December 22, 2025 • 44 mins
In this episode, I unpack my conflicted thoughts on affirmative action, reparations, and race-conscious policies, using Black land loss as a case study for why this debate resists easy answers.
Tech difficulties delayed us a week, but I hope you'll enjoy the final episode of the year.
Tech difficulties delayed us a week, but I hope you'll enjoy the final episode of the year.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Hello, and welcome back. I'm your host, Marae Beacham, and
I am sick and stuffed up, so I apologize. I
will not let that be an excuse because it is
time for the final episode of this calendar year, so
I'm gonna push through. I have loved recording these last
few episodes on things I can't make up my mind about.
(00:33):
So today we've got another one of those. I'll be
talking about why I can't make up my mind about
reparations or affirmative action or just race specific policy in general.
I am going to just blurt out all of my
mangled up, tangled up, contradictory thoughts. How I used to
(00:53):
be very pro all of these policies, and then I
got really convinced that maybe these policies are wrong and
they're a form of racial discrimination. And then I started
to think maybe that is the case, and then I
learned more, and then I was like, no, I actually
think these policies are good and necessary, not all the time,
but some of the time well done well. But we'll
(01:15):
get into all of that really quick, though. I want
to thank some people who have been just standout supporters.
Just today I saw that Robbie upgraded his support just because,
not because he gets any extra perks, but just to
support what I do. Thank you, Robbie. Also, Marcy just
joined today and someone else who didn't show their first
(01:35):
name to me, So thank you to those two new supporters.
Within the paid circle of members, there are a few
people who are especially vocal, so I just want to
give them a little shout out of appreciation. I often
see comments from Kay and from Kelly, and from Jeremy
and from Joe. Caitlin has very thoughtful things to say,
(01:56):
reflecting on her own personal history. I recently just saw
comment from Dirk. I see comments and likes from Meg
every single thing I post. In the last month or so,
I've heard from Olivia, from Mark, from Joel, and oh
my goodness. I just want to say I appreciate all
of you who are so incredibly engaged in the work
(02:17):
that I do. It's exciting to see your same names
pop up again and your picture and to feel like
we are really building a cool little corner of the Internet.
Full transparency is I'm always workshopping what paid membership means.
I want to offer so so much to paid members,
but I want to keep as much as possible, accessible
and free. But when I do that, then paid members
(02:39):
don't get the perks that they deserve. But sometimes when
I pay well things, even paid members have a harder
time getting to it, like with these podcast episodes. So
I just end up so torn. We'll have to figure
some things out in the new year. Maybe things will change,
maybe they won't. I don't know. I'd love to hear
from all of you, but at the end of the day,
(03:00):
I just want to say and make clear that the
paid supporters, whether I named you or not, you are
the ones who make this all possible. I am so
grateful for your belief in me. I'm so grateful you
back me up and you allow me to do this
really cool, strange, unique, one of a kind job. Okay,
with that appreciation, that gratitude spoken, let's get into the rambling.
(03:25):
I could speak loosely about something like affirmative actions or reparations,
but I really want to take one specific case study
as an example so you can understand how my thoughts
on race conscious policies have changed and evolved over time.
Now this is a grab bag, admittedly, because affirmative action
and reparations and race conscious policies are not all the same.
(03:48):
Thing that said, they're similar, they're connected. And the basic
question that we're dealing with when it comes to all
of these things is, should people of a certain race
get some kind of advantage presently that would just make
up for a past disadvantage. Would giving a particular treatment,
a special treatment, a special opportunity to racial minorities be
(04:13):
a way to actually even the playing field. That was
the thinking behind affirmative action, which is now banned in reparations,
which has yet to happen and will probably never happen.
And then race conscious policies, which are also in a
diicy spot legally right now now to riff on affirmative
action for just a little bit. When it comes to
(04:34):
affirmative action, I fully am aware that affirmative action policies
changed my life. I was in programs specifically for people
of color throughout my time in college. I was a
high achiever in the state, top point zero something percent.
When you look at the population of people of color,
(04:57):
ins that afforded me these special arts, honors, special privileges.
And I knew of some people in the program who
were ashamed of that, that like, oh, it's just a
second rate kind of honor because it's only for those
of us who aren't white. But I never felt ashamed
of it like that. I felt like, still, that's a
big group of people. We're doing pretty good. And I thought,
(05:19):
if being a person of color gives you some sort
of shared experience and maybe some shared obstacles, then still
to be the cream of the crop within that subgroup,
assuming that we're a like group of people who must
be demographically similar, still it seems pretty fair that we
received this competitive honor within that subgroup, and so I
was always at peace with it. Those affirmative action programs
(05:43):
totally shaped my whole college experience. But at the same time,
I understand that a lot of people of color do
not like anything that is remotely close to affirmative action.
For affirmative action to be a thing in any way,
shape or form, can crack the door for doubting the
merit and the skills of minorities. And I even had
(06:06):
times I remember in high school and in college when
people would be like, Oh, she's just here because of
affirmative action, when I wasn't. When there were things that
had nothing to do with race based decision making or
anything like that, and so I'd be really offended when
someone would suggest that race had anything to do with
why I got a certain thing when it didn't. But
on the other hand, some things I got were related
(06:28):
to my race. And that's why some people of color
and white people alike say affirmative action should never be
a thing, because as long as affirmative action is even
a possibility, all it's going to do is undermine this
system of trust that the people who are most qualified
get the thing, and it's ultimately going to work against
people of color because they'll always be working against doubt,
(06:51):
doubt in their merit, doubt and their skills, doubt and
their qualifications. And so people are like to eliminate that doubt.
Let's just eliminate affirmative action, because they're like, as long
as affirmative action is a thing in some sort of
legitimate way, it creates that doubt. Now that's an argument
in the book The End of Race Politics. I've talked
about that in other episodes. I have some nice things
(07:12):
to say about that book. I also will highlight a
passage in that book and a little bit that I
don't agree with, but I just wanted to offer ramblings
on affirmative action to say that in my personal experience,
I'm both someone who's benefited from affirmative action and who
has seen the consequence of affirmative action being a thing,
(07:34):
which is you get this undeserved doubt in these other circumstances,
because for affirmative action to exist at all, then people
can just assume it exists for all things all the time,
and you've just been handed everything when that isn't the case.
