From the Classroom to the Streets

Growing up in Los Angeles, the daughter of West African immigrants, Bernadette Atuahene knew from an early age that she was destined for a career in law. What she didn’t realize right away was that she could fuse her passion for social justice and advocacy with the world of academia.

Bernadette AtuaheneSoon enough she would figure it out.

“My parents were from Ghana, so I only really had about four options growing up,” she remembers. “I could be a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer, or a disgrace to the entire family. I thought I had to choose, so I knew immediately that I wanted to be a lawyer to fight for the generational wealth of our people, Black people.”

Atuahene is a professor at the USC Gould School of Law. She stepped into that position after serving as a judicial clerk for the Constitutional Court of South Africa and later as an associate at Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton—a prestigious law firm in New York.

The Yale law school graduate says that for too long, Black and marginalized communities have been the targets of systemic theft—stripped of their wealth, their homes, and their dignity by policies disguised as governance. As a legal scholar and  activist, she has challenged land and housing injustices that disproportionately impact Black communities and has spent her entire career pulling back the curtain, proving that the dispossession of Black people in America and globally isn’t just accidental mismanagement—it’s by design.

While working as a professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law, Atuahene first gained attention for her work on land restitution in South Africa, where she examined the lingering impact of apartheid-era land theft. Her 2014 book, We Want What’s Ours: Learning from South Africa’s Land Restitution Program, laid bare the emotional and financial consequences of stolen land and the struggle for reparations.

“In my first book, I explore two concepts, dignity taking and dignity restoration,” she says. “And from that, over 40 scholars have used those concepts and applied it throughout history to case studies and throughout geographies.”

Atuahene’s concept of dignity taking refers to government-led property dispossession that not only strips marginalized communities of wealth but also dehumanizes them. Dignity restoration seeks to repair the harm through financial restitution, policy reforms, and efforts that restore respect and agency to those affected.

Today, she is in constant motion. Over the past few weeks, she’s been on a whirlwind tour, bouncing between cities, delivering lectures, and engaging with audiences who see themselves in the pages of her newest book Plundered: How Racist Policies Undermine Black Homeownership in America. The book is the culmination of years of her ongoing research and advocacy, an unflinching examination of how systemic racism in property law has stolen generational wealth from Black families in the city of Detroit.

“This isn’t just about numbers and policies,” she says. “This is about people."

Her book reveals a devastating pattern: between 2009 and 2015, officials in Detroit illegally over-assessed thousands of Black homeowners, leading to tax foreclosures that stripped them of their properties. The injustice wasn’t just bureaucratic incompetence. She says it was predatory governance.

Atuahene co-founded the Coalition for Property Tax Justice, working alongside activists and homeowners in Detroit to demand accountability and reparations and she also brings that same urgency into the classroom. As an educator she reinforces that law isn’t just theory—it’s power.

“I teach my students that we need to shift from these narratives of personal responsibility to one of structure,” she says. “All of these narratives of personal irresponsibility explain the dilapidated condition of many of our communities, but we need to start looking at what’s invisible, and that’s racist policies, redlining, and urban renewal.   

“These policies are the reason why our communities are in the state they are in. And Black people get the blame,” says Atuahene. “And I want to lift the shame off our shoulders because when you are in shame, you are hiding. And I hope to move people to a place of righteous indignation so that their fight can begin.”