Akeelah in the Bee taught me about word etymology. Considering the film is more an inspirational drama than it is an educational guide, I am thus not thoroughly versed on the in-depth analysis of the origins of linguistic discipline. I often find myself curious about the phenomenon of individual words containing a multitude of seemingly disparate definitions. And so, upon researching the term equity, once again, my curiosity was piqued. Only this time, instead of simply carrying on after utilizing the definition that best matches the context for which I searched the word in the first place, I am compelled to investigate. This is largely thanks to the conflict I found.
Google first directly informs me that equity is “the quality of being fair and impartial”. It continues, listing four more definitions. Providing five in total. The penultimate definition is what seizes me: “the value of a mortgaged property after deduction of charges against it”.
Before continuing, I will reiterate, I am working with the Fruit Belt Community Land Trust (FBCLT). Its fundamental goal is to stop displacement and the effects it has on poor and predominantly Black families here in Buffalo. Community land trusts are nonprofit, community-based organizations designed to ensure community stewardship of land and long-term housing affordability.
Through my ongoing research and experiences, my understanding of prejudice, inequality and inequity have become more sophisticated. Essentially, I am realizing that the relationship between America and the Black family is far more virulent and inimical than I initially understood.
In fact, it is the effects of this untaught and surreptitious history that has the strongest implications on a people, my people, our people. Blacks, African Americans, Americans(?).
So equity, google tells me, is the value of a mortgaged property after deduction of charges against it. In other words, it is a property’s monetary worth once you deduct what is still owed on its current value. The website of the American Advisors Group shares with me their take on the word equity. Saying that “equity is most commonly connected with real estate, specifically known as home equity”. At this, I provide my disagreement. Assuring that instead, it is real estate that is most commonly connected with, not equity, yet inequity. To this, one might respond that I am utilizing google’s first definition. As they would note my allusion to America’s biased and deceitful history of obstructing the Black American Dream. And yet, it is through the use of google’s first definition that I, too, am able to employ its penultimate.
The American Advisors Group website gladly provided me with further information, elucidating that home equity is often regarded as how much of the property an individual owns outright. Additionally, since homeowners have the opportunity to leverage their home equity as a form of personal wealth and capital, they commonly desire to raise the equity in a home. Up until pretty recently however, that desire was not granted to the majority of Black families hoping to purchase a home, and perhaps, build “equity”.
But alas, the white supremacy that solemnized the marriage of slavery and jim crow also emanated redlining, block busting, segregation, and housing discrimination. It is because of these rooted connections that the application of google’s fourth definition is only complete in conversation through the additional application of its first.
Ultimately, my work in the local Buffalo community is addressing the inequities that were consequently brought forth upon the denial of the Black family’s access to home equity. After all, it is the perpetual denial of equity that keeps us bound to these desperate positions.