Plundered: How Racist Policies Undermine Black Homeownership in America by Bernadette Atuahene

Bernadette Atuahene’s Plundered: How Racist Policies Undermine Black Homeownership in America (2025) is a fierce, disquieting, and urgently necessary book for those studying housing justice, racial equity, and property law. This book is not just an historical critique or a legal scholar’s response; it is a judgment of sanctioned theft by state actors. Although focused on Detroit, Atuahene’s contentions have national importance, forcing scholars and practitioners to grapple with how state and local governments have systematically dispossessed Black Americans through taxation and foreclosure. She describes the extractive state practices of dispossession and degradation that are common to all cities and states with the term ‘predatory governance’ and eloquently describes how state practices like these are unconstitutional and morally outrageous.