Posted by Analyzing the Jim Crow Financial Weapon of Mass Destruction that the elite used to engineer race riots as a cover to steal our land and make it “their” own.
Kamala. Obama. Drake. What do they all have in common? And no, not trying to pick on them like that, so chill and pay attention.
Kendrick Lamar’s song “They Not Like Us” became the unofficial 2024 summer anthem, not necessarily because of the song or the popular video alone. It was because Kendrick and his team created the right song at the right time, especially being tied to Juneteenth and then the video release on July 4th during an election year.
But why did it strike a chord—not “A minor” lol—with our people? Part of it is that we’re witnessing across the country what Claude Anderson predicted in 1995 would happen now: we’re being replaced in Chicago, New York, Detroit, California (don’t forget that LA City Council scandal where the Hispanic contingent was caught on audio recording conspiring to keep blacks out of power), and elsewhere. And who’s leading this effort to replace us? People who claim to be us, and even kinda look like us, but are not born in our indigenous Black American lineage. They’re all immigrants, or born directly from immigrants, not that there’s anything wrong with that in itself.
The problem is they then muddy our voices by redirecting our struggle into “everybody’s struggle,” aka the “people of color” label, ignoring our unique loss of wealth as a result of not only slavery, but also the even more costly Jim Crow terror regime that used the race riot scam to destroy our people’s lives, steal our land and homes, run us out of town, change land title records fraudulently over to the ownership of colonizers, and created sundown towns to keep us from reclaiming our stolen land.
Most of those who are not born into multiple indigenous generations of Black Americans have proven that they are unable or unwilling to understand this. And that’s ok, but nevertheless, that excludes such people from being able to lead us and be our voice during these tumultuous times. That should go without saying. We simply have to stand on business for what was taken from our ancestors and NEVER restored.
Let’s focus on the lasting economic truth of slavery and Jim Crow reparations.
The words “Slavery” and “Reparations” have become controversial. They have become vague buzzwords that those outside our community dismiss. Therefore, we have to break these words down more effectively with less emotion and more logic. The theft of labor directly impacted our ancestors, who did America’s nation building work in those days. The amount of wage money stolen is fixed and finite.
For example, let’s say a cotton worker worked for a plantation from 1825 until 1865, the year slavery supposedly ended. That’s 40 years. Let’s further assume an annual income, in today’s dollars, would have been $30k had the slave worker been paid fairly. We’ll ignore wage growth to keep things simple. That means the total theft of lifelong income would have been $1.2 million for that one person. Multiply that by the number of cotton workers who didn’t get paid, and you can arrive at the total amount of direct slave reparations for the cotton industry.
Following the end of the Civil War, the government acknowledged a debt was owed to all of these workers, our ancestors, whose wages were stolen by, not just the plantation owner, but the entire economy that benefitted from this widespread, systemic theft. That includes banks, insurance companies, Wall Street investors, and all levels of government, among others. This is why the failed Freedmens’ Bureau was created, to attempt to right this horrific wrong.
But as students of true history know, the smiling progressives in the Republican party abandoned our ancestors and gave control of the Freedmens’ Bureau to the KKK within the Democratic party. The outcome was predictable: the Bureau, including the bank meant to be the repository of funds to reimburse us for the theft of labor, collapsed. Again, we NEVER got reparations till this day. This is what outsiders, and even some of our own people, fail to understand.
However, what if I told you during the century long reign of Jim Crow terror from 1865 till 1965 (and in some cases, longer), the theft of our land, assets and race riot massacres, and the PTSD that comes from that, cost us far more than the individual theft of labor? Land is generally more valuable than labor because of the wealth accumulation potential.
Consider the Bruce’s Beach case in Los Angeles California…
Bruce’s Beach: A Case Study in Historical Injustice and Restitution
Background
Bruce’s Beach, located in what would become the very expensive Manhattan Beach, California, was originally owned by Charles and Willa Bruce, a Black American couple. They moved to Manhattan Beach, California to purchase the land in 1912, with the wife opening a sandwich shop to help add to his income during the buildout phase. Within eight years, the Bruces owned multiple properties and successful businesses on the beachfront, developing them into a thriving seaside resort for Black families, providing a rare recreational space during an era of rampant racial segregation³. To quote Arabella Advisors: “Affluent Black beachgoers and families from across the West came to Bruce’s Beach to vacation and buy property. Manhattan Beach soon grew into a thriving Black community.” Now you know “they” didn’t like too many of us successful brothas and sistas using wealth to take over.
So for 12 years, this couple from among our own people offered a tangible service to others of our community. There’s no indication how much they initially charged for access to the beachfront but imagine the potential revenue of that alone. As with most humble entrepreneurial beginnings, there would have come a time where the numbers of our people descending on this beach front would have grown quite a bit, kinda like Freaknic in Atlanta in the 1990s. They would have most likely started charging some kind of fee to properly maintain it and evolve it into a beach resort just like other major resorts do today. The land itself would continue to rise in value.