I haven't even said the official important clarifiers of like,
(07:55):
affirmative action isn't about the quotas. It's not about getting
enough people hired or enrolled of this race. It's about
having enough of the candidates who are diverse and who reflect.
And I'm not even saying any of those qualifiers. You
know it. I've said it. We've talked about this before.
I don't have any of my notes prepared on affirmative action.
(08:17):
I'm afraid that is very clear, because I'm actually talking
about something else. I just thought if I didn't talk,
I just thought, if I didn't say the whole affirmative
action bit, that would be what it's on your mind.
Because I think I know you pretty well, now in
the same general area are questions on reparations. Reparations is
(08:38):
very different than affirmative action, but the philosophy of it
is kind of the same. I think a lot of
people who support affirmative action support reparations. It's not an
equal one for one. I'd say I have a greater
support for affirmative action than I do for reparations. There
have been certain essays by like Tonahasee, Codes and others
that have really bust open the conversation on reparations and
(09:02):
given that possibility a lot more energy and a lot
more excitement and popular culture people read these critical cases
and they're like, you know what, I think Black people
really have been systematically disadvantaged and discriminated against for the
history of the country. And they say, you know what,
some of these other programs to support entire groups of people,
like the GI Bill and different things like that, those
(09:25):
things have worked. Those things have been introduced, and reparations
could work in a very similar way. And so some
people have really been sold on reparations. And honestly, I
have never drank that kool aid. I have never been
gung ho for reparations. I've never been sold on how
(09:45):
we would go about it. And I have also just
I think I'm a little bit too pragmatic, too much
of a realist, and I'm like, whatever little, scrawny, seen sea,
tiny little check in the mail I'd get because I'm
of African lineage would not even compare to all of
the backlash, all of the hostility, all of the frustration
(10:08):
that I would encounter in my life from white people
or non black people who would say that that's so
ridiculous and that I'm always getting hand outs. It wouldn't
be worth the little, tiny little check to again just
face all of this hostility, frustration, doubt, disbelief, just antagonistic
(10:28):
feelings from other people. And if they, on principle think
it's not right that some people would get paid because
of the race they are for things that happened in
the past, I would understand that how would we distinguish
the difference between like a biracial black person and a
black person, But really every person in the world, by
this day and age, is biracial because that's how things work.
(10:50):
And how would we distinguish being black and of African
heritage versus being an African immigrant whose descendants weren't enslaved
in the United States, but who might still experience prejudice
and discrimination in America today? Do they get compensation? What
about people who aren't black, but who are still people
of color? And how do we like rank the inconvenience
that comes with being a person of different races all
(11:12):
of that. I'm just like, Yeah, I don't think that's
ever gonna happen. I don't think it would practically work,
And I think that people would have good reason to
say we shouldn't do that because so many people like
Coleman Hughes in this book The End of Race Politics,
which I'm about to quote, his basic argument is, look,
in the past, we discriminated against certain people based on
(11:34):
their race. He is a man who is black and
Puerto Rican, and he's writing from this perspective of someone
where he's like, I don't want to see handouts. I
don't want to see reparations. I don't want to see
anti racism seminars. I don't want to see people who
define me based on my race. He's just like, wasn't
that the thing that people did wrong in centuries past?
(11:55):
To make judgments based on race, to make decisions based
on race, to just discriminate based on race, He would
look at something like Reparations and be like, oh, okay.
He'd pretty much call that reverse racism or reverse discrimination,
because why are we still continuing the error, which is
to privilege some people and disadvantage others based on their race.
(12:17):
He is of the group of thinkers who says that's
literally what racism was. We were privileging white people and
disadvantaging non white people. And he's like, but now that
we've made discrimination illegal and something that shouldn't happen, can't
that be enough. Can't we let time pass and let
equality and merit and all those things kind of work
(12:38):
themselves out, Because on principle, it would be wrong to
just flip the script and now start to discriminate against
white people and advantage other people. That's how racism works.
So it doesn't matter if you change the direction and
now we discriminate against the people who have it best,
that's still discrimination. That's still the thing that we should
(13:00):
be eliminating, not continuing, but just reinventing. That's kind of
his argument. That's how he'd see reparations, and his whole
book is it really examines race based policies and says,
I think on principle, we should never have these, even
if they create more equitable outcomes, more equal outcomes. And
(13:21):
Jonathan Height has come out and said very similar things
in his book I Think the Righteous Mind, or maybe
one of his other books also in the Coddling of
the American Mind, he says that so many social justice
activists will say we should do anything and everything to
see more equal outcomes, equal outcomes in terms of education
(13:42):
and hiring and income wealth. We should implement any policies
to make sure that the racial wealth gap, for example, decreases.
And he looks at that and he's like, actually, if
you talk to humans about fairness, and if you do
all these studies on even little ch children and what
they think is fair, it seems that for many people
(14:04):
that bent in us isn't to do something unfair, to
take unfair means to get a more equal end, which
you could consider a fair end. He's like, actually, people
want to see fairness through the process, even if it
results in unequal outcomes. And so he like kind of
challenges social justice activists to kind of rebrand their plans,
(14:27):
and he's like, stuff like reparations, Yeah, that one's not
going to catch on. You are not going to go
far with a plan where you're like, let's do this
thing that's unfair to get to an outcome that's more fair.
He's like, based on human psychology, the only thing that
we can really rally around and all be unified around
(14:47):
as something that we believe is fair every step of
the way. I think that's interesting. I read the research
on that. It made sense, But I think that one
case study to explain why I can't make up my
mind about things like affirmative action or things like reparations.
I do have some stances on those, but I just
(15:10):
mean the broad category of should we be doing race
specific things to get closer to equality? I say yes,
but no, but yes, do I think that we should
have programs specifically for little black boys and girls and
support them and blah blah blah. Honestly I do. I
think that that's a good thing. And I don't think
(15:31):
it should have like a racial bar to entry, brown
paper bag test, nothing like that, but to just have
things that are specifically for a group, a group that's
often overlooked, and honestly, with how segregated the country still is,
if you have a boys and girls program in certain
neighborhoods and certain things, all you're going to get is
(15:51):
black children and under certain things. Right now, with like
considering that DEI because it's only serving a certain group,
so that means it must be discriminatory against other groups.
