President Obama has chance to end USDA-approved racism

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http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/03/07/89847/commentary-president-obama-has.html

Commentary: President Obama has chance to end USDA-approved racism

By Mary Sanchez | The Kansas City Star


When all is said and done, and the record of the Obama administration is written, one big accomplishment is likely to be attributed to the president's race.

The first black president seems determined to make the U.S. government finally settle the claims of an estimated 70,000 black farmers, people whose hopes were crushed by government racism. Obama has championed a $1.25 billion settlement that would put these claims to rest.

Termed by some "the last plantation," the Department of Agriculture for decades systematically denied loans, crop subsidies and other aid to black farmers, at one point bringing them to near extinction.

In the 1920, blacks operated one of every seven U.S. farms. By 1992, the number had sunk to one in 100.

Meanwhile, many of their white neighbors' farms prospered. But it wasn't always because white farmers were harder workers, smarter with agriculture or luckier with the weather. They got help that was denied to blacks. That's racism.

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Obama's settlement will need congressional approval, something that hasn't been easy to come by in his first year in office.

To push this settlement carries some risk for the president. No doubt he'd rather make his mark, and launch himself into a second term, by handling problems of health care, the economy and jobs. If he wants praise, he'd probably do better championing issues that benefit all races, and that aren't so laced with national guilt, denial and shame.

But time for justice is running out, as farmers with valid claims are literally dying off, their land in many cases already lost to foreclosure.

And this matter recalls another, infamously neglected promise: 40 acres and a mule. In a word, reparations. That idea, paying black people for the sin of slavery, is not feasible. Not now, not so many generations removed.

But something can be done for the wronged farmers. And it falls to a person who came about at the right time in history.