Justice for African American farmers

External Link: Justice for African American Farmers  

 Working people and the entire labor movement should back exploited farmers fighting for land, including African American producers. In addition to the exploitation under the capitalist rents and mortgages system all family farmers face, farmers who are Black face decades-old racist discrimination and have been driven off their land in disproportionate numbers.

The recent conference in Dallas of the National Black Farmers Association showed that the struggle against this kind of anti-Black prejudice—fostered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and other government institutions, as well as private banks and capitalist business—is alive.

In 1999, following mobilizations by thousands of farmers and their supporters in Washington and a number of southern states, African American farmers forced the USDA through a class action lawsuit to admit responsibility for a historic pattern of discrimination they have faced. As the USDA settled with a consent decree many farmers opposed, it agreed to pay a miserly $50,000 to each farmer who would provide some evidence of bias. However, 86 percent of the 94,000 farmers who applied for compensation were turned down, overwhelmingly due to stringent deadlines the government imposed without adequate notice.

That’s the kind of capitalist justice working people can expect under either Democratic or Republican administrations.

Farmers who are Black are denied loans disproportionately, and the banks steal their land at a faster rate than other farmers. In 1920 there were 900,000 African American farmers in the United States. According to the 2002 U.S. census, that number is now 29,000—just over 1 percent of the country’s 2.1 million farmers.

The fight by Black farmers is part of the struggle of working people against the ravages of the capitalist system. Their demands for compensation, access to land, and treatment with dignity speak to the interests of all producers on the land and beyond.

Working farmers are plagued by commodity prices too low to meet the costs of production. This cost-price squeeze drives them to debt slavery to the banks and other financial institutions. Many can barely make ends meet. In 2002, some 1.5 million U.S. farms—over two-thirds of those in the country—reported annual sales of $25,000 or less.

While subjected to different forms of exploitation, workers and small farmers have a common enemy—the capitalist class. An alliance of the exploited producers on the land and industrial and other workers is indispensable on the road toward the toilers taking power in order to end class exploitation and build a society based on human solidarity, one that can meet the needs of all.
Farmers who are Black are in the forefront of this struggle.

Working people should stand with African American and other exploited farmers and demand: Immediate compensation for racist discrimination! Stop farm foreclosures! Affordable credit for working farmers!