I just don't think that's true. I don't think that's realistic.
I obviously don't think anything like that, like an after
school program should be discriminatory or even racially exclusionary. But
(16:13):
if the program was just made up of black children,
would I take issue with it and say, oh my gosh,
we really need to diversify. No, I wouldn't. I'd say, okay, well,
that's how that shook out. But I even understand the
flaw in that argument, because you could come to me
and be like, well, Marie, what if we said that
about the top five hundred CEOs in the country being
(16:34):
white males, And you could just look at that and say,
that's how that shook out. But you'd think that's discrimination. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah,
I'm sick. Right. I don't really want to make every
argument very well. Some of my arguments I just want
to make half heartedly and then move on. So that's
what we're getting. I really hope you can hear my
sniffles and the worst of these sickness sounds. If you can,
(16:57):
I am so sorry, and this episode will have to
be pulled off the internet. But without further ado, I
just want to segue a real harsh right turn into
the program that I have in mind when I say
I can't make up my mind about these things, because
I was so fully in support of affirmative action, reparations,
(17:17):
any race conscious anything that would achieve greater equality, meaning
it would focus on helping black people and other people
of color rise to the income level of the wealth
all that of white Americans. So I was fully in support,
and then I started to hear some arguments against that.
(17:38):
I heard Coleman Hughes's Ted Talk, which is a good
TED talk, and I also there's all this controversy surrounding
the Ted Talk where Chris Anderson, head of TED, almost
pulled the talk because some black TED employees didn't like
it and they staged a little protest. And so then
Ted was like, ooh, maybe we shouldn't actually air his talk.
(17:59):
And he was like, what do you mean you shouldn't
air my talk? Was it factually incorrect, and they're like, well, no,
it's just an idea we don't like. And that's really
interesting because Ted's whole thing is sharing a diversity of ideas.
And so there's this whole back and forth and whether
or not his talk was even gonna get it published,
but he was making the case for color blind policies.
He was talking about this very thing. He was saying,
(18:20):
we shouldn't do things like affirmative action, we shouldn't do
things like reparations. And he advocated that we have income
beat the measure the litmus test for who gets support
in all of these government programs. And he said that
it's always wrong to use race as a proxy for class.
We should use income. Because he had this example in
(18:41):
his talk where he's like, let's say you line ten
people up and you need to distribute some financial something,
and you go based on race, so you know how
to give more to the black people, and then you
give less to the white people. And then he's like,
but just think about it. All of those people are
out of order. Who among the black people are more
wealthy than the other black people, and who among the
white people is the least wealthy And blah blah blah
(19:02):
blah blah. I'm not explaining this well, but the Ted
talk for me was very convincing. He was saying, let's
go based off income alone, and guess what, because of
how racial wealth inequality is a reality in our country,
people of color will still get the most financial support
of anyone. So it'll still work out, but it'll work
(19:25):
out with more precision. And I said, that's a good point.
And his whole case is that again he thinks that
it's racist to make any kind of choice based on race.
That was the error of racists in the past race
based judgments, So that is not going to be the
(19:45):
solution for moving forward to the future. That's his whole claim.
So I heard his Ted talk, I thought that was
pretty convincing. And then I also read his book, The
End of Race Politics. I don't know if I'm a
broken record at this point, but I don't think I've
talked about this specific thing, which is the the farmer
Stimulus Plan from March of twenty twenty one. So I'm
actually just gonna read the passage from the book because
(20:08):
at the time I highlighted it, I found it very convincing.
I was like, oh, my goodness, this changes my mind.
Is not a nice quality of mine. I learned new information.
It changes my mind. Well four years later, well, actually, no,
this book is not from twenty twenty one. This is
probably from twenty twenty four. One year later, I had
to research an article on this very thing, and it
(20:30):
changed my mind again. I became unconvinced of his argument.
But I'm getting ahead of myself, Okay. The end of
Race Politics, chapter three. He gives this as an example
of racism in government, and he means race conscious policies
are racist, and I quote. In March twenty twenty one,
(20:51):
Congress passed a one point nine trillion dollar stimulus package,
the American Rescue Plan. The plan included four billions of
aid for farmers with debt, but not just any farmers,
only non white farmers. White farmers with debt were to
receive zero dollars of aid. Some of these white farmers
(21:13):
faced foreclosure during the pandemic recession. They reasonably expected that
if their government was going to distribute aid to farmers,
it would do so according to who needed it most.
They were understandably angry to learn that the government was
distributing it instead according to skin color. Some of them
sued the government, and a court ruled in their favor.
(21:35):
Distributing aid accord to race, it said was unconstitutional. So
twenty twenty one, the huge stimulus package happened. Of that
huge stimulus for billy to black farmers, until white farmers
sued and they shut it down before the black farmers
got any of that eid reading on, he says, the
(21:57):
New York Times coverage of this episode didn't blame Loungers
or the Biden administration for passing a bill that was
both racist and unconstitutional. It instead spun the story in
a way that blamed the indebted white farmers, portraying them
as angry conservatives who had ruined a noble government program
and left black farmers in the lurch. I don't know
(22:17):
what in the lurch means, but that can't be good.
He concludes. It is unreasonable to expect people of any
race to sit idly by as laws get passed that
openly discriminate against them on the basis of the race.
That's fair. That's fair. I agree with that. That's why
a colorblind legal regime is the best option for a
multi racial society in the long run, if the Biden
(22:41):
administration had passed a race neutral bill aimed at helping
all farmers with debt and if necessary, triaging them according
to some objective measure of need, such as the size
of their debt, it would have been more helpful and
more just. Okay, that's the end of that passage, and
maybe it easy to can but reading that I was like, oh,
(23:01):
my goodness, he's right. That is terrible. White farmers should
not be discriminated against. I don't know why they did
this package based on race. It was twenty twenty one, so,
you know, a very successful time to get racial causes
off the ground. But I immediately came into agreement. Now, he said,
if only they had done it based on income and need,
(23:21):
which is what Then the replacement bill ended up being
not based on race, but based on debt allegedly. But
then November of this year, so a month ago. Wow,
this was only a month ago, seems long. I wrote
an article for the Preamble Sharon McMahon's publication, many of
your subscribers and readers, and they said, we're going to
(23:44):
do an issue on food and farming. So I said, well,
I could write about black farmers. I know that's kind
of niche, but I could do that, and they're like, no,
that's great, and oh my goodness. I learned so much
about black farming, about black land laws. I learned why
it is a niche. It is because of discrimination. I
became like an evangelist for this cause. And there is
(24:08):
so much history that mister Hughes did not put into
that book to explain how black farmers had been discriminated
against for two centuries. And I really think if it
weren't for that discrimination, specifically from the United States Department
of Agriculture, we would see farming as like the main
(24:28):
profession among black American state That is. Maybe it's an
unsupported claim that I'm making, but that is how I feel.
