesses took the whole community through eminent domain,
didn't build anything in.
Speaker 4 (21:46):
Its place for fifty years. It was just vacant. And
what that does to a person?
Speaker 3 (21:50):
She said, her uncle owned three properties in that neighborhood,
and she was like, what it did to my uncle.
When you spend your whole life savings building this out
and watch the government take it? Why would that make
me want to be an upstanding citizen? How can I
go from that and want to be like I can't
even be around it, Like it would make my skin
crawl to be around people thinking like you did this
(22:11):
to me and like it, you know, and as a
man as a provider, thinking like wow, like I did
everything the way they told me I'm supposed to do,
and they still took it, and they said it's one
hundred percent legal, and there's nothing I can do about
it that will make you angry for a lifetime. So
if y'all tired of black people being angry, do the
thing to make its not angry.
Speaker 4 (22:28):
I promise you.
Speaker 3 (22:29):
If they started giving out reparations, legalizem like there's I
ain't got nothing to I'm.
Speaker 4 (22:33):
Gonna be on my land doing my own thing.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
I don't got no beef, go and do what you
gotta do and like, but if you don't address the problem,
it's always going to be there.
Speaker 4 (22:41):
So how we get there? There are only I believe
New York.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
State is the third state to have established a commission
and a task force for actually exploring what reparations would
look like. California already already has one, Illinois has one.
There's some cities, like there's a city in North Carolina
that is also building it out. But it's very locally
happening right now, and we have to support those things.
So for those who are in New York, you can
(23:04):
support that and why the number four reparations dot org
New York for Reparations dot org, and you can learn
more about how to support that movement, because I think
we have to. We have to stop acting as if
it's never gonna happen, and we have to make it happen.
There's a global movement right now for reparations. It's not
just us in America. You got African nations saying I
want my stuff back and I don't want to be
a part of the Commonwealth no more. You got places
(23:25):
in the Caribbean saying yeah, actually, I don't acknowledge the
British crown no more, and we want to be there's
this movement happening. Give us our stuff back from the Museians,
give us our art back, give us our jewels back.
We got to get our wealth back too, and we
can't wait for I hope it happens. No, we got
to work for it to happen, and in the meantime
be doing everything you can to get you a little
piece of land.
Speaker 4 (23:44):
So that's really where I'm at.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
I think there's also another organization, where is my land
dot org. They had a successful campaign. If people are
familiar with the Bruce's Beach in California, oh yeah, yeah, So
there was like a the Bruce family had built a
hotel and a resort on the beachfront in it in
like the thirties, and their land was taken through eminent domain.
The city did absolutely nothing with it, and in twenty twenty,
(24:06):
a brilliant organizer named Kavan Ward was like, I'm tired
of Californians acting like they're better than the rest of
the country, and y'all have racism right in your backyard
and until y'all give this black family their land back,
like you have no moral authority to be telling nobody
else from anywhere else anything. And that family got their
land back, twenty million dollars worth of land back, so like,
it is possible, but we have to support it. So
(24:26):
I would say some of the easiest ways are eminent
domain reversals because you don't need a President Trump to
sign off on nothing. All she had to do was
go to Los Angeles County and say, hey, this happened
in this county. Y'all signed off on that. Now y'all
can sign off to give it back. They have dozens
of campaigns going around, so you can sign their petitions,
you can donate to support them. There's a lot of
people trying to do this work and they're kind of
doing it by themselves or they're building these coalitions and
(24:47):
they don't have a lot of visibility.
Speaker 4 (24:48):
So for people who are.
Speaker 3 (24:49):
Saying, wow, I've never even heard of this stuff, like, yeah,
just look it up New York for reparations, see what
the California Task Force is doing. And if you're listening
from another state and they don't have that, y'all should
and you don't have to. It's not like you're starting
it from scratch. The blueprint is already elsewhere. Say, how
did New York do it? Can we learn from them?
How did California do it? Can we learn from them?
And how can we start getting landbad for you?
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Have you been paying attention to what's going on in
places like Chicago? Like you know, we had a ma
homegirl zo up here and she's been talking about how
the Chicago Housing Authority has stolen so much land, including
her mother's property.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
Have you paid attention to that.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
I didn't specifically hear about her campaign, but I have
heard about this happening in Chicago because yeah, in urban
community just happens too, whether it's through eminent domain or
they'll take a blighted property.
Speaker 4 (25:29):
But it's a difference.
Speaker 3 (25:30):
If a home own it is abandoned, the land under
it should still belong to whoever owned that. They should
never be taking the land from someone, even if they say, hey,
we got to tear down this house and build something up,
better cool, do that on my land for me, right,
like if you shouldn't be taking my land. And also
in Chicago, I think they were doing pretty good work
about the fact that homeowners, like if a black homeowner
(25:50):
is saying, oh, I'm trying to sell my house, how
much is it worth? Their houses are being appraised for
like six figures less than what a white family is.
Like if you took down all the pictures of your
black family your house and then try to sell it,
they would value it more. So they are people trying
to shift that policy, shift tax codes.
