The Breakfast Club - Brea Baker Talks Black Land Ownership, Reparations, New Book + More

Episode Date: February 6, 2025

Brea Baker Talks Black Land Ownership, Reparations, New Book + MoreSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Seven questions, limitless answers. Yep. It's the World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club. Charlamagne the God, Jess Hilarious, Envy is out, but Lauren LaRosa is in and as promised, her mama called up here and said, you better have my baby up there to talk about that book. Okay, Brea Baker is here.

Good morning. Thank y'all so much for having me and thank you, Mommy, for making sure. That's why I said, is Mommy the manager? Mommy needs to be the manager. She on payroll now. She on payroll now. I'm the allergy, Bria. Your mama fine. And I mean that respectfully.

First of all. I mean that respectfully. You are a beautiful woman. Okay? No disrespect to Mr. Baker. I'm about to say there is a Mr. Baker. Okay, yes, yes, yes. I'm just saying.

I'm listening. I'm just saying. Now, rooted, Sim is your best friend. Sim works here at the Breakfast Club. How far do you and Sim go back? We went to middle school together. And from then on, we've just been locked in. We thought we were both gonna be in medicine.

And now she's obviously up here doing this and I'm writing books. So it worked out exactly as it's supposed to be. But yeah, we've been locked in for years. She's the one who gave me a copy of Rooted. That was a while ago. How long ago was that? I don't even remember.

And she said you was pretending like you didn't read it. I did read it. I know, but you was playing with her. I'm always playing with them. Because she only gave it to me once and it was two books she gave me and she kept asking me did I read them, did I read them. I read this one because it was interesting to me

because I'm from South Carolina where this happens a lot in the low country. And our family's land is in North Carolina, so I was peeping that. That's amazing. I didn't read it, but I'm just captivated by the title. What is it about? Thank you.

Okay, so in general, the book is about black land ownership, the fact that we owned more land a hundred years ago than we do now. And I'm sure the people in this room and the people listening 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 loss. So I started writing this book because my family has land in North Carolina. My grandfather passed away in 2019, 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're not sure if someone in the next generation values it enough to keep it in the family. And so it was 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. 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, Lewis Baker. He bought land like 10 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, 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. It's like, we need to be championing black land ownership, whether you're getting it on your own, whether we fighting for reparations, but that needs to be a conversation in our community

because that's where real equity comes from. I'm glad, okay, Ellen. I was gonna ask you, with all that history, how do you feel about land banks and what they do today? Because there's like the pros of it, I think people are inclusion and people can get the land easier, but then there's kinds of people feeling like the land banks only sell

and work with different people, certain people, certain developers, you kind of get closed out if you don't have a certain amount of money. So how do you feel the land banks only sell and work with different people, certain people, certain developers, you kind of get closed out if you don't have a certain amount of money. So how do you feel about land banks? Yeah, I think some of the, I love that you brought that up. I feel like some of the land banks are really good and they're trying to get land in the hand of black and indigenous and people who don't

historically get a chance. But in anything in this country, there's always gonna be people who are doing it and it's their way to get cheaper stuff to people who really don't need the cheapest stuff, they already good. But I do think that some 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 already good. But I do think that some people are doing it in a really good way where like like climate justice conservation groups will give land to black and indigenous people because like you'll treat the land better than this company will.

You'll treat this land better than this private developer will but it's kind of rare to find these land banks that will do it in that way. But again, that's why I'm a big champion of reparations because land banks could be a form of reparations if you dictate that it has to be going to black people and black families who come from this history. But if we all gotta save up the money, scrounge up the money, to buy a,

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? That's not just a condo. That's really gonna cost like 10k plus per acre that you want, so if you want a lot and to have buildings on it, it gets expensive.