So I'll just walk you through what I learned from
that research process, that writing process, and learning about black
land laws all the way up to this twenty twenty
one policy that I had just been convinced was wrong.
(24:49):
It shouldn't have been based on race. When I researched this,
then I learned about the whole history of discrimination against
black farmers and black landowners, and I changed my two
n so for context, we all know after the Emancipation Proclamation,
there was the whole forty acres and a mule thing,
and that got mixed. So how did enslaved people who
(25:13):
started from nothing build up wealth and property and kind
of verise in the rinks. They turned to agriculture, and
it took decades because their sharecropping arrangements and those were
really exploitative. Those often prevented black people from having any
real ownership. But black landownership and agriculture is how black
(25:36):
Americans saw unbelievable advancement shortly after the end of slavery.
So it was only nineteen ten. The Emancipation Proclamation was
just like fifty years prior, and in nineteen ten peak
landownership for Black Americans. Black Americans owned about sixteen million
(25:57):
acres of land in the United States sixteen million. But
the crazy part is that between nineteen ten and nineteen
ninety seven, black farmers lost more than ninety percent of
their land. When the American Bar Association gathered these experts
to calculate the total value, and they said, let's calculate
(26:17):
the value of that land today if it weren't for
black land loss, they arrived at a conservative estimate of
three hundred and twenty six billion BIBB a billion dollars.
They said, to put this figure in perspective, if this
represented the GDP of a country in twenty twenty, black
Americans wealth would have been in the top twenty percent,
ranking ahead of South Africa, Finland, and New Zealand. But
(26:40):
as it stands today, black Americans have eighty five percent
less wealth on average than white Americans. Now, to just
zoom through it, what happened was blackland loss. There was
all of this corruption with bankers people at the USDA,
and there was so much discrimination against black farmers. The
USDA is super involved in managing crop prices and dealing
(27:05):
with credit programs and things like that, but they were
consistently discriminating against black farmers. And no farmer could have
made it through the twentieth century weather changes and recessions
and different things without significant help from the USDA. All
successful farms needed the USDA to survive, and black farms
(27:26):
were not being given the same level of support from
the USDA. And that's not just speculation, that's a fact
in that quote. In nineteen sixty five, the US Commission
on Civil Rights determined that the USDA's loan programs had
discriminated against black farmers, leaving them out of payouts that
their white counterparts had received. So basically it was proven
(27:49):
in nineteen sixty five that black farmers were being discriminated
against at the grand level. Then in all of these
different presidential administrations, they had this little branch with the
USDA that was supposed to deal with discrimination claims, but
every president had a different agenda. One president would come
in and they'd close that office. The next president would
come in and open that office, but they'd be like
(28:10):
two years behind on the claims, and then it would
roll over into the next president and they'd be like,
actually we're going to redo the office and we're going
to change it, or no, actually we want to close it.
And so they were never dealing with these discrimination claims
in the seventies, the eighties, the nineties, which brought on
a lawsuit. It was the biggest civil rights lawsuit in
(28:32):
all of US history. Did you know this? Do you
know what this lawsuit is the biggest payout, the biggest lawsuit.
It is called Pigford versus Glickman. Pigford versus Glickman. It
was a long overdue lawsuit in the nineties, so black
farmers could finally settle for funds that they had been
denied and loans they had been denied in all these things.
(28:54):
And the issue is when you're denied alone, or when
your loan is delayed, you missed the season as a farmer.
You can't get seed, you can't get the machinery you need,
and so you missed the profit potential for your entire year.
That's a big deal. When some people get the loans
that they need and some people don't, it's a huge difference.
So finally Pigford versu. Glickman happened. All of these black farmers,
(29:17):
about twenty thousand got involved in the lawsuit, and in
the end there were fifteen thousand who had sufficient evidence
of discrimination, and they got settlements of fifty thousand dollars
or more like many were in the ballpark of fifty
thousand but times fifteen thousand, and the total payout was
more than a billion dollars. Lots of black farmers missed
(29:40):
out on the first Pigfords. Then Pigford two happened, which
was another seventeen thousand claims for more than one point
two five billion dollars. But then people still talked about
it and considered it a handout. Now, if you think
about it, and I'm really going into this because I
care about this a lot, and I care about how
just a short little persuasive argument of like, oh, this
(30:01):
USDA program that was for black farmers only, it was discriminatory,
it was racism, racism shouldn't happen anymore. I didn't know
the whole history of proven discrimination from the USDA. I
didn't know that it was known in nineteen sixty five,
proven in nineteen sixty five, and for decades black farmers
couldn't actually have their claims heard. I didn't know that
it was the largest civil rights settlement in history around
(30:24):
two thousand and then again in like twenty ten, and
these settlements for fifty thousand dollars for black farmers. That's great,
But also think about a livelihood if you missed the
profit season, if you weren't able to plant and harvest
your crops for years because of denied loans, delayed loans,
consistently smaller loans. Fifty thousand isn't going to come anywhere
(30:49):
near close to make up for the livelihood you could
have had. It's a tiny fraction of your lost profits,
and it clearly doesn't compare to just getting equal and
fair treatment all the way through and being able to
do your job and make a living. Nobody wanted to
be discriminated against. You would rather have that than be
(31:10):
discriminated against for thirty plus years and then get a
relatively small settlement. I think anyone would agree. So that alone,
I read this case of like, oh, in twenty twenty one.
At first, there's going to be four billion dollars to
black farmers specifically, isn't that terrible? At first I'm like, oh, yeah,
that's strange. Why would they do that? And then I'm like, oh,
my gosh, there's such a history of racism in farming
(31:32):
that has pushed black farmers out of farming almost entirely.