Speaker 4 (26:06):
Why are we paying more taxes in.
Speaker 3 (26:08):
Communities that have worse schools, worse roads, no infrastructure. So
there's a lot of people trying to attack us from
different areas. And I think it's all important, Like not
everybody needs to move to a farm and grow something,
but everybody deserves a piece of land with at least
the backyard in the back there's enough to go around.
If Bill Gates didn't have all of it, could we
could all afford to have a nice piece of something.
And this scarcity mindset they try to teach us is
(26:30):
we have to push back against like this idea that
even sometimes what I see is they try to pit
our groups together against one another, where when I start
talking about reparations, someone's like, well, actually it's all indigenous land.
Speaker 4 (26:41):
Well there's enough.
Speaker 3 (26:42):
For us all to have some Indigenous folks should have
their land back too. Black people should have some land, Latinos,
whether they are coming as workers on, Like, there's enough
for all of us to have something. And in this
richest country in the world, why are we accepting, Oh,
there's not enough to go around. I just don't believe that.
I don't believe that, and I'm not going to ever
believe that. And so, actually, to the point of New
Yorker's for reparations, there's a collective. I'm a part of
(27:04):
Bliss Black liberation, Indigenous sovereignty, and we're trying to be
in solidarity with one another and say, hey, they can.
Speaker 4 (27:10):
Never pit me against you.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
I want you to have land too, and I want
me to have lant to and both of our answers acknowledge,
like there's enough for us to get this, get to
it together. We don't got to fight over it, because
while we're fighting over it, they vacationing on their Wyoming ranch.
Speaker 4 (27:25):
They in Hawaii with it.
Speaker 3 (27:26):
They everywhere own the land, and we're fighting for two
acres over here.
Speaker 4 (27:29):
I'm not here for that. There's enough for all of
us to go around.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
I got one. Well, I think we can do it.
That I did have one last question that was good.
Speaker 4 (27:37):
I appreciate you.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
Bria Baker rooted the American legacy of land theft and
the modern movement for black land ownership is out right now.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
We can they get at you, Bria.
Speaker 4 (27:45):
Listen.
Speaker 3 (27:46):
You can follow me at Freckled while Black on social media.
I also have a website Bria Baker dot com and
the book is in stores everywhere. Don't buy it from
Amazon though we boycotting them too. Just about to ask you,
what is your book on Amazon? It is on Amazon,
is on Target, but we boycotting both of those places
right now.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
Your Instagram name right so you can find it there.
Speaker 4 (28:09):
I might be off of them too, so that's why
I said the website breaker dot com. That's want to
use it listen, you know, just.
Speaker 3 (28:16):
But there's black bookstores everywhere. Get it from a black bookstore.
If you're like I don't want to go in person,
bookshop dot org will let you buy it from a
local bookstore and make sure that your money is going
to someone who also wants to see us win. Because
buying a book about black land from a company that
don't want to see you own no land is a
little crazy.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
But listen.
Speaker 3 (28:31):
You gotta get it. Get it where you gotta get it.
You gotta get it.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
It's in Target too and Walmart. Right the Breakfast Club
Yep, it's the one more dangerous, wanting to show the
Breakfast Club Charlamagne the God just hilarious, envyous out.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
But Lauren la Rossa is in and.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
As promised, her mama called up here and said, you
better have my baby up there to talk about that book.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Okay, Bria Baki is here.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
Thank you so much for having me, and thank you
mommy for making sure.
Speaker 4 (00:19):
That's why I said, it's mommy the manager. Mommy needs
to be the manager.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Your mama.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Fine, and I mean that respect, I mean that respectfully,
beautiful woman. Okay, no disrespect. Okay, yes, yes, yes, I'm
just saying. I'm just saying. Now Rooted, Sim is your
best friend. Sim works here at the Breakfast Club.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
How do you how to fall? You and Sim go back?
Speaker 3 (00:42):
We went to middle school together and like from then on,
we've just been locked in. We thought we were both
going to be in medicine, and now she's obviously up
here doing this and I'm writing books. So it worked
out exactly as supposed to be. But yeah, we've been
locked in for years.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
She's the one who gave me a copy of Rooted. Yes,
that was a while ago. How long ago? I don't even.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Remember, and she said he was pretending like you didn't
read it. I did read it, I know, but he
was playing with her, you know, because.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
I'm always playing with them.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
And because she didn't, she only gave it to me
wanted she It was two books she gave me, and
she kept asking me, did I read them?
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Did I read them?
Speaker 1 (01:13):
I read this one, yeah, because it was interested in
me because I'm from South Carolina. This happens a lot
in the low Country, and.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
Our families land is in North Carolina. So I was
peeping that.
Speaker 4 (01:22):
That's amazing.
Speaker 5 (01:23):
I didn't read it, but I'm just captivated by the title.
Speaker 4 (01:27):
What is it about?
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Thank you?
