I.

The Narrative of Housing and Ownership

Again, I'd for us to begin by thinking about The Narrative around black
and white inequality. I am not saying this is The Truth, but that this is
the dominate view particularly of white Americans that we use to
explain the different expressions of inequality between white people
and people of other races, particularly black people in America.
I said last week that when looking at wealth, that is ownership of
assets and investments, on average today a household headed by a
black college graduate has less wealth than a household headed by a
white college drop out.1
How do we explain this? Well, as The Narrative goes the primary place
where most Americans gain wealth is through home ownership.
Owning one's home is not only a consumptive good, but also an
investment good.
Looking back at American history, we see pretty clearly that even
though they were freed, black citizens had their property stolen and at
times had the courts working against them, these practices were later
deemed illegal.
Now, the primary reason that black Americans do not own homes at
the rate of white people and that they have not accumulated as much
wealth is because they spend their money on too many consumer
goods. Large TVs sit in low-income neighborhoods and instead of
saving for a down payment, black people would rather spend their
money on shoes, phones, or other flashy items that satisfy them right
now. Because of this shortsightedness, black people don't save as
much and spend only for the moment. This leads to them failing to put
money away for college, purchasing vehicles, or owning their own
homes.
As we said last time, the explanation here is that black people
developed particular values and a culture that did not place a high
priority on saving. They did this because for a time they were legally
and culturally barred from such activities. However, once those legal
and cultural hindrances were dropped, black people had not learned to
overcome their culture and develop new habits and values.
Again, I am not claiming this to be the truth, but just that it is the
Narrative by which many people in white America explain the massive
difference in home ownership and wealth accumulation.
1 Forty Acres and a Mule in Being Black, Living in the Red by Dalton Conley

II. The History - Theft and Exclusion

At the time of Emancipation, black people in America owned 0.5
percent of the total worth of the United States. By 1990, that number
had climbed to 1 percent. How do we account for so little progress
made? Class does not do justice to the difference. Even amongst lowincome people making less than $15k/year, white people have a
median net worth of $10k. Black people have almost none.
In a chapter entitled "Forty Acres and A Mule," in his book, Being Black,
Living in the Red, Dalton Conley looks to find an explanation for this
disparity. Is it simply a matter of racism and racial policies that account
for the lack of accumulated wealth between generations. He examines
the accumulation of wealth from one generation to another and
statistically adds or removes factors such as class, race, gender,
number of siblings, parent's wealth, income, etc. to find which factor
has the greatest causality in wealth staying the same between
generations.
His conclusion may seem surprising. He discovers that race is actually
not much of a factor in predicting the wealth levels of a younger
generation. He writes, "The single most important factor for this age
group is parental net worth. Among such a young group, parental net
worth can have a very strong impact that dwarfs the individual's own
labor market success as well as his or her own savings and investment
behavior. Most likely this represents the impact of parental giving in
the form of trusts, down payments for first homes, and the like."
The second biggest factor is the income of the person being examined.
Factors that did not matter nearly as much: education, the number of
siblings, or the age of the parents. Think about that for just a minute.
The child of a wealthy, single eighteen year old is more likely to grow
up and have a higher net worth than the child of a married twentyseven year old living in poverty.
What this tells us is what we've been saying each and every week: our
parents and our grandparents matter. They matter for our faith, and
they matter for our bank accounts. In fact, we might say our parents
and grandparents matter for our faith because they matter for our
bank accounts. If a white person's parent owned a home, owned land,
owned anything it put them at an advantage over a black person
whose parents didnt own anything.

So we need to go in and look at how housing and ownership have

played out racially in our country.
For generations, using Black Codes, the police, local courts, and
sometimes just physical violence, white people took land owned by
black citizens. In 2001, the Associated Press did an investigation of
tens of thousands of public records and interviews with more than
1,000 people. They tracked 107 land takings throughout 13 Southern
and border states.
"In those cases alone, 406 black landowners lost more than 24,000
acres of farm and timber land plus 85 smaller properties including
stores and city lots. Today, virtually all of this property, valued at tens
of millions of dollars, is owned by whites or by corporations."2
Some of those takings have turned into a country club in Virginia, oil
fields in Mississippi, and a major-league baseball spring training facility
in Florida.
One example documented by the AP states that, "After midnight on
Oct. 4, 1908, 50 hooded white men surrounded the home of a black
farmer in Hickman, Ky., and ordered him to come out for a whipping.
When David Walker refused and shot at them instead, the mob poured
coal oil on his house and set it afire, according to contemporary
newspaper accounts. Pleading for mercy, Walker ran out the front door,
followed by four screaming children and his wife, carrying a baby in her
arms. The mob shot them all, wounding three children and killing the
others. Walker's oldest son never escaped the burning house. No one
was ever charged with the killings, and the surviving children were
deprived of the farm their father died defending. Land records show
that Walker's 2 1/2-acre farm was simply folded into the property of a
white neighbor. The neighbor soon sold it to another man, whose
daughter owns the undeveloped land today."
How do you think owning that property has effected that family? What
would justice look like for the family driven off the property?
Some of the pieces of property chronicled by the AP have sold recently
for millions of dollars and their original owners were driven from them
through violence and the courts all the same. They and their children
never got to benefit from owning that land, those homes.
One of those cases documented by the AP says, "In the 1950s and
1960s, a Chevrolet dealer, acquired hundreds of acres from black
2 AP Documents Land Taken From Blacks Through Trickery, Violence and Murder by
Todd Lewan and Dolores Barclay