Like I said, ninety percent decrease in black land ownership,
and the vast majority of that is because of a
Pacific policy known as Air's Property not super relevance. So
I'm not going to get into that. But when you
fast forward to today and the policy that was proposed
(31:53):
in twenty twenty one, from doing my research, I had
a very different view of things. An initial COVID farm
aid bill that went up to farmers, and the Agriculture
Secretary made a real point to point out that black
farmers were not getting proportionate aid from the COVID support
So initially and I quote, only zero point one percent,
(32:18):
So one tenth of one percent of COVID farm aid
went to black farmers, that is one thirteenth of what
would have been proportionate, whereas ninety nine percent went to
white farmers. So then in twenty twenty one, when Congress
passed a much larger, multi billion dollar targeted debt relief
package for black farmers in an attempt to lessen racial inequalities,
(32:40):
it was shut down by a lawsuit alleging that white
farmers were being discriminated against. Then in twenty twenty two,
the replacement was a two billion dollar race neutral program
based on financial distress. But this still significantly decreased and
eluded the aid for black farmers, and pr even found
that presently black farmers still get a lot less aid
(33:02):
from the USDA. When they apply for loans from the USDA,
their acceptance rate is about thirty six percent. White farmers
acceptance rate is exactly double that, seventy two percent. Their
rejection rate is four times that of white farmers, and
their applications end up being withdrawn twice as often as
white farmers. Then, also under Trump, the USDA has said
(33:25):
they're pulling all of their language on racist history or
disparities or anything acknowledging racial inequality. They're like, that's all mixed,
that's all dead, that's all done, no more of that.
They're completely done with race conscious policies. They're race neutral
from here on out. But in being race neutral, the
outcomes are so different. And this ties back to what
(33:49):
I was saying at the beginning. People feel that the
fair thing to do is to have a fair process
that leads to fair outcomes. If you have a targeted processor,
you say this is based on skin color, this is
based on this, that and the other thing. People generally
don't feel that it's fair because it's selective. It's discriminatory,
so to speak. And when I read those arguments in
(34:10):
the abstract, I agree, But when I read about this
specific case study, I'm like, whoaa W whoa, whoa. We're
eliminating anything race conscious at a time when this organization,
the US Department of Agriculture, has only ever discriminated against
black people all throughout their history, and even today, black
(34:32):
people are half as likely to have their requests approved,
to have their loan applications accepted, half as likely thirty
six percent versus seventy two percent. And we're saying race
shouldn't be considered as a factor because it should be irrelevant.
That's more equal, that's more fair. I think that in
(34:53):
a perfect world we should have race neutral policies. The
issue is when, and race neutrality doesn't seem to play
out like race neutrality. You would expect for race neutrality
to not have such stark, severe differences between people of
different races, And so maybe policies and programs that don't
(35:16):
account for race are still somehow being affected by race.
Because clearly your race, if you're a farmer and you
got a lot of reliance on the USDA, your race
is gonna have predictive power over whether you get the
support you need. And so yeah, I just think about
that passage in Coleman Hughes's book, because I spoke very
(35:36):
highly of the book when it was released, I've read
many flattering passages saying this was a good point, this
challenged my thinking, But that one in particular, is one
that I took. I read, I was also convinced of that,
Oh yeah, discriminatory policies. What was the Biden administration doing?
And then I later came to realize, No, I don't
think that that was a solid argument. I don't think
(35:57):
that they accounted for the full history of discrimination in
the past. I don't think that they accounted for the
continuing discrimination in the present, or the fact that they
had already done a COVID relief package and black farmers
got one thirteenth of what would have been proportionate support.
You know, I'm not gonna say black farmers should get
equal aid to white farmers. If white farmers get one billion,
(36:20):
black farmers get one billion, because there are way fewer
black farmers, so then each one would get way more
than any individual white farmer. That's not the issue. The
issue is that if it were proportionate, black farmers would
have gotten one point three percent of the aid, but
they didn't. They got zero point one percent of the aid,
one tenth of one percent. And so that's why the
(36:42):
follow up bill was supposed to be this targeted package
to make up for not even past discrimination from like
decades prior, past discrimination from like the decision a few
months prior that ended up being discriminatory. So this whole
thing as I was researching it, It's just that's an
example of why I can't make up my mind about things.
(37:03):
On principle, I think that race blind things are really good,
but then I think of my own life and how
race conscious things have benefited me tremendously. But I also
do see the issue with how race conscious programs cast
doubt on people of color. But I don't think that
the doubt cast on you has hurt me as much
(37:25):
as race conscious policies have helped me. So I'm fully
a beneficiary of those things. That's how I was able
to get a college education and a college degree, honestly.
But just because I benefit it doesn't mean it's right.
It's not like I benefited from this thing that you
didn't benefit from, so therefore I think this thing is
morally right. Like, no, maybe it is a problem that
(37:47):
I got a program that a white student would have
killed for but they didn't have the opportunity to get.
I'm open to that being like racial unfairness in the
reverse direction. From an abstract argument standpoint, I'm like, yeah,
I can see that. But at the same time, if
we just make these blanket statements that these programs that
(38:07):
are just for racial minorities are so unfair and they
give them such a leg up, like how that black
farmer aid program was being represented, I think we just
end up with such a silly little view of the situation,
because is that really like the one example we should
focus on. Oh my gosh, black farmers were going to
(38:27):
get targeted relief for COVID. That's terrible. What about the
white farmers who got the aid the first time around?
They got more than their share in the first COVID
relief package, and then when we made a race neutral
they got more than their share again. And then with
every loan program from the USDA they get more from
than their share. Again, they have more than their proportion.
(38:49):
What I'm trying to say is that if we see
the whole history usually the race conscious program, that's like
trying to set things right. Even if and I really
appreciate Colman Hugh's argument, like in his Ted talk and
in his work where he's like, we shouldn't allow for
any racism, and he thinks that the anti racism movement
and race conscious policies and all of that are this
(39:10):
late stage reinvented racism, And on principle, I think that
he's right to advocate against that. If you see how
race based judgments and race based decisions created a history
of racism in the past our country, and you want
to move forward and you want to move past that,
you say we should get rid of race based stuff altogether.