Speaker 4 (01:28):
Okay? So, in general, the book is about black.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
Land ownership, the fact that we owned more land one
hundred years ago than we do now. And I'm sure
the people in this room and people listening to know
land is where you really build wealth, like property, real estate,
that's where it goes. So the fact that we've been
losing land while White America has been continuing to get
these gains means that this racial wealth gap we keep
talking about is because of this land laws. So I
started writing this book because my family has land in
(01:53):
North Carolina. My grandfather passed away in twenty nineteen, and
on his deathbed, he was like, don't sell the land,
because that happens a lot of times. An older black
person passes on and they'd are sure if someone in
the next generation values it enough to keep it in
the family. And so it's just really important to us, Like, no,
we're not letting this go anywhere. That land means everything
to us. There's no price that we will accept for it.
(02:13):
But what we have now is still a fraction of
what we used to have, even like my great grandfather
owned and like, I'm a sixth generation Black landowner. So
the first person in my family to own land was
my great great great grandfather Louis Baker. He bought land
like ten years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed. And
so to go from that legacy to now, it's like,
how could I not value this? And unfortunately in this country,
(02:36):
black is kind of like they equate it with urban
so they think we only live in cities. But most
Black people live in the South, and most Black people
come from grandparents who lived in these rural areas but
were disconnected just around the time when we could have
made some money from it. So that's really what I
wanted the book to be, is like we need to
be champion in Black landownership, whether you're getting it on
your own, whether we fighting for reparations. But that needs
(02:58):
to be a conversation in our community because that's where
real equity comes from.
Speaker 6 (03:02):
I was gonna ask you, with all that history, how
do you feel about like landbanks and what they do today?
Speaker 4 (03:08):
Because there's like the pros of it.
Speaker 6 (03:09):
I think people are inclusion and people and get the
land easier, but then there's conds of like people feeling
like the landbanks only sell and like work with different people.
Certain people, certain developers like you kind of get closed
out if youn't have a certain amount of money.
Speaker 4 (03:20):
So how do you feel about Labanik? Yeah, I think
some of I love that you brought that up.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
I feel like some of the landbanks are really good
and they're trying to get land in the hand of
black and Indigenous and like people who don't historically get
a chance. But in anything in this country, there's always
going to be people who are doing it and it's
like their way to get cheaper stuff to people who
really don't need the cheapest stuff, like they're already good.
But I do think that some people are doing it
in a really good way, where like like climate justice
(03:45):
conservation groups will give land to black and indigenous people
because like, you'll treat the lamb better than this company will, right,
you'll treat this lamb better than this private developer will.
But it's kind of rare to find these landbanks that
will do it in that way. But again, that's why
I'm a big champ in reparations, because landbanks could be
a form of reparations if you dictate that it has
to be going to black people and black families.
Speaker 4 (04:07):
Who come from this history.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
But if we all got to save up the money,
scrounge up the money to buy al it, I mean
it'll take forever for us to all become landowners in
that way because not everybody has the down payment money,
especially when you're talking acres that's not just a house, right, Like,
that's not just a condo. That's that's really going to
cost like ten k plus per acre that you want.
So if you want a lot and to have buildings
(04:29):
on it, it gets expensive. So I think the landbanks
are just a good way of making it more accessible
to people. They just got to make sure it's accessible
to the right people.
Speaker 1 (04:36):
You know, in the book, you talk about how reparations
is a racial and economic justice policy as well as
a climate imperative. So how do you outline the bunk
common myths about the difficulty of enacting reparations?
Speaker 2 (04:47):
But also too, I wonder why we got away from
wanting the.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
Forty acres right exactly, because that's where reparations came from,
was right after the Civil Wars, Like we want our
forty eights and a mute, and we still talk about that.
You know, Spike Lee has the production company, but it's
almost like we talk about forty acres and a mule
or reparations as pigs flying, Like, oh, that's never going
to happen. They never going to do that for us.
It's like, why are we defeating ourselves? We have to
demand it. To me, anyone in this country who believes
(05:13):
that slavery should not have happened should support reparations. It
should be that simple, because how you don't believe in slavery,
but you won't actually do anything to change it for
the people who are the descendants of not having benefited
from it. So to me, it's just that's one of
the biggest myths is it's just like, oh, it'll just
never happen, and it's like they give out money like
it's nothing all the time. Ukraine got the money that
(05:36):
should have been our reparations. Israel got the money that
should have been our reparations, like the Pentagon. So the
money is out there, they're just not given it to us,
and we have to start demanding our fair share of it,
especially because every election cycle they're coming around begging for
our votes.
Speaker 4 (05:51):
What are you offering in exchange? And why is reparation
such a bad word.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
And then the other thing that gets to used is
black celebrities actually are used as an excuse. Oh you
don't need reparations. You got to Oprah, you got Michael Jordan.
Black people are already making money. The fact that you
can name them means it's not widespread enough, right, Like
if I was saying, oh, white America has money, like
I think Chris Tucker or Chris Rock, one of them
has this like stand up where he's like, yeah, in
my neighborhood, it's like me and a bunch of black
(06:15):
comedians and then like.