So I think the land banks are just a good way of making it more accessible to people. They just gotta make sure it's accessible to the right people. 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 common myths

about the difficulty of enacting reparations, but also too, I wonder why we got away from wanting the 40 acres? Right, exactly, because that's where reparations came from was right after the Civil War, is like we want our 40 acres in a mule. And we still talk about that, you know, Spike Lee has the production company But it's almost like we talk about 40 acres in a mule or reparations as pigs flying like oh that's never gonna happen

They never gonna 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 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, is 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 should have been our reparations. Israel got the money that should have been our reparations. The pence, so the money is

out there, they just not giving 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. What are you offering in exchange and why is reparations such a bad word? And then the other thing that gets used is black celebrities actually are used as an excuse. Oh, you don't need reparations, you got an Oprah, you got a 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. I think Chris Tucker or Chris Rock, one of them has this like standup where he's like, yeah, in my neighborhood is like me and a bunch of black comedians and then like dentists. It was Mary Jane's wife. I think Derek G. are a-rod us. It's like crazy.

So like how come we have to be superstars to live next door to a dentist, an 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. I want you to speak to the land thing for reparations a little bit more,

because Erin Magruder had created this show called Black America, and it was an all history drama that black Americans had received the sovereign states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama as reparations for slavery. And with that land, they were able to shape their freedom. The show never came out, but it is an idea that he had.

How do you think that would have played out? Oh yeah, it would have been major because those states that you're talking about had predominantly black majority populations. So that's where black people were. So if you actually, like thinking 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 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 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. And there are some places where we saw that. There was examples of 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 15 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, wait, let me get that back from you actually. That's what happens in places like Tulsa, Wilmington,

even Atlanta, like you had these predominantly black communities that somehow, without having their 48 acres and a mule, were able to figure it out. And it's like, even when we pick ourselves up by our brook straps, they still waiting to take that. Like, wait, you wasn't supposed to do that well. I didn't expect, exactly, Black Wall Street.

Exactly. People don't talk about Wilmington, North Carolina at all. At all. When they talk about, when they have those conversations about things that they took from us. 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 proof of this.

The folks in Tulsa went to the people in Wilmington, because the Wilmington massacre happened in 1898, and Tulsa massacre happened in 1921. They literally were like, teach us how you did that, and learned it. They did that too in Atlanta in 1906. 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 in Wilmington, they just figured out 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 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 people out of here.

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 105, 106 years old, trying to get their just due. We're not even just talking about descendants. They're alive. Right, right. And they got museums, and if you go through Tulsa,

in the sidewalks, it'll tell you, there used to be a barber shop here, and it was burned down in 1921. It used to be a dry cleaners here, it was burned down in 1920. You know exactly which businesses were there. 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, Wilmington was definitely the blueprint. And I think people ignore that because they don't wanna be accountable, especially in like the Carolinas. They don't wanna 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 read your book and I hear you talking, you're so passionate about this, where did that passion come from? It's one thing to know about something, but to be passionate about it and want it to be your life's work in a way. And you're like an historian too.

Thank you, I appreciate that. I read so fluently on my little- I appreciate y'all saying that. Girl, you know dates and everything, 1998 and 1826. I was literally sitting here like, I wonder how she, like, yeah. I'm like, damn, okay. I'm so fluent, Leigh-Anne. I appreciate y'all saying that. Girl, you know Bates and everything. 1998 and 1826. I'm like, damn, okay. I'm so weak.

Well, I will say, I've always been very studious, so I think I do have that memory for stuff like that. But my mom used to joke, oh, we sent you to Yale to be a doctor, you came back a Black Panther. You went to Yale, how was that experience? I went to Yale. It was horrible. I did not like it.

Wow. Yeah. I mean, I think, so growing up was horrible, I did not like it. Oh wow. 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 that part of Long Island that I'm in.

