Deeply researched and as readable as a novel, Plundered: How Racist Policies Undermine Black Homeownership in America identifies an element of structural racism that constrains and disadvantages so many people of color. Scholar Bernadette Atuahene and her team of researchers call this “predatory governance.”
Along with better-known discriminatory policies like redlining and exclusionary zoning, Atuahene says predatory governance—“when local governments intentionally or unintentionally raise public dollars through racist policies”—affects Black homeownership in poor communities throughout the country. Atuahene’s focus is the city of Detroit, where local government has confiscated one in three homes through tax foreclosure. Plundered unspools an intricate story of a nearly-bankrupt city unconstitutionally overtaxing homes in poor Black neighborhoods, resulting in property tax evictions, loss of generational wealth, rampant speculation and a rise of entrepreneurial slumlords.
Depressing? Enraging? More than a little. Plundered is also illuminating, humane and even hopeful. In an inspiring afterword, Atuahene details her research methods. Viewing herself as an ethnographer, she is deeply engaged with her subjects, rather than neutral. She digs well beneath the surface of the lives of the people she interviews and allows them to access and amend the record. Her goal as a storyteller is “to use each person’s virtues as well as their imperfections to make their humanity shine.” As a result, even people we might dismiss as malicious and greedy—a Florida investor buying repossessed homes as investments for Argentina’s wealthy elite, for example—are granted moments to express a flicker of humanity.
Even more important and moving are the in-depth stories of people like Myrisha Brown, whose grandfather, Tommie Brown Jr., moved from the South to Detroit in the early 20th century for a low-level but steady job at Ford Motor Company. Brown’s ability to buy a home was constrained in ways that another Detroit man, an Italian immigrant named Paris Bucci, similarly employed, did not experience.
Tracked over decades, the contrasting stories of homeownership and growth of family wealth for Brown and Bucci is eye-opening. Myrisha, a vibrant woman and the caretaker of her family, struggles to retain their home and neighborhood. She ultimately fails because of the predatory forces Atuahene exposes. Another narrative would likely blame Myrisha’s loss on personal failings. But Plundered offers a more accurate and humane story of what is happening in poor Black neighborhoods in Detroit and elsewhere.