(39:30):
I'm right there with you. I still think that argument
is very convincing in various settings. But I'm so hung
up on these settings where it's not convincing because in
the grand scope of things, the one little rinky dink
program that was meant to even the playing field for
the black folks that got cut anyway because enough people
(39:54):
complained and made it happen, And maybe it should have
gotten cut, you know, if it was if it's unconstitutional,
yeah that shouldn't happ And if it's not constitutional because
it's racial discrimination, then yeah, I guess it's racial discrimination.
But that just makes me so mad because there's so
much other racial discrimination against black farmers that went on
for centuries, and even they acknowledged it was happening, and
(40:14):
it still went on for more decades until finally this
huge lawsuit, and then it just continued on after the lawsuit,
all the same disparities, all the same discrimination. And so
I think there's even just something ironic and how the
second white farmers are discriminated against by a program, they
get it done. Their voices are heard, they get to
go to court, and they get to make sure that
(40:35):
doesn't happen, and then they get the aid redirected toward
them and their needs. But when black farmers were saying
this and they were raising their voices, it took so
long to make any kind of change happen, so long
for their needs to be met, so long for like
their day in court and their vindication. So yeah, I
(40:55):
don't know. This wasn't a full blown thoughtful argument. This
is just my back and forth rambling on race based programs.
I read arguments against them, and I understand those arguments,
and I think that they make really good points. But
on the other hand, I still think that the history
of discrimination does linger on and it still requires some
sort of repair. Instead, I'm not fully convinced that we
(41:19):
should do away with race based policies and programs just yet.
Of course, this is all just me musing, because it's
not up to me, it's up to the president, and
the President has decided that they're all done and dead
and gone. But I think that it'll be up for
discussion in the years to come. And really where you
land on this is whether you believe that racism in
(41:39):
the past is still affecting the present and so we
still need to be proactively doing things to undo those injustices,
or if you believe that race in the past was
bad but it's pretty much done, it's pretty much taken
care of, and now from here on out, we just
need to be a meritocracy. We need to do things fairly,
(42:00):
need to do things the right way and make sure
there are no more race based policies. And if you
believe that injustice carries on, you'd say, well, the race
neutral programs are really race based because the white people
are the only ones who benefit from them. So you
can call it race neutral, you can call it race blind,
but if those end up being discriminatory against non white people,
then your race blind stuff is very race conscious. Actually,
(42:23):
so maybe we need it to be race conscious, so
it's actually diverse and it reflects the population and it
takes being race conscious, for a thing to actually in
effect be race blind, and for you to have an
equal shot at some sort of benefit program funding regardless
of your race. And I just I have so many
more thoughts, but there's so much to consider. Those are
(42:48):
my sickly thoughts. I so appreciate you all listening to
the podcast being enthused about the relaunch a few months back.
This will be the last episode this year. Will come
back in the new year as always. Thanks for your support,
your listenership, and just the fact that you really take
the time to hear my thoughts on these brainy topics
(43:12):
just because you want to learn and be more informed yourself.
That is awesome. If you want to be a paid supporter,
the link to that's in the show notes, and right
when you join, I will smile at my phone and
send you a little thank you, hello welcome message that
is really truly from me. You'll also gain access to
a bunch of exclusive stuff. And like I said, I'm
(43:34):
still trying to figure out how paid support should work.
I want so many things to be benefits of being
on paid but I want things to be accessible to
as many people want to see them, and I just
have decisions to make, so please be gracious with me
through that. Give me your advice, your feedback, especially if
(43:54):
you're a paid supporter. I'd love to know what makes
it worthwhile for you. Thanks for the listening. Until next time,
M
Hello, and welcome back. I'm your host, Marae Beacham, and
I am sick and stuffed up, so I apologize. I
will not let that be an excuse because it is
time for the final episode of this calendar year, so
I'm gonna push through. I have loved recording these last
few episodes on things I can't make up my mind about.
(00:33):
So today we've got another one of those. I'll be
talking about why I can't make up my mind about
reparations or affirmative action or just race specific policy in general.
I am going to just blurt out all of my
mangled up, tangled up, contradictory thoughts. How I used to
(00:53):
be very pro all of these policies, and then I
got really convinced that maybe these policies are wrong and
they're a form of racial discrimination. And then I started
to think maybe that is the case, and then I
learned more, and then I was like, no, I actually
think these policies are good and necessary, not all the time,
but some of the time well done well. But we'll
(01:15):
get into all of that really quick, though. I want
to thank some people who have been just standout supporters.
Just today I saw that Robbie upgraded his support just because,
not because he gets any extra perks, but just to
support what I do. Thank you, Robbie. Also, Marcy just
joined today and someone else who didn't show their first
(01:35):
name to me, So thank you to those two new supporters.
Within the paid circle of members, there are a few
people who are especially vocal, so I just want to
give them a little shout out of appreciation. I often
see comments from Kay and from Kelly, and from Jeremy
and from Joe. Caitlin has very thoughtful things to say,
(01:56):
reflecting on her own personal history. I recently just saw
comment from Dirk. I see comments and likes from Meg
every single thing I post. In the last month or so,
I've heard from Olivia, from Mark, from Joel, and oh
my goodness. I just want to say I appreciate all
of you who are so incredibly engaged in the work
(02:17):
that I do. It's exciting to see your same names
pop up again and your picture and to feel like
we are really building a cool little corner of the Internet.
Full transparency is I'm always workshopping what paid membership means.
I want to offer so so much to paid members,
but I want to keep as much as possible, accessible
and free. But when I do that, then paid members
(02:39):
don't get the perks that they deserve. But sometimes when
I pay well things, even paid members have a harder
time getting to it, like with these podcast episodes. So
I just end up so torn. We'll have to figure
some things out in the new year. Maybe things will change,
maybe they won't. I don't know. I'd love to hear
from all of you, but at the end of the day,
(03:00):
I just want to say and make clear that the
paid supporters, whether I named you or not, you are
the ones who make this all possible. I am so
grateful for your belief in me. I'm so grateful you
back me up and you allow me to do this
really cool, strange, unique, one of a kind job. Okay,
with that appreciation, that gratitude spoken, let's get into the rambling.
