The Author Series Committe is honored to welcome Professor Bernadette Atuahene for a discussion about her latest book, Plundered: How Racist Policies Undermine Black Homeownership in America. She will be joined in conversation by Detroit journalist Stephen Henderson.
Just as Evicted uses Milwaukee to discuss America’s eviction crisis, Professor Atuahene uses Detroit to reveal another under reported national phenomenon: predatory governance, where public officials raise public dollars through racist policies.
When Professor Atuahene moved to Detroit, she planned to study the city’s squatting phenomenon. What she accidentally found was too urgent to ignore. Her neighbors, many of whom had owned their homes for decades, were losing them to property tax foreclosure, leaving once bustling Black neighborhoods blighted with vacant homes.
Through years of dogged investigation and research, Atuahene uncovered a system of predatory governance, where public officials raise public dollars through laws and processes that produce or sustain racial inequity — a nationwide practice in no way limited to Detroit.
In this powerful work of scholarship and storytelling, Atuahene shows how predatory governance invites complicity from well-meaning people, eviscerates communities, and widens the racial wealth gap. By following the lives of two Detroit grandfathers, one Black and the other white, and their grandchildren, Atuahene tells a riveting tale about racist policies, how they take root, why they flourish, and who profits.
Copies of Plundered will be available for sale from Detroit's own 27th Letter Books!
About Professor Bernadette Atuahene: Bernadette Atuahene is a Harvard and Yale trained property law scholar whose work focuses on land and homes stolen from Black people. She currently holds the Duggan Chair at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law. Atuahene has served as a judicial clerk at the South African Constitutional Court, worked as a consultant for the South African Land Claims Commission, and practiced at a global law firm called Cleary Gottlieb. She is the author of We Want What’s Ours: Learning from South Africa’s Land Restitution Program, and she directed and produced an award-winning short documentary film about one South African family’s struggle to regain their land. Atuahene has won several accolades and has published extensively in both academic journals such as the California Law Review and NYU Law Review as well as news outlets such as the New York Times and LA Times.
About Stephen Henderson: Stephen Henderson is a native Detroiter who has more than 30 years of journalism experience as a writer and editor, and a deep-rooted connection with the city that birthed him.
A winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary, Henderson has also won more than two dozen other national awards for writing and editing, including the 2014 Journalist of the Year award from the National Association of Black Journalists.
He is a graduate of the University of Michigan and University of Detroit Jesuit High School. Henderson is a founder of BridgeDetroit, a non-profit news organization that covers critical issues identified by Detroiters themselves. He is also creator of the radio show and podcast, Created Equal and host of two weekly shows on Detroit Public Television. In 2012, Henderson founded The Tuxedo Project, a literary arts and community center located in Henderson's childhood home on Detroit’s west side.
Questions? Email msummers@detroitpubliclibrary.org for help!
