For the Times: Justice

Advancing a just society is a signature focus of UMass Boston research. And as two recent studies show, that work is informing the conversation around equity on a national and local level.

THE THEFT OF BLACK FARMLAND

Black farmers in the United States were deprived of approximately $326 billion worth of land over the course of the 20th century, a shocking loss that has set Black families back immeasurably, according to a study led by Dania Francis, an assistant economics professor in the College of Liberal Arts. The research appeared in the American Economic Association’s Papers and Proceedings journal and made international news.

In the early 1900s, the amount of farmland owned by Black families was at its peak. About 425,000 Black people owned almost 20 million acres in the Jim Crow South. But by 1997, Black farmer land ownership had plummeted to 4.7 million acres.

To investigate the value of the land lost and how this happened, Francis and her team started with the USDA Census of Agriculture, using its data to estimate $326-billion-dollar figure by taking nominal land values and compounding them. The estimate is conservative because it doesn’t account for multiplier effects, such as using the land as collateral. Even so, the implications of the loss are devastating.

“Wealth and land is one way in this country that you're able to grow opportunity for your family," Francis told Reuters. “When huge groups of African Americans were denied that opportunity, it speaks to the intergenerational wealth gap that opened up in part due to this type of land loss.”

The Black-white wealth gap is enormous, more than 10 times larger than the income gap between Black and white families. And that number doesn’t account for the lost hopes and dreams, the loss of investment in future generations.

The loss occurred because the USDA itself was—and continues to be—discriminatory against Black farmers, the researchers found. Black farmers were refused loans by USDA agents, who interfered in county elections and restricted the crops Black farmers could grow. On the federal level, USDA policies ensured that money would flow to white landowners and effectively cut out Black ones. The practices have been so egregious that Black farmers refer to the USDA as “the Last Plantation.”

The enormous loss “destroyed a rural Black middle class that had, by sheer will, emerged in the aftermath of slavery,” the authors wrote in a New Republic article about their findings. “Since family wealth is iterative— growing slowly at first, adding to itself, and accumulating and expanding over time—this blow to a nascent Black middle class has reverberated down the generations.”

ASIAN AMERICANS HAVE BEEN SLAMMED BY A COMBINATION OF THE PANDEMIC AND RACISM

Asian Americans in the Greater Boston area face racial prejudice, mental health concerns, and economic loss because of the pandemic, says a new report from UMB’s Institute for Asian American Studies.

A sizable proportion of those surveyed who have limited formal education and low household income were hit hard by financial loss and loss of work. Many are worried about paying for food and housing.

Boston-area Asian Americans already faced social isolation because of cultural and linguistic differences, said the report, written by Carolyn Wong, a research associate for the institute, and research assistant Ziting Kuang ’21. This was the first survey to reach out to them using a multilingual questionnaire. Almost 200 people participated.

Nearly half the respondents reported that people acted afraid of them because of their race during the pandemic. More than 25 percent of Vietnamese Americans said they had been threatened or harassed because of their race, and over 40 percent of South Asians reported receiving poorer service.

Already high poverty rates among Asian Americans were made worse during the pandemic. Many Asian American workers faced reduced hours or job loss in the hospitality, retail, and food service industries, and small business owners were hit hard by loss of customers.

The authors called for increased funding for mental health services, expansion of social services for people with limited English proficiency, and research on the effects of anti-Asian racism and ways to help Asian American workers and businesses recover from the pandemic.