Member-only story
RACISM
How White People Became Gatekeepers of Natural Spaces
An essay about America's history of property ownership
America was founded by a group of White men who believed they had the right to confiscate lands belonging to Indigenous people, enslave Black people, and force them to harvest crops like sugar, cotton, rice, and hemp. To put it another way, the founding fathers treated Black people like a goose that laid the golden egg. This unjust system enabled White Americans to amass wealth and, perhaps most importantly, property. As a result, White people today are significantly more likely to own a home than Black people and have more access to natural spaces.
Originally, only landowning White men were considered full-fledged American citizens. Women, Black, and Indigenous people were denied the opportunity to own property even though the Framers of the Constitution viewed property ownership as a sacred right, one that was essential to their liberty, one they valued enough to enshrine in the Constitution. Sadly, they extended these ideas to enslaved Black people, who they regarded as property or "chattel." We can see this language used in secession documents. For instance, South Carolina asserted that ending slavery would deny "the rights of property," which were "recognized by the Constitution." In contrast…