farmers by foreclosing on small loans for farm equipment and pickup

trucks. Norman Weathersby, then the only dealer in the area, required
the farmers to put up their land as security for the loans, county
residents who dealt with him said. And the equipment he sold them,
they said, often broke down shortly thereafter. Weathersby's friend,
William E. Strider, ran the local Farmers Home Administration - the
credit lifeline for many Southern farmers. Area residents, including
Erma Russell, 81, said Strider, now dead, was often slow in releasing
farm operating loans to blacks. When cashpoor farmers missed
payments owed to Weathersby, he took their land. The AP documented
eight cases in which Weathersby acquired black-owned farms this way.
When he died in 1973, he left more than 700 acres of this land to his
family, according to estate papers, deeds and court records.
So theft was one way of keeping white people gaining an advantage
over black people and passing it along to their children. Another was
exclusion.
In 1934, the Federal Housing Administration was tasked with helping
bring homeownership to the masses. And it worked. In 1930, only 30
percent of Americans owned a home; by 1960 it was up to 60 percent.
Through a process called redlining, neighborhoods deemed dangerous
were ineligible for loans to purchase their homes. This was an explicitly
racist project.
As late as 1950, the National Association of Real Estate Boards code of
ethics warned that a Realtor should never be instrumental in
introducing into a neighborhood any race or nationality, or any
individuals whose presence will clearly be detrimental to property
values. A 1943 brochure specified that such potential undesirables
might include madams, bootleggers, gangstersand a colored man of
means who was giving his children a college education and thought
they were entitled to live among whites.3
Because we know that the net worth and owned assets of parents are
the strongest indicators of the future net worth of their children this
means that if you are white and you grew up in a home purchased in
the 1930's, 1940's or 50's your family benefited from two things:
thousands of dollars in government handouts and racism. Those
benefits were passed on to you and you have passed them on to your
children.
This exclusion didn't just take place through policy. Black people
moving in to white neighborhoods were treated as threats. They were.
3 The Case for Reparations by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Not to people's safety, but their net worth. Black people moving in to
the neighborhood meant that property values were likely to go down
and so white people fled to the suburbs as fast as possible. This
combined with red-lining created areas where black people remained
impoverished due to making lower wages than white people and were
not able to accumulate wealth at the same rate. Any account of "black
on black crime" or shootings in Chicago has to take this fact into
account.
III. The Problem - Justice
In June of 2015, the eccentric car dealer, Trader John, who lived his life
in Indianola, Mississippi died at the age of 76. Trader John was a
successful businessman, Trader John lived a full and eccentric life. A
larger than life character, he purchased a bus and painted it to look
like Willie Nelson's bus in the film "Honeysuckle Rose," that he called
"The Circus." He'd drive The Circus to Memphis, Louisiana, concerts
and festivals.
The Circus also carried his balloon equipment. Trader John was an avid
hot air balloon pilot. At one point, he owned an elephant.4
As a car dealer, Trader John had been brought up in the family
business. His father was Norman Weathersby, the man mentioned
above who in the 1950's and 60's who took property from his black
neighbors by renting them faulty equipment and making them sign
their land over as collateral. John inherited some of that property from
his family, and his financial success likely would not have been
possible without the wealth his father accumulated.
This raises all sorts of challenging questions: what did John
Weathersbey owe the people whose land his father took? Why did he
get to live the life he did while their descendants lived the lives they
did? When asked by the AP about his father's dealings, John said "he
had little direct knowledge about his father's business affairs. However,
he said he was sure his father never would have sold defective vehicles
and that he always treated people fairly."
And what are we to do with the after affects of all of the stories like the
Weathersby's and their neighbors? What about his own three children
and their children?
IV. Discipleship - Jubilee
4 Trader John A true Delta legend by Mark H. Towers in The Clarion Ledger

So how should we white Christians respond to this legacy?

In the Bible, the practice of Jubilee names redemption. This redemption
is a time in which people who have fallen on hard times, been cheated
out of their land or wealth or have had to sell themselves into slavery
may be freed. We hear in Jesus words in Luke the proclamation that
such a time has been instituted in his coming when he preached: "The
Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach
good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the
captives and recovery of sight to the blind to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor (Jubilee)."
So the people of God should be marked by a belief that because of
Jesus we can practice Jubilee.
As individuals we ought to practice hospitality to those in need
particularly our neighbors that are black and persons of color. Jesus has
harsh words to say for people who store up their treasure in bank
accounts. We never know when we might die and at that point our
bank accounts will be worthless. This means that we ought to think
long and hard about how our wealth is passed down and to whom it is
passed on to.
In Leviticus, we are told that Jubilee means not only not taking
advantage of the poor, but actually taking care of them until the year
of Jubilee when their property can be returned to them. This means
refusing to charge a profit for the necessities of life such as food or
housing.
This also might look like individuals or communities offering no interest
loans to those in need or for them to purchase their own home
(Leviticus 13:35).
We, white Christians, ought to do all of this with an eye towards our
brothers and sisters who are black because we know full well what the
history of this country has meant to them and to us as Christians.