Black farmers in America, formally organized into the overtly racial "National Black Farmers Association" or NBFA, are set to get billions of dollars of taxpayers' money after claiming that "white racism" is the reason why they have failed in their enterprises.
The astonishing development, which will most likely take place once Congress reconvenes after the upcoming elections, is the result of a bill which will allege that "racism" is the reason why so many black farmers have gone bankrupt, particularly in the South.
A June 2008 convention of litigants, organized by Rep. Artur Davis, D-Ala, provided an insight into the mindset which is driving the bill and its supporters.
An Associated Press report from the time takes up the story:
Ronnie Clark, 50, was among the first to sue. He said he tried to grow corn and peanuts in the 1980s but gave up after being denied loans from the government.
"I went and tried to get a loan and they talked to me so hateful that I just quit," said Clark, who is from Brundidge, Ala., and now works on a transportation maintenance crew for the state. "They told me I had to own so much land for collateral. I just quit trying to borrow."
The Obama administration has, not surprisingly, indicated that it is going to set aside $1.2 billion to pay out "discrimination" claims such as these. With more than 70,000 claimants, the total bill is however expected to be in excess of $3 billion.
This is not the first time that these obviously bogus "discrimination" claims by black farmers have ripped off the taxpayers.
In 1999, a $2 billion settlement was made by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) after the NBFA's president testified before the United States House Committee on Agriculture and NFBA representatives met with President Bill Clinton at the White House.
That settlement has now been attacked by the NFBA as "incomplete" because a further 70,000 claimants were "excluded." The current legislation will provide for these "new" cases.
There are a number of interesting points to emerge from this shameful episode:
- Once again, utterly spurious and obviously artificially invented "white racism" is being blamed for black failure.
If black farmers have failed because they are unable to meet basic loan requirements, that is hardly the fault of the government in general and white people in particular.
- The existence of a National Black Farmers' Association and its official recognition at the highest level of government is clear proof that the only real "racism" is against white people.
Would a "National Association of White Farmers" be granted permission to testify before the Senate and be hosted in the White House? Unlikely, to say the least. Instead, such an organization would be hounded out of town as "racist."
- The lack of a "National Association of White Farmers" means that there are no statistics available on the number of white farmers who have been denied loans.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) claims that there are about 960,000 persons who claim farming as their principal occupation, and a similar number of farmers who claim some other principal occupation.
According to the EPA, for "the purposes of the U.S. Census, a farm is any establishment which produced and sold, or normally would have produced and sold, $1,000 or more of agricultural products during the year. (Government subsidies are included in sales.) By that definition, there are just over 2.1 million farms in the United States.
"It has been estimated that living expenses for the average farm family exceed $47,000 per year. Clearly, many farms that meet the U.S. Census' definition would not produce sufficient income to meet farm family living expenses. In fact, fewer than 1 in 4 of the farms in this country produce gross revenues in excess of $50,000," the EPA reported, adding that "an economically viable crop/livestock operation in the Corn Belt would have between 2,000 and 3,000 acres of row crops and between 500 and 600 sows."
From these EPA figures, it is clear that farming is an extremely hard occupation and subject to intense financial pressures. It is a simple cop-out for blacks to blame whites for their own failure in maintaining and running these highly complex operations.
It is time that blacks and other nonwhites stopped blaming whites for all the ills which affect their communities and accept responsibility for their own actions.