(03:25):
I could speak loosely about something like affirmative actions or reparations,
but I really want to take one specific case study
as an example so you can understand how my thoughts
on race conscious policies have changed and evolved over time.
Now this is a grab bag, admittedly, because affirmative action
and reparations and race conscious policies are not all the same.
(03:48):
Thing that said, they're similar, they're connected. And the basic
question that we're dealing with when it comes to all
of these things is, should people of a certain race
get some kind of advantage presently that would just make
up for a past disadvantage. Would giving a particular treatment,
a special treatment, a special opportunity to racial minorities be
(04:13):
a way to actually even the playing field. That was
the thinking behind affirmative action, which is now banned in reparations,
which has yet to happen and will probably never happen.
And then race conscious policies, which are also in a
diicy spot legally right now now to riff on affirmative
action for just a little bit. When it comes to
(04:34):
affirmative action, I fully am aware that affirmative action policies
changed my life. I was in programs specifically for people
of color throughout my time in college. I was a
high achiever in the state, top point zero something percent.
When you look at the population of people of color,
(04:57):
ins that afforded me these special arts, honors, special privileges.
And I knew of some people in the program who
were ashamed of that, that like, oh, it's just a
second rate kind of honor because it's only for those
of us who aren't white. But I never felt ashamed
of it like that. I felt like, still, that's a
big group of people. We're doing pretty good. And I thought,
(05:19):
if being a person of color gives you some sort
of shared experience and maybe some shared obstacles, then still
to be the cream of the crop within that subgroup,
assuming that we're a like group of people who must
be demographically similar, still it seems pretty fair that we
received this competitive honor within that subgroup, and so I
was always at peace with it. Those affirmative action programs
(05:43):
totally shaped my whole college experience. But at the same time,
I understand that a lot of people of color do
not like anything that is remotely close to affirmative action.
For affirmative action to be a thing in any way,
shape or form, can crack the door for doubting the
merit and the skills of minorities. And I even had
(06:06):
times I remember in high school and in college when
people would be like, Oh, she's just here because of
affirmative action, when I wasn't. When there were things that
had nothing to do with race based decision making or
anything like that, and so I'd be really offended when
someone would suggest that race had anything to do with
why I got a certain thing when it didn't. But
on the other hand, some things I got were related
(06:28):
to my race. And that's why some people of color
and white people alike say affirmative action should never be
a thing, because as long as affirmative action is even
a possibility, all it's going to do is undermine this
system of trust that the people who are most qualified
get the thing, and it's ultimately going to work against
people of color because they'll always be working against doubt,
(06:51):
doubt in their merit, doubt and their skills, doubt and
their qualifications. And so people are like to eliminate that doubt.
Let's just eliminate affirmative action, because they're like, as long
as affirmative action is a thing in some sort of
legitimate way, it creates that doubt. Now that's an argument
in the book The End of Race Politics. I've talked
about that in other episodes. I have some nice things
(07:12):
to say about that book. I also will highlight a
passage in that book and a little bit that I
don't agree with, but I just wanted to offer ramblings
on affirmative action to say that in my personal experience,
I'm both someone who's benefited from affirmative action and who
has seen the consequence of affirmative action being a thing,
(07:34):
which is you get this undeserved doubt in these other circumstances,
because for affirmative action to exist at all, then people
can just assume it exists for all things all the time,
and you've just been handed everything when that isn't the case.
I haven't even said the official important clarifiers of like,
(07:55):
affirmative action isn't about the quotas. It's not about getting
enough people hired or enrolled of this race. It's about
having enough of the candidates who are diverse and who reflect.
And I'm not even saying any of those qualifiers. You
know it. I've said it. We've talked about this before.
I don't have any of my notes prepared on affirmative action.
(08:17):
I'm afraid that is very clear, because I'm actually talking
about something else. I just thought if I didn't talk,
I just thought, if I didn't say the whole affirmative
action bit, that would be what it's on your mind.
Because I think I know you pretty well, now in
the same general area are questions on reparations. Reparations is
(08:38):
very different than affirmative action, but the philosophy of it
is kind of the same. I think a lot of
people who support affirmative action support reparations. It's not an
equal one for one. I'd say I have a greater
support for affirmative action than I do for reparations. There
have been certain essays by like Tonahasee, Codes and others
that have really bust open the conversation on reparations and
(09:02):
given that possibility a lot more energy and a lot
more excitement and popular culture people read these critical cases
and they're like, you know what, I think Black people
really have been systematically disadvantaged and discriminated against for the
history of the country. And they say, you know what,
some of these other programs to support entire groups of people,
like the GI Bill and different things like that, those
(09:25):
things have worked. Those things have been introduced, and reparations
could work in a very similar way. And so some
people have really been sold on reparations. And honestly, I
have never drank that kool aid. I have never been
gung ho for reparations. I've never been sold on how
(09:45):
we would go about it. And I have also just
I think I'm a little bit too pragmatic, too much
of a realist, and I'm like, whatever little, scrawny, seen sea,
tiny little check in the mail I'd get because I'm
of African lineage would not even compare to all of
the backlash, all of the hostility, all of the frustration
(10:08):
that I would encounter in my life from white people
or non black people who would say that that's so
ridiculous and that I'm always getting hand outs. It wouldn't
be worth the little, tiny little check to again just
face all of this hostility, frustration, doubt, disbelief, just antagonistic
(10:28):
feelings from other people. And if they, on principle think
it's not right that some people would get paid because
of the race they are for things that happened in
the past, I would understand that how would we distinguish
the difference between like a biracial black person and a
black person, But really every person in the world, by
this day and age, is biracial because that's how things work.
(10:50):
And how would we distinguish being black and of African
heritage versus being an African immigrant whose descendants weren't enslaved
in the United States, but who might still experience prejudice
and discrimination in America today? Do they get compensation? What
about people who aren't black, but who are still people
of color? And how do we like rank the inconvenience
that comes with being a person of different races all
(11:12):
of that. I'm just like, Yeah, I don't think that's
ever gonna happen. I don't think it would practically work,
And I think that people would have good reason to
say we shouldn't do that because so many people like
Coleman Hughes in this book The End of Race Politics,
which I'm about to quote, his basic argument is, look,
in the past, we discriminated against certain people based on
(11:34):
their race. He is a man who is black and
Puerto Rican, and he's writing from this perspective of someone
where he's like, I don't want to see handouts. I
don't want to see reparations. I don't want to see
anti racism seminars. I don't want to see people who
define me based on my race. He's just like, wasn't
that the thing that people did wrong in centuries past?