Going from that to Yale, where I was like, I remember growing up and thinking, cause by the time I was conscious of it, I got a black president, you know, Obama became president when I was in middle school. And so I'm thinking up and thinking, because by the time I was conscious of it, I got a black president. Obama became president when I was in middle school. And so I'm thinking like minority, that's an out-dirty term. I'm not no minority. 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, you can't even wrap your mind around how much money some of these people have. The institution, when I was at Yale, they had a $20 billion endowment,

which is their investment portfolio, sitting in a bank account somewhere making money. Now, eight years after I graduated, that is a $45 billion 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

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 1%. And it just has you really thinking, like, I'm going to school with them, though. They're here. And what do I want to do? So, yeah, I just remember thinking,

I cannot sit in nobody's lab for the next 10 years while we're being killed in the streets. 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 a 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 on to it, employing people, giving people a job, feeding themselves.

Even now during the pandemic was the first time a lot of people realized how dependent they are on somebody else to eat. If the grocery store shelves are empty, what are you gonna do for your family? You don't know how to grow nothing. That's what all activism was. That's what the civil rights movement was in the South. Right, it was all in the South,

but it was in Southern cities though. It was in Selma's and Birmingham's and Atlanta's, but black people were, as far as working class black people, were in the boonies. Were in like, where my family is, is still very rural. When we were kids going there, they didn't have no Wi-Fi. And I was like, I want to go home. I want to be here.

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're 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 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 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 question, she was my research partner for the book.

She would take me around, you gotta 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? 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 they've lived through and things that they're probably like, yeah, that got taken from us too. That's our story too.

And with this reparations movement 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. 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 gonna 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 talking, I used to Craig jokes on him all the time, he was talking about farming.

You know, we got this land, let's grow this on. I'm like, grow? I don't know how to, but he knows how to do all of that. I'm sorry? Yeah, well you gotta bring that up. I'm just saying, he's also Mexican. He is a clown, right? As in that what?

Yes, but he is Mexican. But I do love that though. But yes, he's still, he's saying that like, yo, got all this land, Let's let's let's grow everything What are we gonna do and I'm like dang you sound like the movie? Let's not leave the world leave the world behind you but it's a real is bang and you have to you have to do that Yeah, 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. That's intentional because when we were working the land, we were doing it forcibly for no pay. The moment we could start making money for it, it's like, actually we could find somebody else to do it.

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 in a similar boat. They're the ones picking strawberries out in California with the fires. It's crazy. Well, we're in the same situation where it's like they want us to work the land where they can profit off of it. And in the moment that we start to be entrepreneurial and get our own farms 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 can take advantage of an immigrant community and they can do it, because I don't wanna pay you your fair share. So we gotta be able to own our own land to decide what actually happens on it. How do you-

Go ahead. How do you feel like what's happening right now with Trump and like DEI and the mass deportation? 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 try and figure out the roots and the land, like all that more? Like what do you think is about, what do you predict? Honestly, I feel like it's going to 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. So 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 not feeding our people, we gonna feed our people. They not educating us, we educate listen, they not feeding our people, we gonna feed our people. They not educating us, we educate us. They not providing us healthcare, we gonna open a clinic. And I think sometimes, it's not like you're wishing for the situation. 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 innovative and 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 this literally in our family group chat. They like, I'm only shopping in Bre's backyard

from now on until they get this land thing together. But it's like, for real though, what if we were all growing something and we could just afford to say, let's share what we growing. You growing potatoes and tomatoes and cucumbers, so I'm gonna come to you for that. I got the chicken, so we provide the eggs. So andand-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 so many farms upstate. Like, what does it mean to find the black farmers upstate and shop from them?

Because they 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 that the Black Panther started, the federal government was like, oh, we're going to do that too. Y'all doing a free breakfast program? We're going to do that. Y'all doing, educating your young people? We'll do a head start.

Like the government learns that what Black people do will benefit everybody. And so they will pick it up later, but we can't wait around for them. So. I want us to learn that what we do will benefit us. You know, when you talk about the black panthers, you gotta talk about the nation of Islam. You gotta talk about Marcus Garvey movement. They've been teaching us to do for self forever.

That should have never not been our model. 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 and anything we can catch him in. They got him on mail fraud or something like that.

