It’s The Racism, Stupid

Black Texas farmers were finally on track to get federal aid. The state’s agriculture commissioner is helping stop that: https://t.co/Pt1plv3gnk pic.twitter.com/6yjTPwkNFr

— Texas Tribune (@TexasTribune) January 25, 2022

Nationally, Black farmers have lost more than 12 million acres of farmland over the past century, according to the Washington Post, due to biased government policies and discriminatory business practices. In 1920, there were over 925,000 Black farmers in the United States, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. But by 1997, their numbers had fallen to just under 18,500.

Recent data suggest the USDA continues to disproportionately reject Black farmers for loans. According to a CNN analysis, 42% of Black farmers were rejected for direct USDA loans in 2021, more than any other demographic group.

But the real issue is, how does the change in the law affect white people? Because that’s the racism that matters.

Last March, Congress passed a sweeping debt relief program for farmers of color. The culmination of 20 years of advocacy, the law would have provided $4 billion worth of debt relief for loans many of them had taken on to stay afloat while being passed over for financial programs and assistance their white counterparts had an easier time obtaining. Black farmers made up about a quarter of those targeted in the bill.

As agriculture commissioner, Miller leads an agency tasked with “advocat[ing] for policies at the federal, state, and local level” beneficial to Texas’s agriculture sector and “provid[ing] financial assistance to farmers and ranchers,” among other duties. In a statement to The Texas Tribune, Miller called the debt relief program “facially illegal and constitutionally impermissible.”

 “Such a course will lead only to disunity and discord,” Miller said. “Shame on the Biden Administration for authorizing a program it knows was unambiguously illegal, instead of enacting a proper relief bill that complies with the laws and constitution of the United States.”

I’d say the primary purpose of those laws is to protect white people, but that’s Critical Race Theory and I don’t think I’m allowed to mention that in Texas anymore.

Between 1937 and 1961, Congress changed eligibility for USDA loans from farm tenants, laborers and sharecroppers to family farm owner-operators with farming training or experience. This change, the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund wrote in a court filing, made it easier for county committees, which help deliver federal programs at the local level, to deny loans to Black applicants.

See? But wait, there’s more!

Miller’s motion to block the law for excluding white farmers would only increase existing debts and worsen these trends, the federation wrote in its October motion to intervene. Farmers who made plans and purchases with the understanding they were eligible for the new federal assistance would face “severe, life-changing disadvantage” without the relief, the federation added.

If the law continues to be blocked, the federation said its members will face “irreparable harm.”

“Many Black farmers will lose their land and farming equipment to foreclosures,” the federation wrote.

Yeah, but white people will be hurt if the law is changed, and tell me, is that fair?

Among several other major provisions, the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 offers relief to “socially disadvantaged” farmers and ranchers, which the plan defines as people of color. Miller’s complaint against the U.S. Department of Agriculture says the definition in the program fails to include “white ethnic groups that have unquestionably suffered” because of their ethnicity, such as those of Irish, Italian, German, Jewish and eastern European heritage.

White suffering is easily equal to black suffering; probably more equal. Turns out there’s also the issue of forum shopping:

While U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor denied their motion in December, Cooper said the group is appealing that decision. O’Connor’s past rulings against a key Obamacare provision and transgender children’s right to use the bathroom of their identity have made his court a favorite among Texas conservatives.

And then there's the company the plaintiffs keep:

Some big conservative names have gotten behind Miller’s lawsuit. The effort has been sponsored by America First Legal, a group founded by Stephen Miller and other Trump-era officials as a conservative version of the ACLU.

You can read the signs of the times, right? Black farmers in Texas certainly can. They’ve had to for over a century and a half.