Almost four years ago, President Obama announced a provisional agreement to settle longstanding claims of institutional racism, which Black (and Indian) farmers filed against the federal government. This announcement made me as proud of Obama as I was pleased for the farmers.
Here, in part, is how I commented in “Government Finally Settles Billion-Dollar Discrimination Suit with Black Farmers,” November 2, 2011.
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Far too few Americans, especially Black ones, are aware of the almost 30-year legal battle Black farmers launched in 1983 against the U.S. government. They claimed that for decades the Department of Agriculture (USDA) denied them loans and technical assistance that were routinely offered to White farmers.
Here is how President Obama hailed the settlement of their claims in an all too modest statement last Friday:
This agreement will provide overdue relief and justice to African American farmers, and bring us closer to the ideals of freedom and equality that this country was founded on.
(Whitehouse.gov, October 28, 2011)
His statement is modest because, but for Obama’s decision to order the USDA and the Department of Justice to assess the merits of their claims, this settlement would never have been reached.
Not to mention that if these farmers did not hold out hope that this day would come (i.e., despite being ignored by presidents Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush), the USDA would have succeeded in ethnically cleansing them from the ranks of the nation’s farmers. After all, according to the 1997 Census of Agriculture, in 1920 Black farmers owned 14 percent of the private farms in America; today they own less than 1 percent…
Given the way so many Democrats (and even some Republicans) are waxing nostalgic over Bill Clinton these days, I think it’s important to at least question why even he ignored the desperate pleas of these black farmers.
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Well, here’s to that settlement now being signed, sealed and delivered. The money is theirs.
President Obama signed a $4.55 billion settlement today to end decades-old claims by African-American farmers and Native Americans who said the federal government cheated them out of loans and royalties from use of natural resources…
The bill provides $3.4 billion to American Indian tribes for past royalties from oil, gas, and timber extraction from their lands.
And $1.15 billion goes to African-American farmers who said they have been unfairly denied federal loans and other assistance.
(USA Today, October 12, 2015)
Justice delayed is not always justice denied. But, like Obama said at the signing ceremony, it’s high time the government made things right.
Related commentaries:
Government finally settles…