Something like, what harm is he doing? But we're seeing that now. 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 gotta build stuff out and we gotta defend the programs we're building and make sure

that it can't be dismantled so easily. And sometimes I feel like social media makes it very easy for us to fight away at our own. Like you see black people building a movement and there's more critique in the comment section than offers of help. And we gotta be willing to actually- From us.

From us too. You know, like I saw that with BLM. So more people are mad at the, and I'm like, wait, but what if we, like we can do more together. We can do more together. 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 become? That made me political science. I actually entered Yale a physics major and pre-med. And then I switched sophomore year and like never looked back and was political science, yeah. So it was just like, I mean, especially at Yale, you see now a lot of the people doing this stuff, JD Vance, Yale grad.

So I'm looking around, which one of y'all is gonna be, I'm protesting one day. Because I know it's gonna be one of y'all, but that's where it is. So it's like, in essence, it's like my job as a Yale alum is to be a traitor to what the other alum's about to do and to resist them full force 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 or the information that I've gotten from Yale, I want to siphon it away and bring it to us, like for more of us to know this. And I love that through the book, like 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 wanna be the generation that starts that. And what's the path to it? Oh, I gotta put my land in a trust

so that it doesn't ever get taken after I pass away. Like, it takes information to get there, and we gotta get into those rooms and bring the information back out with us, 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, I mean, we also need black doctors. We also, so we need all of that. But I also was just like, we need people to like speak truth to power. And I wanted to be one of those people. I just got two more questions, because you know, Jess, she got a poof around 10.45.

Excuse me? In the book, you talk about returning equity to dispossessed people can heal both the land and our nation's soul. What are some things we can do to make that happen? And why do you feel that way? Yeah, so I feel that way because America is obsessed with getting, we wanna be post-racial,

we wanna 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,

I was talking about this, an eminent domain especially, and there was an older black woman in the audience who was like, yeah, when I was a kid in the 60s, they came through our middle-class community and took the whole the audience who was like, yeah, when I was a kid in the 60s, they came through our middle class community and took the whole community. It was like 100 families there. So many black owned businesses took the whole community through Eminent Domain.

Didn't build anything in this place for 50 years. It was just vacant. And what that does to a person, 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 to me. And like, 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 100% legal and there's nothing I can do about it. Nothing that you can do. That will make you angry for a lifetime. So if y'all tired of black people being angry, do the thing to make us not angry. I promise you, if they started giving out reparations, legalizing, I ain't got nothing to be,

I'ma be on my land, do my own thing. I don't got no beef, go on and do what you gotta do. But if you don't address the problem, it's always gonna be there. So how we get there, there are only, I believe New York State is the third state to have established a commission and a task force for actually exploring what reparations would look like.

California 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 support that NY the number four, reparations.org, NewYorkforReparations.org.

And you can learn more about how to support that movement because I think 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 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 museums. 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 gotta work for it to happen. And in the meantime, be doing everything you can to get you a little piece of land. So that's really where I'm at. I think there's also another organization, WhereIsMyLand.org. They had a successful campaign,

if people are familiar, the Bruce's Beach in California. Oh yeah. Yeah, so there was like a Bruce, the Bruce family had built a hotel and a resort on the beachfront in LA in like the 30s. And their land was taken through eminent domain. The city did absolutely nothing with it. And in 2020, a brilliant organizer named Kavon 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, $20 million worth of land back. So like, it is possible, but we have to support it.

So 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 they don't have a lot of visibility. So for people who are saying, wow, I've never even heard of this stuff, like, yeah, just look it up, New York for reparation, and 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 land back for each other? Have you been paying attention to what's going on in places like Chicago? Like, you know, we had my 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.

Have you paid attention to that? I didn't specifically hear about her campaign, but I have heard about this happening in Chicago, because yeah, in urban communities it happens too, whether it's through eminent domain, or they'll take a blighted property, but it's a difference, if the home on 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 gotta tear down this house and build something up better, cool, do that on my land for me, right? Like, 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 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 in your house and then tried to sell it, they would value it more. So there are people trying to shift that policy, shift tax codes, why are we paying more taxes

in 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 a backyard in the back.

