Cease and Desist on the Foreclosures: The Ball is in Your Court, Mr. Vilsack

We are living in curious times. Sometimes the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. Sometimes that lack of information is part of a sadistic plan. Sometimes it's incompetence. 

Under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, section 1005 lined out $4B in debt relief to a group known as Socially Disadvantaged Farmers and Ranchers, a designation that has been around since 1990. Section 1006 prescribed $1.01B for outreach, training, education, technical assistance, grants, and loans as well as other matters. 

Then, the white farmers across the country decided the the designation of "Socially Disadvantaged Farmers and Ranchers," or 2501 of the 1990 Farm Bill, was unconstitutional. Their lawsuits, some 13 of them at last glance, stopped in its tracks the effort to relieve the indebtedness of historically mistreated farmers. In a recent post on this page, I jumped into the USDA data base and showed how the first six white litigants, including the ag commissioner of the State of Texas, benefited via three pots of money to the tune of over $523,000 and that the counties of those six litigants benefitted to the tune of $1.2B+. They are claiming reverse discrimination when the stats point out how white farmers have always had the upper hand in terms of subsidies, coronavirus relief funds, and the bailout from Trump's failed tariff war with China. 

Provisions of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 were rewritten in the Reconciliation Bill of 2021 such that even white farmers, who have not been historically mistreated, would also receive debt relief. Whites gain advantages off of Black suffering is the way folks say it with whom I hang out. 

Earlier this year a moratorium was placed on debt collections and foreclosures. You can read that release here. 

But now, while we are waiting for the Senate to work its magic on the Reconciliation Bill, and as we wait to see what Manchin out of West Virginia is going to do, several egregious things are happening at the county level. Farms are being foreclosed on, loans are being accelerated, liens are being placed on crops, and other acts of malfeasance. For instance, a Black farmer has loans to plant and harvest his peanut and cotton crops. He owes the USDA some money and knows that he'll find debt relief around the corner, or at least he hopes so. 

In a magic slight of hand, the company buying the Black farmer's crop has placed a lien on it. This is apparently at the request of the local county office. My questions are several. What right was it of this company to know what the farmer owed? What collaborative gig was set up such that the FSA gets the first dibs on the farmer's money. Did the farmer know about this possibility? The local county office has in some way, shape, or form, realized that this particular grain company is going to process that particular farmer's particular crop and found a way to put a lien on. This means that once the farmer has had his crop sold, the money will go not to him, but to the FSA and put against the loan. This smells like a rat. 

So, there is a moratorium. It reads like this: if you  have a direct loan, the USDA will work with you and will not foreclose on you. The USDA will not accelerate your loans. See the final sentence in Senator Reverend Warnock's letter to Secretary Vilsack below. He is quoting USDA that there will be no adverse actions taken upon any farmer who does not make payments while the debt relief thing is being resolved. There you have it. What USDA said in DC, a local FSA office can undermine. How much sense does that make? Who's guarding the hen house? A bunch of foxes? You know what I mean. 

But then, here comes the foreclosure notice, here comes the loan acceleration notice, here comes the lien on your crops. Here comes all manner of things that the USDA said would not happen. Those decisions are being made at the county level. 

We have advised various Senators as to these shenanigans. One of those Senators has written a strong letter to Secretary Vilsack to call off his dogs. Here is what Senator Reverend Warnock writes: 

"In March 2021, President Biden signed the American Rescue Plan Act into law. This legislation includes targeted debt relief payments aimed at remedying USDA’s well-documented history of racial discrimination. As USDA prepared to implement this legislation, it told eligible farmers that they would not be subject to punishment for failing to make payments on forgivable debts. On a public-facing website regarding the American Rescue Plan Act debt relief payments, USDA states “USDA is not taking any adverse actions on any eligible borrower who does not make payments” on Farm Service Agency direct loans or farm storage facility loans." This letter was signed on December 10, 2021. 

We are also in the process of gathering data across the country. We want to know whether or not this is happening just to Black farmers, and in what counties, and in what states. We want to know what other acts of malfeasance are being done to them. The data is being collected as we speak. 

A lot of people are mad. A lot of people have every right in the world not to trust the USDA. These actions justify that anger and mistrust, if we ever needed more justifications. 

White people, even white employees of the USDA, want to believe these types of actions are sporadic. Wrong. Remember the words, "systemic racism," "systemic discrimination," the system is at fault and the people who stand there with their hands in their pockets. 

And we don't. Plain and simple. Period. Full stop. Period. 

Why Am I Writing This? The Threats and Threads of Racism

I frankly do not know what I am writing this. There are too many entanglements for the sake of clarity. Here, however, are a few random thoughts.

Jemar Tisby, Reparations, and the American Rescue Plan Act

Jemar Tisby. I was listening to his podcast this morning while exercising. He spoke of reparations and why the need for. I had read in days gone by Ta-Nehisi Coates and his compelling article about reparations. I recall Senator Mitch McConnell’s comment about sections 1005 and 1006 of The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 as reparations. Tisby and Coates get it, and McConnell does not.

