Copyright 2002 Gannett Company, Inc.

USA TODAY

July 12, 2002, Friday, FINAL EDITION

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 9A; Commentary

Minority farmers get short shrift

Constance Hilliard

I emanate from a long, proud lineage of farmers. To my West African ancestors, the earth was sacred, the animate, pulsating womb of our being. In fact, so skilled had these men and women become at coaxing vegetation from the hardscrabble soils of their regions that early American plantation owners readily exploited them as a slave labor force in order to ensure their own profits.

While today I live a city life, I continue to admire the rural values that farm families inject into our predominantly urban culture. So I am all the more disappointed that the Department of Agriculture (USDA) may be forcing countless minority farmers from their lands through discriminatory practices in granting farm loans. On Wednesday, the Congressional Black Caucus came to the defense of these farmers, winning a meeting for them with the Agriculture secretary today.

In 1999, when the USDA settled a lawsuit brought by black farmers, I hoped the problem had been rectified. But earlier this month, several hundred protesting black farmers in Tennessee asserted that the USDA continues to drag its feet in paying their claims. And Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, says the USDA may also be discriminating against Hispanic farmers. A lawsuit filed on behalf of 20,000 Hispanic farmers alleges that USDA officials falsely told them that money for loans was not available, and funds that were granted were often insufficient or too late to help.

The USDA’s problems with women, who also have filed a class-action suit, and other minorities were exacerbated in the early 1980s, when the Reagan administration dismantled its civil rights office. Not only did minority farmers have little remedy against discriminatory practices, but they were never told that their complaints were piling up in an empty office.

Ann Veneman, the first female Agriculture secretary, has said that "Civil rights is a very important issue." But she continues to press for the controversial appointment of Thomas Dorr as undersecretary for rural development. A wealthy Iowa farmer, Dorr has said that ethnic diversity can be a stumbling block to economic development in rural areas.

USDA officials need to realize that the rural sector is not the only element of the American public paying close attention to this administration’s farm policies. A growing number of us city folk with the heritage of the soil in our souls remain unwilling to see minority, female and family farmers "bite the dust" due to discriminatory agency practices.

Constance Hilliard is a professor of history at the University of North Texas in Denton.