Speaker 4 (06:20):
That crazy.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
So how come we have to be superstars to live
next door to a dentist and accountant or whatever. Like,
any black person should be able to access it the
same way that white people can. And the fact that
you have to be exceptional to get your fair share
in this country is ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
I want you to speak to the land thing for
reparations a little bit more, because you know, Aaron Magrude
had created this show called Black America and it was
an all history drama that black Americans had received the
southern states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama has reparations for
slavery and with that land they were able to shape
(06:56):
their freedom. And the show never came out, but it
was an idea that he had. How do you think
that would have played up?
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Oh yeah, it would have been major because those states
that you're talking about had predominantly black majority like populations,
so that's where black people were. So if you actually
like think, especially at that time, agriculture was the economy. Now,
you can make your money in a lot of different ways,
but back then you needed land to be able to
compete in any way. So if you didn't own the land,
you was a sharecropper, like, you're not making no money
(07:23):
that way, you barely make an even So I really
I think if those things had happened in the timeline
when it should have, it would have been monumental because
that's where most of us was.
Speaker 4 (07:32):
And there are some places where we saw that. There
was examples of.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
Former plantations that after the Civil War had been burned
to the ground. Confederate widows were like, I can't afford
to rebuild this. I'll just sell it for pennies on
the dollar to this Black people thinking I'm getting over
on them, But we always make a dollar out of
fifteen cents. And so you had these formerly enslaved people
turning their plantations into communities that were so vibrant, and
then when they see us doing well, they're like, way,
(07:56):
let me get that back from you actually, And that's
what happens in places like Tulsa, Wilmington, even Atlanta. Like
you had these predominant black communities that somehow, without having
their forty ecres and the mule, were able to figure
it out. And it's like even when we pick ourselves
up by our broup straps, they still waiting to take
that like wait, you wasn't supposed to do that. Well,
I didn't expect exact black wall streets.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
People don't talk about women's in North Carolina at all
at all.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
They when they talk about when they have those conversations
about things that they took from us.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
Yeah, and it needs to be talked about because actually,
and this is like something I talk about in the book,
there is like on paper.
Speaker 4 (08:28):
Proof of this.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
The folks in Tulsa went to the people in women
to because the Wilmington massacre happened in eighteen ninety eight
and Tulsa massa happened in nineteen twenty one. They literally
were like, teach us how you did that and learned it.
They did that too in Atlanta in nineteen oh six.
There was a massacre in Atlanta where they were like, hey,
black people are getting into positions of power here. We
got black politicians, black entrepreneurs, this is crazy. Oh, but
(08:52):
in Wilmington, they just figured out how to how to
get them out teach us. And so it was like
they were it was like a think tank for how
to be a white supremacist, Like, okay, teach us how
to get black.
Speaker 4 (09:01):
People out of here.
Speaker 3 (09:02):
And Tulsa became this like big example of it, and
it deserves to be because you still have survivors who
are going into court at like one hundred and five,
one hundred and six years old, trying to get there.
Just do We're not even just talking about descendants, right right, and.
Speaker 4 (09:17):
They and they got museums.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
And if you go through Tulsa in the in the
in the sidewalks, it'll tell you there used to be
a barber shop here and it was burned down in
nineteen twenty one. It used to be a dry cleaners here,
it was burned down in nineteen twenty So you know
exactly which businesses worth where. Why are you not giving
reparations to those direct like these were people who were
kids running for their lives when it was happening. But yeah,
(09:41):
Wilmington was definitely the blueprint. And I think people ignore
that because they don't want to be accountable, especially in
like the Carolinas. They don't want to be accountable to
the fact that, like, we did that here, and what
would it mean to have to give it back? What
would it mean to have to say sorry, I.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Read, I read, I read your book and I hear
you talking. You're so passionate about this, Like where did
that passion come from? Like it's one thing to know
about something, but to be passionate about it and wanted
to be your life's working.
Speaker 4 (10:09):
A way, and you're like a historian too. I appreciate
you and.
Speaker 5 (10:17):
I want to know how She like, yeah, well, I
will say, like I've always been very studious, so I
think I do have that memory for stuff like that.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
But my mom used to joke like, oh, we sent
you to Yale to be a doctor, you came back
a black panther.
Speaker 4 (10:30):
But it was it was horrible. I did not like it.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
Yeah, I mean, I think so growing up where Samantha
and I grew up in Long Island, but we're in
this like black and brown bubble. Everybody's kind of on
the same footing, Like I'm the lightest person in the
room in Long in that part of Long Island that
I'm in, going from that to Yale where I was, Like,
I remember growing up and thinking because by the time
I was conscious of it, I got a black president.
Speaker 4 (10:57):
Obama became president when I was in.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
Middle school, and so I'm thinking, like minority, that's an
out dirty term. I'm not a minority, like all I
see when I look around is black people. And then
I got to Yale and I said, oh, this is
where y'all were, Like there is this white majority and
the amount of wealth, Like you can't even wrap your
mind around how much money some.
