Biden’s farm aid rules institutionalize racism

As left-wing revolutionaries reenergize and further institutionalize racism, a Colorado woman fights back. The government, she insists, cannot discriminate against people on a basis of race.

Before considering the federal lawsuit Sara Rogers filed against President Joe Biden’s administration, contemplate saner times in the USA when then-President Barack Obama held the White House. In 2010, a poorly vetted and deceptive story appeared on cable news and spread through the internet and traditional media. It involved a supposedly scandalous video clip of a federal employee, Shirley Sherrod, saying something racist.

Sherrod worked as the Obama administration’s state director of rural development in Georgia for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The video shows Sherrod addressing a meeting of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in March 2010.

On video, Sherrod recounts her past assignment to work with a white farmer who needed federal assistance to save his farm. Sherrod tells the audience how she resisted helping the man because he was white and too many Black people were losing farms.

“So, I didn’t give him the full force of what I could do,” Sherrod tells the audience. Instead, she handed the farmer off to a white lawyer because “his own kind would take care of him.”

Shortly after the clip went viral, the Obama administration fired Sherrod for making seemingly racist comments. Then-NAACP President Benjamin Jealous tweeted that his organization was “appalled” by the Sherrod’s video. He condemned racist behavior toward anyone, Black or white.

Within days, the scandal changed course. The Obama administration apologized for firing Sherrod, and the White House offered her an attractive appointment she declined to accept.

The government apologized because a look at the full, unedited video made clear that Sherrod told the story to contextualize her conversion from racism. Sherrod told the audience she had been wrong to discriminate, because the white farmer’s color had no relevance.

At issue was poverty, and she learned it hurts people regardless of their genetics. She and the white farmer developed a long-term friendship. Neither was a racist, and each learned from each other.

Fast-forward to the neoracist movement of 2021 and the deceptively edited video would not hurt Sherrod for a moment. It would more likely earn her an award. By contrast, a full view of the unedited comments might cause Sherrod’s downfall in 2021.

After all, it reveals the mindset of a woman who thinks poverty hurts people of all ethnic backgrounds. That is blasphemy among the left-wing revolutionaries who helped elect Biden and insist all whites oppress all nonwhites.

Today, the intestinally misrepresented, scandalizing, and racist-sounding part of Sherrod’s speech would comport with federal policy.

Consider Rogers. She’s a young, white, third-generation farmer near the Eastern Plains village of Otis. Nearly 98% of the 535 residents are white, yet no one can say they are economically privileged. While the median household income statewide is nearly $73,000, Otis households earn less than half of that with median incomes of $31,333. That is less than half the median household incomes in Aurora, where nonwhite minorities comprise more than half the population. Clearly, economic forces don’t care about white, Black, or brown.

Farmers languishing financially could use help from Biden’s American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. It should be perfect for farmers such as Rogers, as it provides $4 billion toward forgiveness of loans for socially disadvantaged farmers.

Rogers and others in her community need not apply because of Biden’s federally institutionalized neoracism. Because Rogers and her neighbors are white they do not qualify. Here’s what the USDA’s website says about prospective applicants.

“The American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) Section 1005 includes provisions for USDA to pay up to 120% of loan balances… to any Socially Disadvantaged producer who has a qualifying loan with FSA. This includes producers who are one or more of the following: Black/African American, American Indian, Alaskan Native, Hispanic/Latino, Asian American, or Pacific Islander.”

Maybe Biden thinks minority farmers cannot perform like white farmers without his help. How insulting. Financial decisions made on a basis of race are racist. That is why we long ago outlawed the racist banking practice of redlining, in which banks rejected loans on a basis of race. That is why Rogers is wise to sue and nonracists of all backgrounds should hope she wins.

“This blatant racial discrimination is not only illegal and unconstitutional, but it also further stokes racial tensions at a time in which unity is needed most in this country,” explains the Mountain States Legal Foundation, which represents Rogers.

Merely explaining a past and momentary racial bias cost Sherrod her job during the Obama years. In the era of Biden — who has a history of racist comments and alliances with segregationists and a former Klan leader — racist treatment of farmers is required by law.

Ten years ago, under Obama’s leadership, Americans could not have imagined this racist federal disgrace and regression to the days of government-sanctioned segregation. How sad for the cause of social justice.

The Gazette Editorial Board

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