Sections 1005 and 1006 are not reparations in the strictest sense of the word. They are about debt relief for Socially Disadvantaged Farmers and Ranchers who experienced egregious maltreatment at the hands of the county FSA office of the USDA. Debt relief was allocated for those who had one of three different types of loans guaranteed by the USDA. But then, the white farmers stepped in and claimed their privilege so as to be included in the debt relief despite the fact that they are not members of the class of SDFRs and neither have they been discriminated against. Nobody ever said that farming was easy, but it should not be made more difficult because of the color of one’s skin. And that, my friends, is the root of the story of discrimination within the USDA.

White Farmers Feel Discriminated Against

To add fuel to the fire, the litigation on behalf of white farmers against the USDA and the debt relief is Stephen Miller, and also Mark Meadows, via American First Legal. As we know, Miller was in charge of trump’s aggressive immigration policy that marginalized all sorts of people. It’ll take a while to overcome those policy decisions and for trust in America to be restored. Many see this move on behalf of Miler and American First Legal as another white nationalism effort.

White farmers never ever experienced the degradation of discrimination by employees of the USDA at the County Committee level. There are literally dozens and dozens of federal reports and reports and briefs done by outside consultants which explain definitively what happened to Black farmers. For a briefer story, check out details in Hinson 2018.

The Numbers of Enslaved People Who Made it to Our Shores

I reviewed the numbers for those enslaved Africans who embarked for the Americas and those that arrived in the Americas and those that arrived in American ports. The numbers are astonishing: 12,521,335 embarked and 10,702,657 disembarked in the Americas. Into American ports disembarked 388,747 and then 835,000 were moved across the Second Middle Passage. Check out Hinson 2018 for more details.

I then reviewed some numbers of whites and Blacks back to 1790 in the census for that year and up this way. In 1790 there were 607,681 Blacks and in 1860 there were 3.95M. In 1790 there were 3.17M whites and in 1860 there were 26.92 million. And, there were 59,527 free people of color in 1790 and in 1860 there were 488,070. Whites outnumbered Blacks and free people of color.

The Economics of Slavery

 Then, I perused an online article entitled “Measuring Slavery in 2020 Dollars” published by the Measuring Worth folks. You can find the article here: https://www.measuringworth.com/slavery.php.

Slavery had incredible influences on the economic, political, and social fabric of our country.  Do not let anyone tell you otherwise. The average price of an enslaved person in 1850 was $400. In 2020, the price would be anywhere from $14,000 to $240,000. $400 was much larger than the average person’s income during 1850, so why would enslavers want to spend so much money on them. Profits. It was all about the profits. If an enslaved person costs $400 but was able to generate well up into the 100,000 during his or her lifetime, then the investment would be worth it. When compared to the costs and profits of hiring someone to work the cotton or the corn or the rice or the whatever was much, much less.

Despite the horrors that enslaved people had to endure, up to the point of death, and living on meager amounts of food, working sun up to sun down and longer, and wearing woeful clothes, the profits were clear. Take a good look at what Frederick Douglass said in chapter 7 of the “Life and Times of Frederick Douglass,” and the glaring distinctions between life in the big house and life in the row houses were brutal.

Divided by Commitment to Enslaving People for Economic Gain

And still, as we attempt to litigate or deconstruct or defend whatever our position is in terms of the Civil War, some say it was all about states rights. Others declare it was about slavery. However you cast it, it was about slavery and the right to own people because it was the best economics of the time. Here is one pivotal quote: “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth.” The entire document is found here:  https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_missec.asp

Black Farmers then and Now

And then switch to more modern times.  Black farmers, just a generation or so removed from slavery owned something like 16-19M acres, and there were approximately 925,000 of them. Now, there are approximately 37,000 Black farmers who are farming somewhere around 4M acres. White farmers are far more numerous and farm substantially more acreage. Their farms are larger, something like 436 acres to 120 acres. 

And then move this way a little further. In 1990 the Farm Bill designated a group of farmers as Socially Disadvantaged Farmers and Ranchers.  Not a lot of noise about that until 2020 when hidden within the America Rescue Plan Act of 2021 was a sum of money for debt relief for Black, Hispanic, Asian, and American Indian farmers and then a sum of money for programmatic sorts of things.  And then the white farmers come out en masse and file lawsuits in federal courts in Texas, Wisconsin, and Florida, led ostensibly by one of trump’s henchmen in charge of the immigration policy. Their complaints have several layers to them, all nuanced around white privilege and white supremacy, alleging that the designation of SDFRs was unconstitutional and that debt relief for that group was unconstitutional and that white farmers should have their fair share of it.

Mistreated, Discriminated Against, Now, How is That?

So, I decided to see how unfavorably the first six litigants were treated. Those six pulled in $523,000 in subsidies, MFP, and CFAP, the latter two of which are for Trump’s failed war with China and the other is coronavirus relief funds. That’s a lot of money for being mistreated between 1995 and 2020. Farmers and ranchers in the counties within which those farms and ranches are located pulled in over $1.2B during those same years. If indeed there is an appreciably small percentage of SDFRs in those counties who received little if any support in terms of subsidies, MFP, and CFAP, then I would not say that the white farmers have been treated poorly. In fact, in keeping with how the USDA has worked since the beginning, the system continues to work the way it is supposed to work, toward those who have white skin.

What About Those Threads?

So, do you see the threads of this post?

What do you see?

If you and I were talking, and if I were saying the words printed above, what would you hear me saying?