Speaker 4 (11:15):
Of these people have. The institution.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
When I was at Yale, they had a twenty billion
dollar endowment, which is their investment portfolio sitting in a
bank account somewhere making money.
Speaker 4 (11:25):
Now, eight years.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
After I graduated, that is a forty five billion dollar endowment. Like,
it's so much money there, but you still try so anyway,
it was a very like radicalizing experience when you realize
there's people with enough money to completely change the lives
of people you grew up with, but they would never
open up their bank accounts to do it because their
job is to just keep collecting, collecting, collecting, and never
(11:47):
make it in service of anybody. So I would say
that was a big moment for me. And also, I'm
going to college at Yale when the Black Lives Matter
movement is popping off, when Occupy Wall Street is popping off,
So there's just a lot of conversations. Bernie Sanders is
talking about this top one percent, and it just has
you really thinking like I'm going to school with them though,
like that they're here and what.
Speaker 4 (12:05):
Do I want to do?
Speaker 3 (12:05):
So yeah, I just remember thinking I cannot sit in
nobody's lab for the next ten.
Speaker 4 (12:09):
Years while we're getting being killed in the streets.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
And then as I got older, because my grandparents are
from North Carolina, I felt like to me, activism was
the Black Panthers, was Angela Davis, was being in a
city with the bullhorn. But I had to realize growing
up that I had been kind of like downplaying the
activism of the South, that there are people who their
activism was buying land, holding onto it, employing people, giving.
Speaker 4 (12:31):
People a job, feeding themselves.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
Even now during the pandemic was the first time a
lot of people realize how dependent they are on somebody
else to eat. If the grocery store shelves are empty,
what are you going to do for your family? You
don't know how to grow nothing.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
That's what all the activism was. That's what the civil
rights you know, the movement was in the.
Speaker 3 (12:46):
South, right, it was all on the South, but it
was in southern cities though it was in Selma's, in
Birmingham's and Atlanta's but black people were as far as
like working class black people were in the Moonies, like
where my family is is still very rule.
Speaker 4 (13:00):
When we were kids going there, they didn't have no WiFi,
and I was like, I want to go home. I
don't want to be here.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
But you grow to appreciate it when you're like, but
they're breathing fresh air, they're drinking clean water, and it
just sounds so theoretical to an extent until eggs is
the price of eggs is going up, until they doing
recalls on chicken, and then all of a sudden people
want to talk about where's the farmers at? And then
you realize, like, oh, they've been fighting by themselves for
a really long time. So I really have to credit
my grandparents because it was after my grandfather died that
(13:27):
I was like, man, I wish i'd asked you more
questions while you were alive. And my grandmother was like,
I'm here, and I just sat there, asked her question
after question after questions. She's my research partner for the book.
She would take me around. You got to talk to
Uncle Ed and we gonna ask him these questions because
he remembers this better than me. And then I would
corroborate it by going into these different places to like, okay,
but where on paper can I find that that really happened?
(13:47):
And there are records out there, So I would say
to anyone who's thinking, like that's so cool that she
did that, talk to your elders, talk to your grandparents,
your great aunts and uncles like they're still if they're
still alive, talk to them. There's stuff that they've survived
and if through and things that they're probably like, yeah,
that got taken from us too.
Speaker 4 (14:03):
That's our story too.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
And with this reparations woman going, the more proof you
have of that, the more you can actually try and
get your land back. There are black families getting their
land back, and like it's happening in little pieces here
and there, but we can be that movement that brings
it together.
Speaker 5 (14:16):
And to your point, like you said, you know, you
don't even know. It takes like a pandemic or something
to happen where you'll be like, damn, like I don't
know how to I'm I can't go to the market.
How am I going to feed? And you know, how
am I going to buy food? And everything like that.
And it wasn't until I met my fiance. He was
told I used to cray jokes on all the time.
He was talking about farming. You know, we got this land,
(14:38):
let's grow this on. I'm like, grow, but he do
all of that.
Speaker 4 (14:43):
I'm sorry, that's why you got to bring that up.
Speaker 5 (14:49):
Yes, but he is, yes, but well but yes, he's
still he's saying that, like, YO, got all this land,
less less, less, grow everything, what are we gonna do?
Speaker 4 (15:00):
And I'm like, dang, you's not like the movie.
Speaker 5 (15:02):
Let's not leave the world, but it's the real it's
rain and you have to.
Speaker 3 (15:07):
You have to do that, and if you wait until
you need it, it's too late. You have to learn
the skill before you need it. And I'm actually glad
that you did bring it up because I will say,
like black people, historically, we are the ones who were
forced to work this land. So the fact that we're
so far removed from what it means to work this
land is like systematic. It's intentional because when we were
working the land, we were doing it forcibly, with no pain.
(15:29):
The moment we could start making money for it is
like actually we we could find somebody else to do.
It's like wait a second, now, we don't know how
to do it. But I really think that like Mexican Americans,
Chicanos in California, like they're they're in a similar boat.
