The Department of Agriculture is supposed to help farmers.
Full stop.
The problem is that America is built on white supremacy and as such, the Department of Agriculture not only helped white farmers, “...it systematically denied Blacks and other people of color access to the same loan and grant programs that have helped generations of white farmers get the financing they needed to hold onto their land in lean years and even expand their operations.”
So Congress tried to make this right by throwing Black farmers some cash in President Biden’s recently passed COVID-19 bill.
And you know who had something to say about this? President Trump’s favorite tackling dummy, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, who voiced his opposition to making things right with Black folks during a recent appearance on Republican Pornhub, aka Fox News.
“Let me give you an example of something that really bothers me,” Graham said. “In this bill, if you’re a farmer, your loan will be forgiven up to 120 percent of your loan ... if you’re socially disadvantaged, if you’re African American, some other minority. But if you’re [a] white person, if you’re a white woman, no forgiveness. That’s reparations. What does that have to do with COVID?”
Graham is right. This has nothing to do with COVID-19, but, in the words of Harriet Tubman, “I could’ve said more slaves if only they recognized that Lindsey Graham is a stone-cold bitch.”
John Boyd Jr., the president of the National Black Farmers Association, has called for Graham, Donald Trump’s illegitimate son, to apologize for his comments.
“I lobbied Sen. Lindsey Graham as a congressman,” Boyd said during an appearance on MSNBC’s PoliticsNation With Al Sharpton. “I lobbied him as a senator. I’ve been by his office and asked him to help me fix the problems at the United States Department of Agriculture that caused Black farmers to lose millions of acres of land and address the lack of loans and subsidies, and he’s never once used his megaphone to speak out against the discrimination,” he said.
“But as soon as we get justice here, some 30 years later, his very first words — he said he found it troubling, and in his last part of his statement, he said that we need to check them,” he said.
The provision in the COVID-19 relief bill would create a $5 billion fund for debt repayment to disadvantaged farmers who were refused assistance because of their skin color.
From the Hill:
Due to years of racial discrimination, Black farmers are more likely to have more debt, less land and less access to credit. According to estimates from the Farm Bureau, Black farmers account for roughly a fourth disadvantaged farms that would be eligible for loan relief under the fund program.
However, the provision does not include language that bars white farmers from applying for the benefits.
“The National Black Farmers Association is calling for him to apologize. ... He needs to apologize not only to our Black farmers but to Black people in this country who struggled for so very, very long, and now we get a chance for a little bit of justice, and he uses his megaphone to play this race type thing when he knows that firsthand that Black farmers have suffered,” Boyd said.
“He has 6,000 Black farmers in his state, and he won’t help us, but he uses his megaphone to try to deny payments from Black farmers,” he added.
I don’t mean this in an offensive way but has Boyd ever heard Graham speak? This is Graham to his core. He’s Trump’s favorite stepping stool, his favorite non-washcloth soap. Asking Graham to be less fucked up and racist-y is like asking Common to apologize for being a horrible poet-rapper. It’s like asking Megan Thee Stallion to apologize for her untraditional spelling of “the.” It’s like asking Jay-Z to apologize for selling out the Black race and Colin Kaepernick’s movement to line his own pockets.
It’s just how they are built.
But no one can stop Boyd from asking. Boyd also noted that Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack needs to get aid to the “thousands of Black farmers that desperately need it right now.”
“I spoke to Secretary Vilsack yesterday and urged him to hurry up and put in place the commission and to get the debt relief to not just Black farmers but farmers of color, Native American farmers, Hispanic farmers and other socially disadvantaged farmers. He can’t be the same Secretary Vilsack he was under the Obama years. He’s going to have to take a more aggressive approach to help fix the discriminating culture.”