Patrisse Cullors, a co-founder of Black Lives Matter and a self-described Marxist, blasted the American housing market as a bastion of “white supremacy” just weeks after splashing out millions on a real estate portfolio, snagging four high-end homes worth an estimated $3.2 million.
Cullors shared snippets from a National Public Radio documentary last week detailing the historical “racism” of the American housing market and suggesting that black homeownership — presumably including her own — was a way to “disrupt” white supremacy.
“Thank you @npr for highlighting the history of racism inside of the housing market and why Black homeownership has always been a way to disrupt white supremacy,” Cullors wrote on social media, sharing a link to the documentary.
The documentary, “We Hold These Truths,” the Daily Mail noted Sunday, addressed issues of structural racism within the American housing market and “looked at how black people have been systematically discriminated against by the real estate industry and government policy over decades,” and how black homeownership appears to have stagnated over the decades, despite significant efforts on the part of the federal government to press the issue and subsidize black home buyers.
“The report – which focuses on the experiences of black people living in Compton, California, revealed that just 41.8 percent of black households owned their homes. that rate is almost identical to the black homeownership level 50 years ago, in the early 70s,” the Daily Mail noted. “Experts say reasons for the lower homeownership rate ranges from historic underemployment and low wages to a recession-related foreclosure crisis that hit black communities particularly hard.”
Cullors may have cited the documentary in order to defend her own real estate portfolio and a home “buying binge,” which, as The Daily Wire reported, saw the longtime racial justice advocate snapping up at least four homes worth a collective $3.2 million and reportedly exploring vacation property in an exclusive, private community in the Caribbean that caters to A-list Hollywood celebrities.
Cullors faced criticism from both conservatives, who called the self-described Marxist a hypocrite for so fully embracing the concept of private property, and from leftists, who blasted Cullors as a “fraud” for purchasing a $1.4 million home in a nearly all-white neighborhood near Los Angeles, California, and who pointed out that the national Black Lives Matter organization, which took in nearly $90 million just last year, has been accused of “hiding” finances, and of failing to support black families who lost children in police-related shootings, inspiring BLM’s national crusade.
The BLM co-founder previously defended her real estate buying binge as necessary to support the cause of racial justice.
“Sure, and I think that is a critique that is, um, wanting, and I say that because, um, the, the way that I live my life is in direct support to black people, including my black family members, first and foremost,” Cullors said in an interview with Marc Lamont Hill last month. “And, for so many black folks who are able to invest in themselves and their community, they choose to invest in their family, and that’s what I have chosen to do. I have a child, I have a brother that has severe mental illness who I take care of, I support my mother, and I support many other family members of mine.”