They're the ones picking strawberries out in California with the
will fires. It's crazy, well what you want to call it,
(15:51):
in the same situation where it's like they want us
to work the land when they can profit off of it.
And then the moment that we start to be entrepreneurial
and get our own arms off the ground, all of
a sudden, it's like, actually, I got a machine that
can do that. Actually I got some like I could
take advantage of an immigrant community and they can do
it because I don't want to pay you your fair share.
So we got to be able to own our own
land to decide what actually happens on it.
Speaker 4 (16:13):
How do you go ahead?
Speaker 6 (16:15):
How do you feel like what's happening right now with
Trump and like DEI and the mass deportation, Like do
you feel like that's going to remove us as black
people or just people of color from things or do
you feel like it's going to make us trying to
figure out the roots and the land like all that more,
Like what do you think is of O do you predict?
Speaker 3 (16:29):
Honestly, I feel like it's gonna be a little bit
of both. He's definitely eliminating our ability to do this
through the federal government, Like people who are working for
the USDA trying to make change in this agency that
has historically discriminated against us are now not being able
to do that work. Anything that's in the guise of
equity or justice for us is oh, we don't need
that program actually anymore.
Speaker 5 (16:49):
So.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
I think though, that that's going to make us turn
and do other things to bring back the Black panthers.
They were the main ones saying, listen, they're not feeding
our people. We gonna feed our people. They're not educating us,
we'll educate us. They're not providing us healthcare. We gonna
open the clinic. And I think sometimes it's not like.
Speaker 4 (17:04):
You're wishing for the situation.
Speaker 3 (17:06):
We don't want a Trump administration, but sometimes it's like
the juxtaposition, the contrast of him, that orange man in
the office doing this makes us more creative and innovatively
say I'm not gonna wait around because I don't got
four years. We don't got four years to wait, And
we see in this literally in our family group chat,
They're like, I'm only shopping and breeze backyard from now
on until they get this land thing together. But it's
like for real, though, Like what if we were all
(17:28):
growing something and we could just afford to say, let's
share what we're growing. You growing potatoes and tomatoes and cumbers,
so I'm gonna come to you for that. I got
the chicken, so we provide the eggs. So and so
got this so they can provide. Like what if that
was the thing, or for those who don't live in
a place where they have the land to do it,
if you find the black farmers because in New York State,
we're downstate, but there's.
Speaker 4 (17:47):
So many farms upstate.
Speaker 3 (17:48):
Yeah, like what does it mean to find the black
farmers upstate and shop from them because they're still growing,
they still got their land. So I think it's gonna
make us remember that we can be autonomous, we can
be doing things for ourselves. And a lot of those
programs at the Black Panthers started, the federal government was.
Speaker 4 (18:04):
Like, oh, we're gonna do that too. Y'all doing a
free breakfast program.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
We're gonna do that, y'all doing educating your young people
will do a head start, Like the government learns that
what black people do will benefit everybody, and so they
will pick it up later.
Speaker 4 (18:17):
But we can't wait around for them.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
So I want us to learn that what we do
will benefit us. You know, when you talk about the
black pants is you got to talk about the Nation
of Islam. You gotta talk about Marcus Goarvey movement. They've
been teaching us to do for self whatever. Yeah, that
should have never not been our model.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
But I mean talk about the moment that we're in now.
Marcus Garvey's movement was killed because they deported him. He
was Jamaican and they said, let's find him in anything
we can catch him in. They got him on mail
fraud or something like that, something like what harm is
he doing?
Speaker 4 (18:45):
But we're seeing that now.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
It's like in the name of we're deporting criminals. No,
you're deporting people who are working, who are keeping food
on our table. And so we have to be really
vigilant too, Like we got to build stuff out and
we got to defend the programs are building and make
sure that it can't be dismantled so easily.
Speaker 4 (19:00):
And sometimes I feel like social.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
Media makes it very easy for us to bite away
our own Like you see black people building a movement,
and there's more critique in the common section than offers
of help, and we got to be willing to actually
from us too, you know, Like I saw that would
blms more people.
Speaker 4 (19:15):
I'm mad at the end. I'm like, wait, but what
if we like we can do more together? Yeah, we
do more together.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
I wanted to ask you about Yale, right, because were
you always a political science major or was everything that
was going on in the world at the time did
that make you?
Speaker 4 (19:27):
That made me political science?
Speaker 3 (19:29):
I actually entered yellow physics major and pre med and
then I switched sophomore year and like never looked back
and was political science.
Speaker 4 (19:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
It's just like I mean, especially at Yale, like you
see now a lot of the people doing this stuff
Jade Vance Yale grad Like, so I'm looking around, like
which one of y'all is going to be I'm protesting
one day, like because I know it's gonna be one
of y'all, but like that's where it is. So it's like,
in essence, it's like my job as a Yell alum
is to be a traitor to what the other alum
is about to do and to resist them full force
(19:58):
because they're built. These institutions are built to consolidate power,
and they only want people who are going to keep
power in the same places. And I'm really all about like, No,
I want the power, the information that I've gotten from Yale.
