Homestead Act wealth still reaches 46 million living white descendants

Evidence

The Homestead Act, described as “the most comprehensive form of wealth redistribution that has ever taken place in America,” has had a long afterlife. One estimate has it that 25 percent of the current adult population, or 46 million people, are the living legacy of ancestors who owned property because of the virtually whites-only Homestead Act of 1862. As noted by historian Kari Leigh Merritt, “these beneficiaries, of course, were overwhelmingly white.” Merritt continues by noting that because black Americans were “largely denied these wealth entitlements, blacks were essentially left landless after years (and generations) of unpaid, coerced, and brutalized labor.” — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 442

Categorization

• SEED: The 46-million-living-descendants framing is a strong rhetorical figure for rebutting ‘we can’t trace ancestry back that far’ objections.