But the colonizers in the state had other sinister plans for our business savvy couple…
Seizure and Injustice
In 1924, according again to Arabella Advisors: “this haven of economic prosperity was soon taken away…At the same time the Bruces were building a successful business and shaping the community…you saw a racist and violent backlash from the white majority. [The] threats and vandalism failed to drive wealthy Black families away.”
The racist city of Manhattan Beach used eminent domain to seize Bruce’s Beach under the pretense of building a public park. However, the land remained undeveloped for decades, highlighting the racially motivated nature of the seizure. The Bruces received a paltry sum of $14,500 (equivalent to about $224,603 today) and were forced to leave³.
Any non Black person surely has to see the unfairness of this move by the city, and more importantly, the loss of not only the true value of the land, but also the loss of economic development, business revenues, and residential and commercial real estate transactions. It’s very likely had this heinous act of Jim Crow terrorism not happened, the cumulative value of the land and business interests would have easily been in the hundreds of millions of dollars from 1924 until the present 2024: 100 years of lost economic development, income and profitability.
Restitution Efforts
In 2022 came a “compromise.” Perhaps it was well meaning, but business is war, and being well meaning doesn’t pay the bills. Los Angeles County returned the land to the Bruce family. This move was part of a broader effort to address historical injustices and provide restitution to the descendants of those affected by systemic racism³. In January 2023, the Bruce family decided to sell the property back to the county for nearly $20 million³. The problem with this:
- Returning the land ignored the loss of 100 years of potential economic development
- $20 million is way too small
Economic Considerations
While the return of the land and the $20 million settlement are heartfelt, significant steps toward justice, they may not fully compensate for the long-term financial impact on the Bruce family as I indicated. The opportunity cost of lost wealth accumulation, potential revenue from real estate developments, and broader economic contributions are substantial factors that the settlement does not entirely address²³. This is not only true of this one specific case, but of all the tracts of land, towns and cities that were systematically stolen from us under the false pretense of fraud induced race riots.
By “fraud,” I am referring to the systemic, often repeated pattern of blaming mostly brothas of crimes against usually white women. This created a pretext for local officials and their extra judicial “angry white mob” to terrorize our people, looting and burning down houses, lynching and shooting us, violating our women and children, and running them out of town. This happened in Black Wall Street Tulsa in 1921, Rosewood Florida, Wilmington NC, Forsyth County Georgia (directly affected my maternal grandparent’s family), Mississippi (directly affected my paternal grandparents’ family), and throughout America.
Broader Implications
The Bruce’s Beach case underscores the importance of addressing historical injustices comprehensively, especially for a nation that claims to be a beacon of freedom and democracy in a new world. It raises critical questions about reparations, economic justice, and the long-term impacts of systemic racism, which we are still reeling from right now, despite what Kamala and the Democrats, and Republicans as well, mislead others from understanding. This case serves as a powerful reminder of the need for ongoing efforts to right historical wrongs and support the indigenous descendants of those affected²³.
In this year of the reckoning, an election year, we are no longer supporting the operating system platform known as Black America 1.0. We have upgraded to 2.0, where we are now specifically and tightly focused on tangible outcomes to address this economic and financial weapon of mass destruction unleashed on us known as Jim Crow 100, where “100” stands for the time period of 1865-1965. All of the manufactured race wars waged against us by the elite of America, at all levels, have NEVER been addressed and reimbursed to us. This is our new agenda for economics and politics.
If you agree or disagree, feel free to comment below. Until the next video, brothas and sistas, take care.
—
Links:
Source: Conversation with Copilot, 7/27/2024
(1) How Bruce’s Beach Was Stolen From The Black Family That Owned It – LAist. https://laist.com/news/la-history/history-how-bruces-beach-manhattan-beach-was-stolen-from-the-black-family-that-owned-it-and-how-they-got-it-back-sb-797.
(2) Bruce’s Beach. https://ceo.lacounty.gov/ardi/bruces-beach/.
(3) . https://bing.com/search?q=Bruce+Beach+owners+settlement+with+California+state+analysis.
(4) A Once-Thriving Black-Owned Beach Is Returned to Its Rightful Owners – NRDC. https://www.nrdc.org/stories/once-thriving-black-owned-beach-returned-its-rightful-owners.
(5) LA County Applauds Court Ruling in Bruce’s Beach Case. https://lacounty.gov/2022/04/15/la-county-applauds-court-ruling-in-bruces-beach-case/.
(6) Where Bruce’s Beach Fits Into the Debate on Reparations – Bloomberg. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-15/where-bruce-s-beach-fits-into-the-debate-on-reparations.
What Bruce’s Beach Can Teach Us About Closing the Racial Wealth Gap | Arabella Advisors
Affluent Blacks of Dallas 