I want to siphon it away and bring it to us,
like for more of.
Speaker 4 (20:14):
Us to know this. And I love that through the book, like.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
People will say, oh, yeah, like my grandparents did have
this land, or maybe I don't come from a family
that had land in this country, but I want to.
I want to be the generation that starts that. And
what's the path to it? Oh, I got to put
my land in a trust so that it doesn't ever
get taken after I pass away.
Speaker 4 (20:30):
Like that.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
It takes information to get there, and we got to
get into those rooms and bring the information back out
with us and not get stuck in the room thinking
I'll be the only one in there. Like No, it
probably would have been easier to graduate Yale and try
and just be a doctor who did it on her
own and whatever the case may be. But and not
to shape I mean, we also need black doctors.
Speaker 4 (20:47):
We need all of that.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
Yeah, but I also was just like, we need people
to like speak truth to power, and I wanted.
Speaker 4 (20:52):
To be one of those people.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
I just got two more questions because you know, just
she got to prove Around ten forty five in the book,
you talk about returning equity to dispossess people can heal
both the land and our nation soul. What are some
things we can do to make that happen? And why
do you feel that way?
Speaker 4 (21:09):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (21:09):
So I feel that way because America is obsessed with
getting up. We want to be postracial. We want to
be post racial. You cannot do that without addressing the problem.
And one thing that I've noticed is like, I think
there's a lot of people in America who don't understand
black anger. And to me, it's like, but if you
address the issue, I might have nothing to be angry about.
But when I was in Detroit for the book tour,
(21:30):
I was talking about this and eminent domain especially, and
there was an older black woman in the audience who
was like, Yeah, when I was a kid in the sixties,
they came through our middle class community and took the
whole community. It was like a hundred families. There so
many black owned businesses took the whole community through eminent domain,
didn't build anything in.
Speaker 4 (21:46):
Its place for fifty years. It was just vacant. And
what that does to a person?
Speaker 3 (21:50):
She said, her uncle owned three properties in that neighborhood,
and she was like, what it did to my uncle.
When you spend your whole life savings building this out
and watch the government take it? Why would that make
me want to be an upstanding citizen? How can I
go from that and want to be like I can't
even be around it, Like it would make my skin
crawl to be around people thinking like you did this
(22:11):
to me and like it, you know, and as a
man as a provider, thinking like wow, like I did
everything the way they told me I'm supposed to do,
and they still took it, and they said it's one
hundred percent legal, and there's nothing I can do about
it that will make you angry for a lifetime. So
if y'all tired of black people being angry, do the
thing to make its not angry.
Speaker 4 (22:28):
I promise you.
Speaker 3 (22:29):
If they started giving out reparations, legalizem like there's I
ain't got nothing to I'm.
Speaker 4 (22:33):
Gonna be on my land doing my own thing.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
I don't got no beef, go and do what you
gotta do and like, but if you don't address the problem,
it's always going to be there.
Speaker 4 (22:41):
So how we get there? There are only I believe
New York.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
State is the third state to have established a commission
and a task force for actually exploring what reparations would
look like. California already already has one, Illinois has one.
There's some cities, like there's a city in North Carolina
that is also building it out. But it's very locally
happening right now, and we have to support those things.
So for those who are in New York, you can
(23:04):
support that and why the number four reparations dot org
New York for Reparations dot org, and you can learn
more about how to support that movement, because I think
we have to. We have to stop acting as if
it's never gonna happen, and we have to make it happen.
There's a global movement right now for reparations. It's not
just us in America. You got African nations saying I
want my stuff back and I don't want to be
a part of the Commonwealth no more. You got places
(23:25):
in the Caribbean saying yeah, actually, I don't acknowledge the
British crown no more, and we want to be there's
this movement happening. Give us our stuff back from the Museians,
give us our art back, give us our jewels back.
We got to get our wealth back too, and we
can't wait for I hope it happens. No, we got
to work for it to happen, and in the meantime
be doing everything you can to get you a little
piece of land.
Speaker 4 (23:44):
So that's really where I'm at.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
I think there's also another organization, where is my land
dot org. They had a successful campaign. If people are
familiar with the Bruce's Beach in California, oh yeah, yeah, So
there was like a the Bruce family had built a
hotel and a resort on the beachfront in it in
like the thirties, and their land was taken through eminent domain.
The city did absolutely nothing with it, and in twenty twenty,
(24:06):
a brilliant organizer named Kavan Ward was like, I'm tired
of Californians acting like they're better than the rest of
the country, and y'all have racism right in your backyard
and until y'all give this black family their land back,
like you have no moral authority to be telling nobody
else from anywhere else anything. And that family got their
land back, twenty million dollars worth of land back, so like,
it is possible, but we have to support it. So
(24:26):
I would say some of the easiest ways are eminent
domain reversals because you don't need a President Trump to
sign off on nothing. All she had to do was
go to Los Angeles County and say, hey, this happened
in this county. Y'all signed off on that. Now y'all
can sign off to give it back. They have dozens
of campaigns going around, so you can sign their petitions,
you can donate to support them. There's a lot of
people trying to do this work and they're kind of
doing it by themselves or they're building these coalitions and
(24:47):
they don't have a lot of visibility.
