You and I both know the tossed around phrase, "There's good people on both sides." We know from whence that phrase came. There's another phrase perhaps you've heard before, "Justice takes sides." Or maybe "justice is what love looks like out in the open," or something to that effect. Cornel West is fond of that last statement.
I am also a fan of Dr. Jemar Tisby and his books, podcasts, and his words from substack. Here is one that struck me a day or so ago, so I've been turning it over and thinking of its applications. Do you do that at times yourself? This particular article has its background in the Montgomery Boycott in 1955, prompted by Rosa Parks and her determination to keep her seat, which led to a 381 day boycott of the bus system in Montgomery as Black Americans found alternate ways to work, shop, and to other events whereas prior they would get on the segregated bus and move to the back.
One of the key decisions by the city's fathers and mothers was to find a new voice for the movement, and they found that voice in Martin Luther King, Jr., the new pastor at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. Other sisters had voiced protest against the segregated bus system, but it didn't stick like it did in 1955.
Dr. King tells his version of those momentous days in his book, "Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story." It is a riveting book. It's time for me to read it again and wonder out loud to myself why I underlined or starred or commented on certain paragraphs or sentences.
In Dr. Tisby's substack article referenced above, there was a particular sentence that stuck with me. Without taking the world's opinion as to its orgin, I hunted through the entire book, and there it was, bracketed and underlined on page 51. Here is the quote: "He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetuate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is cooperating with it." There is much more to that paragraph, but it'll wait for another day.
So, while Dr. Tisby offers a well-articulated broad brush stroke for this riveting phrase, my mind, heart, and words go to a specific context: Black farmers, their oppressors, those doing the oppressing and those who idly stand by with a toothpick in their mouths, feigning ignorance or "not my problem."
What the USDA/FSA have done to Black farmers is indeed evil. "What evils do you recall?" Dr. Hinson, you might ask. Thanks for asking. I'll name a few.
Selling land to a Black farmer, knowing that the land is over-priced and cannot produce the volume of cotton to make the payments on it, so your good friend can come along and buy it for a below market value price, that's #1. Do you think others in that FSA office knew about these shenanigans?
Foreclosing on a farmer because he got his loan too far into the planting season, that's # 1, and then when a disaster came, that is, too much rain, so that he could not get into the fields to harvest his crop, you don't offer him disaster relief, that's # 2, and then to settle his debt, you seize equipment that belongs to his parents, # 3. Or, when the farmer fills out paper work for the operating loan, you tell him to write it in pencil and you'll make it cash flow, and then in a depostion you lie about it, that's # 4, but your secretary says, "No. That's what he did." Do you think others in that FSA office knew about these shenanigans besides the secretary? At least she had courage to tell the truth.
Farmers depend on operating loans long before the planting season draws near, but you, Mr. FSA guy, deny him loans, sending him again and again and again, demanding that he fill out his paper work differently, that's # 1. You deny them for so long, that his pigs actually die, # 2. Then, he appeals the decision up to the state level, and that office sides with Mr. Black farmer, but you take his check, place it in his file, and never tell him about it until it's too late, and his pigs were dead, # 3. Then, you force him and his ill wife out, sell the land at an open auction, and his neighbor, the white guy over there buys it for below market value, # 4. His wife dies and then he dies in an untimely manner. Do you think in a small office in rural America, that other people were standing idly by and watching it all unfurl? I think so. There are more than just four evil actions in this situation. There are too many to count, but they all have a common denominator.
Those items listed above? Let's call them what they are. Acts of evil. Oppression is evil. Watching as it unfolds is evil. Call them what they are. EVIL. There are no innocent bystanders in this thing called racism. If you know, your guilty, as guilty as if you did the evil thing yourself.
As an aside, I know of one farmer family in which an office person knew that such malfeasance was going on, so he pulled the farmer and wife in, laid out the materials and told them all that was going on, and they eventually won their case against USDA/FSA and the local bank. That employee was courageous, very courageous.
There are more stories, but I think you can see the points I'm making. Some people intentionally make decisions that harm people. People in positions of power and influence decide that farmers who skin is Black should not have that much land, do not need to farm that much land, do not need to have that much money from their harvests, and do not need to have those expensive pieces of equipment. Those people are evil according to the quote from Dr. King. Other people who sit around and watch it happen, other office employees, other agents of the federal government, other powerful people in powerful positions are just as evil as they turn a blind eye, accepting evil behavior without protesting. They are just as complicit as it the person who signed the documents that led to the farmer's foreclosure on his property and way of life.
Racism is evil. Turning a blind eye and saying nothing about racist behaviors is racism also.
There's a lot of evil-doing these days as the plight of Black farmers is being ignored: Mr. President, Mr. USDA Ag Secretary, Mr. and Mrs. Senators, Mr. and Mrs. Congressionals. Mr. and Mrs. employees of the USDA, you who have your fingers on explosive information, but the Secretary says not to release it via the FOIA process because, "It'll make us look bad."
Yes, there is a lot of evil going on over in the agriculture world these days. There is a lot of complicity going on. The people I know and respect will not look away. They and I are truthtellers. We are whistle blowers. We demand accountability and transparency.
I hope you do, too. Call your senators and congressional folks and tell them what is going on. Feel free to use anything captured in any of the posts on this blog.
The wheels of justice grind slowly and along the way, those wheels and those sitting in powerful postions all the way from the local level to the highest offices in our land, they are responsible for the grind that destroys our people. Two of our people have met their ancestors the last few weeks. We grieve and we mourn, but we do not give up.
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