There's enough to go around. If Bill Gates didn't have all of it, like we could all afford to have a nice piece of something. And this scarcity mindset they try to teach us is we have to push back against. Like this idea that even sometimes what I see is they try to pit our groups against one another, where when I start talking about reparations, someone's like,

well, actually it's all indigenous land. Well, there's enough 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 the, 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 gonna ever believe that. And so actually, to the point of New Yorkers for reparation, there's a collective, I'm a part of BLISS, Black Liberation, Indigenous Sovereignty, and we're trying to be in solidarity with one another and say, hey, they can never pit me against you. I want you to have land too, and I want me to have land too.

And both of our ancestors acknowledged, like, there's enough for us to get to it together. We don't gotta fight over it. Because while we fighting over it, they vacationing on their Wyoming ranch. They in Hawaii with it. They everywhere on the land and we fighting for two acres over here.

I'm not here for that. There's enough for all of us to go around. I got one, oh, I think we can end it at that. I did have one last question, we can end it. That was good. Appreciate you. Brea Baker, Rooted, The American Legacy of Land Theft and the Modern Movement for Black Land Ownership

is out right now. What can they get at you, Brea? Listen, you can follow me at Freckled While Black on social media. I also have a website, breabaker.com. And the book is in stores everywhere. Don't buy it from Amazon, though. We boycotting them, too, right?

I was just about to ask you, was your book on Amazon? It is on Amazon. It is on Target. But we boycotting them too. Right, so. I was just about to ask you, was your book on Amazon? It is on Amazon, it is on Target, but we boycotting both of those places right now. Just gave you Instagram name. Right, so you can find it there. But Meta's already DEI-ing. That's true, and I might be offering them too. So that's why I said the website, Briandbaker.com.

That's not on none of those. But she gonna use it, you know, just until. But there's black bookstores everywhere. Get it from a black bookstore. If you're like, I don't wanna go in person, Bookshop use it just until she use it to what she need. But there's black bookstores everywhere. Get it from a black bookstore. If you're like, I don't wanna go in person, bookshop.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. Cause buying a book about black land from a company that don't wanna see you own no land is a little crazy. But listen, you gotta get it. You gotta get it where you gotta get it. You gotta get it. Yeah, yeah.

It's in Target too and Walmart, right? Yeah. Shut up. No, shut up. Shut up. No get it, you gotta get it. It's in Target too and Walmart, right? Shut up! Shut up! No! Stop it! It's Brea Baker, it's the Breakfast Club. Calling all Yellowstone fans. Let's go to work.

Join Bobby Bones on the official Yellowstone podcast for exclusive cast interviews, behind the scenes insights, and a deep dive into the themes that have made Yellowstone a for exclusive cast interviews, behind the scenes insights, and a deep dive into the themes that have made Yellowstone a cultural phenomenon. Our family legacy is this ranch. I'm an architect of my life. Listen to the official Yellowstone podcast now on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Black History Month is here and we're excited to kick off season four of I Didn't Know, Maybe You Didn't Either, or wherever you get your podcasts. 16 year old black woman helped to make it happen. Listen to I Didn't Know. Maybe you didn't either, from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or simply wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, and my latest episode is with Bill Gates. This is a world where somebody can have over a hundred billion dollars.

What is that? Social networking we're still arguing about what the policy should be, algorithms reward outrageous things. These fortunes are almost illegitimate unless in a very smart way given back. Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. What if you ask two different people the same set of questions? Even if the questions are the same, our experiences can lead us to drastically different answers. I'm Minnie Driver and I set out to explore this idea in my podcast

and now, Minnie Questions is returning for another season. We've asked an entirely new set of guests our seven questions including Jane Lynch, Delaney Rowe and Cord Jefferson. Listen to mini questions on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Seven questions, limitless answers.