Why are vested interests blocking legal reforms that could help stop the bleeding?
Quick take: Last week at the General Assembly, members of a House committee considered a bill advanced by advocates for rural African American landowners that would have improved the fairness of legal proceedings that often result in the taking of family farms. Unfortunately, as in the proceedings in question, the letter of the law and “efficiency” seem to be trumping actual justice and human decency. Here’s an important issue that you probably haven’t heard or thought much about lately: the loss of land by rural African Americans of modest income. For decades, the hemorrhaging of farmland has been a plague upon Black families. Here’s how the folks at a North Carolina nonprofit known as the Land Loss Prevention Project describe one of the principal causes of this problem: “Like many poor people, rural African American farmers often failed to prepare wills before they died. In the absence of a proper will, state laws governed how the farmers’ land was passed on to their heirs upon their
