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In general, properties owned by Black Americans have lower values. This sobering fact, backed by 150 years of assessment data, underpins today's inequality.
Black Americans' properties have been undervalued by home appraisers and overvalued by tax assessors. This double whammy makes Black homeowners more likely to default on taxes and ultimately be dispossessed of their property. One such case involved a black landowner in North Carolina who lost his land in 1920. That loss has affected generations in the family, with his great-great-grandson, George Floyd, killed by a police officer after calling authorities. About the fake $20 bill in Minneapolis a century later.
A book published this week, “The Black Tax,” explains how Mr. Floyd's great-grandfather's case was not unique under a system that took shape shortly after black Americans began acquiring property. ing. Black Americans continue to be the only racial group whose homeownership rate is below 50%.
We asked author Andrew Carle, a history professor at the University of Virginia, about his research. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
By 1910, black Americans owned more than 16 million acres of land. On the surface, it appears to have been a success. What's underneath?
It was a remarkable achievement in the face of enormous odds. By the early 20th century, however, a clear pattern of overtaxation of black-owned property had become apparent throughout the South. Even more egregious, local tax authorities were quick to auction off black-owned land for unpaid taxes, especially when the land in question became valuable.
By owning land, black people living in the Jim Crow South were able to gain a degree of independence that black sharecroppers and sharecroppers did not have, but they also had responsibilities such as paying taxes that came with owning land. also involves debt. Abuse of local taxing powers functioned to ensure that any land blacks managed to acquire was at risk of dispossession.
Please explain how the evaluation process was abused.
Local tax assessors enjoyed, and in many cases still enjoy, incredible discretion in the valuation of local property for taxes. They were, in a sense, accountable to the voters who put them in office, but because they were disenfranchised, they were not accountable to black property owners and were effectively impunity. This meant that there was a possibility of excessive taxation without being able to do so.
By severely underestimating the value of large plantations and estates, as well as smaller white landholdings, local tax authorities intentionally allowed the wealthiest landowners to pay the lowest taxes and local governments depleted local revenue and shifted the burden of local taxes decisively onto disenfranchised black citizens.
Has it essentially become easier to steal land?
Tax sales are a powerful yet underappreciated tool of eminent domain and were largely responsible for the decline in black land ownership from 16 million acres in 1910 to less than 1.6 million acres by 2000. Contributed.
Although the specific causes of black land loss varied, they tended to fit a pattern. Black-owned land is most vulnerable when Black people own land that is coveted by others, or when the presence of Black landowner individuals or groups is seen as a threat to the prevailing social and economic order. It was when
The people bidding on tax-delinquent properties at county tax auctions were not the hooded night riders and white mobs often associated with black land grabs of this era. They were often lawyers and land speculators who sought to profit from the misfortune, financial hardship, and vulnerability of others.
How did black Americans protect themselves?
Black newspapers reported on the gross neglect of Black schools and neighborhoods, and pressed for equal service in their rights as taxpayers. Individuals sometimes filed appeals and received reductions. However, there were few legal options other than state and local courts to challenge systemic acts of discrimination.
Across the rural South, we found examples of black victims of fraud suing to recover land from tax foreclosure actions and successfully representing themselves in court as aggrieved property owners and taxpayers. This tactic is more likely to bear fruit than claiming to be a victim of racism. .
What about racial taxes in the North?
Particularly after World War II, northern cities began to dry up their tax base as the white middle class moved to the suburbs. So cities reduced property taxes while increasing services to the people and businesses they wanted to attract and retain. The favorable tax assessments, better schools, and public services that whites enjoyed came at the expense of black neighborhoods.
By the late 1960s, real estate assessments in black urban neighborhoods were higher relative to property values ​​than those in white neighborhoods in nearly every city where tax inequity was studied. However, the condition of public schools, goods, and services in these areas was even worse.
What impact did “black taxes” have on today's disparity between rich and poor?
At the most conservative estimate, a pattern of racialized overvaluation has forced every black person in America to pay an additional $100 (in 2024 dollars) per year for the past 150 years. This adds up to nearly $300 billion for him.
But even that amount doesn't fully capture the damage the black tax did to generations of African Americans.
The tax benefits enjoyed by white homeowners in majority-white cities and school districts allowed middle-class white families to build wealth through homeownership. At the same time, the value of black-owned homes and real estate in black neighborhoods declined, ensuring that homeownership would never be the upward mobility vehicle it had been for generations of white Americans.
All the homes and acres of land Black people lost in tax sales, and the exorbitant payments forced to protect their homes from tax foreclosure, not only drained Black people of their income and assets, but quietly , but strongly contributed to the increase in redistribution of American wealth.
In one example from the book, in 1961, Evelina Jenkins, a black woman living in South Carolina, was arrested after the white man she was entrusted with intentionally failed to deliver a $26 tax bill to the county. He lost 66 acres of prime coastal land that he owned. Then she quickly had her land extorted at a county tax sale. Currently, her home on Horse Island, South Carolina is on the market for more than $2.5 million. Mr. Jenkins died penniless.
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