Thinking creatively and collectively about reparative futures

By Marisa Raya

I came to be a scholar of land reparations after working most of my life in the public sector, leading data-based analysis of racialized urban displacement and regional disparities, and engaging with diverse communities to develop anti-gentrification programs. Often, I worked with governments and public stakeholder committees to set equity targets we were not able to meet: ambitious goals to close racial wealth gaps and build enough affordable housing to keep families together in place. It is frustrating – embarrassing really – to be a part of a public system that can name a challenge but is inadequate to solve it. Where I live, for every 200 new homes for the homeless, 400 more people lose their housing. At the same time, I love the imagination of the public sector, the willingness to try, and the dream of collective self-determination that motivates public employees, activists, funders and nonprofits to take on wicked challenges.

Some community development solutions do work – maybe a topic for another blog post. But beneath many racial disparities in both urban and rural areas, including access to housing, business ownership, wealth, and health, is unequal access to land and the space for communities to generate and maintain their own sustainable livelihood. I am always amazed by the ways that people carve out spaces for cultural expression in areas that were designed to oppress them. Within a real estate system that favors profit and exploitation, people create coops, vendors markets, self-governed villages, food delivery programs, public ceremonies and festivals and mutual aid. Yet in our first few hundred years as a country, property rights were racialized and denied to Native Americans, African Americans, Mexicans, and Asian Americans through laws such as the Dawes Act, Fugitive Slave Act, Morrill Act, Alien Law act, Barcero program and others. This isn’t the world we live in anymore, but it is the legacy of ownership in our landscape. 

As property across the United States gets increasingly expensive, our perception of land as a resource and place where we live is changing. Public investment into the restoration, carbon sequestration, forest management and regenerative agriculture should also seek to correct structural racial discrimination. Our challenge is to find ways to invest in communities who have been historically discriminated against without opening lawsuits charging, ironically, privilege based on race. To me, public scholarship means investigating how our collective relationship to land and the environment is changing at this pivotal moment. If earlier eras saw land given away in the Homestead Act and mortgages made accessible through the Federal Homes Administration, how could sustainability investments into land lead to more equitable access?  Part of my ambition is to increase our comfort and fluidity in discussing reparations as part of planning and Community Development discourse. When I engage the public in the future, I want policy and program tools and options for reparative futures at the ready.

Image Description: A mother taking a photo of her children on a shoreline has them raise their fists in the air. Photo by Marisa Raya