Speaker 4 (24:48):
So for people who are.
Speaker 3 (24:49):
Saying, wow, I've never even heard of this stuff, like, yeah,
just look it up New York for reparations, see what
the California Task Force is doing. And if you're listening
from another state and they don't have that, y'all should
and you don't have to. It's not like you're starting
it from scratch. The blueprint is already elsewhere. Say, how
did New York do it? Can we learn from them?
How did California do it? Can we learn from them?
And how can we start getting landbad for you?
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Have you been paying attention to what's going on in
places like Chicago? Like you know, we had a ma
homegirl zo up here and she's been talking about how
the Chicago Housing Authority has stolen so much land, including
her mother's property.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
Have you paid attention to that.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
I didn't specifically hear about her campaign, but I have
heard about this happening in Chicago because yeah, in urban
community just happens too, whether it's through eminent domain or
they'll take a blighted property.
Speaker 4 (25:29):
But it's a difference.
Speaker 3 (25:30):
If a home own it is abandoned, the land under
it should still belong to whoever owned that. They should
never be taking the land from someone, even if they say, hey,
we got to tear down this house and build something up,
better cool, do that on my land for me, right,
like if you shouldn't be taking my land. And also
in Chicago, I think they were doing pretty good work
about the fact that homeowners, like if a black homeowner
(25:50):
is saying, oh, I'm trying to sell my house, how
much is it worth? Their houses are being appraised for
like six figures less than what a white family is.
Like if you took down all the pictures of your
black family your house and then try to sell it,
they would value it more. So they are people trying
to shift that policy, shift tax codes.
Speaker 4 (26:06):
Why are we paying more taxes in.
Speaker 3 (26:08):
Communities that have worse schools, worse roads, no infrastructure. So
there's a lot of people trying to attack us from
different areas. And I think it's all important, Like not
everybody needs to move to a farm and grow something,
but everybody deserves a piece of land with at least
the backyard in the back there's enough to go around.
If Bill Gates didn't have all of it, could we
could all afford to have a nice piece of something.
And this scarcity mindset they try to teach us is
(26:30):
we have to push back against like this idea that
even sometimes what I see is they try to pit
our groups together against one another, where when I start
talking about reparations, someone's like, well, actually it's all indigenous land.
Speaker 4 (26:41):
Well there's enough.
Speaker 3 (26:42):
For us all to have some Indigenous folks should have
their land back too. Black people should have some land, Latinos,
whether they are coming as workers on, Like, there's enough
for all of us to have something. And in this
richest country in the world, why are we accepting, Oh,
there's not enough to go around. I just don't believe that.
I don't believe that, and I'm not going to ever
believe that. And so, actually, to the point of New
Yorker's for reparations, there's a collective. I'm a part of
(27:04):
Bliss Black liberation, Indigenous sovereignty, and we're trying to be
in solidarity with one another and say, hey, they can.
Speaker 4 (27:10):
Never pit me against you.
Speaker 3 (27:11):
I want you to have land too, and I want
me to have lant to and both of our answers acknowledge,
like there's enough for us to get this, get to
it together. We don't got to fight over it, because
while we're fighting over it, they vacationing on their Wyoming ranch.
Speaker 4 (27:25):
They in Hawaii with it.
Speaker 3 (27:26):
They everywhere own the land, and we're fighting for two
acres over here.
Speaker 4 (27:29):
I'm not here for that. There's enough for all of
us to go around.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
I got one. Well, I think we can do it.
That I did have one last question that was good.
Speaker 4 (27:37):
I appreciate you.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
Bria Baker rooted the American legacy of land theft and
the modern movement for black land ownership is out right now.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
We can they get at you, Bria.
Speaker 4 (27:45):
Listen.
Speaker 3 (27:46):
You can follow me at Freckled while Black on social media.
I also have a website Bria Baker dot com and
the book is in stores everywhere. Don't buy it from
Amazon though we boycotting them too. Just about to ask you,
what is your book on Amazon? It is on Amazon,
is on Target, but we boycotting both of those places
right now.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
Your Instagram name right so you can find it there.
Speaker 4 (28:09):
I might be off of them too, so that's why
I said the website breaker dot com. That's want to
use it listen, you know, just.
Speaker 3 (28:16):
But there's black bookstores everywhere. Get it from a black bookstore.
If you're like I don't want to go in person,
bookshop dot org will let you buy it from a
local bookstore and make sure that your money is going
to someone who also wants to see us win. Because
buying a book about black land from a company that
don't want to see you own no land is a
little crazy.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
But listen.
Speaker 3 (28:31):
You gotta get it. Get it where you gotta get it.
You gotta get it.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
It's in Target too and Walmart. Right the Breakfast Club
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