(11:55):
To make judgments based on race, to make decisions based
on race, to just discriminate based on race, He would
look at something like Reparations and be like, oh, okay.
He'd pretty much call that reverse racism or reverse discrimination,
because why are we still continuing the error, which is
to privilege some people and disadvantage others based on their race.
(12:17):
He is of the group of thinkers who says that's
literally what racism was. We were privileging white people and
disadvantaging non white people. And he's like, but now that
we've made discrimination illegal and something that shouldn't happen, can't
that be enough. Can't we let time pass and let
equality and merit and all those things kind of work
(12:38):
themselves out, Because on principle, it would be wrong to
just flip the script and now start to discriminate against
white people and advantage other people. That's how racism works.
So it doesn't matter if you change the direction and
now we discriminate against the people who have it best,
that's still discrimination. That's still the thing that we should
(13:00):
be eliminating, not continuing, but just reinventing. That's kind of
his argument. That's how he'd see reparations, and his whole
book is it really examines race based policies and says,
I think on principle, we should never have these, even
if they create more equitable outcomes, more equal outcomes. And
(13:21):
Jonathan Height has come out and said very similar things
in his book I Think the Righteous Mind, or maybe
one of his other books also in the Coddling of
the American Mind, he says that so many social justice
activists will say we should do anything and everything to
see more equal outcomes, equal outcomes in terms of education
(13:42):
and hiring and income wealth. We should implement any policies
to make sure that the racial wealth gap, for example, decreases.
And he looks at that and he's like, actually, if
you talk to humans about fairness, and if you do
all these studies on even little ch children and what
they think is fair, it seems that for many people
(14:04):
that bent in us isn't to do something unfair, to
take unfair means to get a more equal end, which
you could consider a fair end. He's like, actually, people
want to see fairness through the process, even if it
results in unequal outcomes. And so he like kind of
challenges social justice activists to kind of rebrand their plans,
(14:27):
and he's like, stuff like reparations, Yeah, that one's not
going to catch on. You are not going to go
far with a plan where you're like, let's do this
thing that's unfair to get to an outcome that's more fair.
He's like, based on human psychology, the only thing that
we can really rally around and all be unified around
(14:47):
as something that we believe is fair every step of
the way. I think that's interesting. I read the research
on that. It made sense, But I think that one
case study to explain why I can't make up my
mind about things like affirmative action or things like reparations.
I do have some stances on those, but I just
(15:10):
mean the broad category of should we be doing race
specific things to get closer to equality? I say yes,
but no, but yes, do I think that we should
have programs specifically for little black boys and girls and
support them and blah blah blah. Honestly I do. I
think that that's a good thing. And I don't think
(15:31):
it should have like a racial bar to entry, brown
paper bag test, nothing like that, but to just have
things that are specifically for a group, a group that's
often overlooked, and honestly, with how segregated the country still is,
if you have a boys and girls program in certain
neighborhoods and certain things, all you're going to get is
(15:51):
black children and under certain things. Right now, with like
considering that DEI because it's only serving a certain group,
so that means it must be discriminatory against other groups.
I just don't think that's true. I don't think that's realistic.
I obviously don't think anything like that, like an after
school program should be discriminatory or even racially exclusionary. But
(16:13):
if the program was just made up of black children,
would I take issue with it and say, oh my gosh,
we really need to diversify. No, I wouldn't. I'd say, okay, well,
that's how that shook out. But I even understand the
flaw in that argument, because you could come to me
and be like, well, Marie, what if we said that
about the top five hundred CEOs in the country being
(16:34):
white males, And you could just look at that and say,
that's how that shook out. But you'd think that's discrimination. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah,
I'm sick. Right. I don't really want to make every
argument very well. Some of my arguments I just want
to make half heartedly and then move on. So that's
what we're getting. I really hope you can hear my
sniffles and the worst of these sickness sounds. If you can,
(16:57):
I am so sorry, and this episode will have to
be pulled off the internet. But without further ado, I
just want to segue a real harsh right turn into
the program that I have in mind when I say
I can't make up my mind about these things, because
I was so fully in support of affirmative action, reparations,
(17:17):
any race conscious anything that would achieve greater equality, meaning
it would focus on helping black people and other people
of color rise to the income level of the wealth
all that of white Americans. So I was fully in support,
and then I started to hear some arguments against that.
(17:38):
I heard Coleman Hughes's Ted Talk, which is a good
TED talk, and I also there's all this controversy surrounding
the Ted Talk where Chris Anderson, head of TED, almost
pulled the talk because some black TED employees didn't like
it and they staged a little protest. And so then
Ted was like, ooh, maybe we shouldn't actually air his talk.
(17:59):
And he was like, what do you mean you shouldn't
air my talk? Was it factually incorrect, and they're like, well, no,
it's just an idea we don't like. And that's really
interesting because Ted's whole thing is sharing a diversity of ideas.
And so there's this whole back and forth and whether
or not his talk was even gonna get it published,
but he was making the case for color blind policies.
He was talking about this very thing. He was saying,
(18:20):
we shouldn't do things like affirmative action, we shouldn't do
things like reparations. And he advocated that we have income
beat the measure the litmus test for who gets support
in all of these government programs. And he said that
it's always wrong to use race as a proxy for class.
We should use income. Because he had this example in
(18:41):
his talk where he's like, let's say you line ten
people up and you need to distribute some financial something,
and you go based on race, so you know how
to give more to the black people, and then you
give less to the white people. And then he's like,
but just think about it. All of those people are
out of order. Who among the black people are more
wealthy than the other black people, and who among the
white people is the least wealthy And blah blah blah
(19:02):
blah blah. I'm not explaining this well, but the Ted
talk for me was very convincing. He was saying, let's
go based off income alone, and guess what, because of
how racial wealth inequality is a reality in our country,
people of color will still get the most financial support
of anyone. So it'll still work out, but it'll work
(19:25):
out with more precision. And I said, that's a good point.
And his whole case is that again he thinks that
it's racist to make any kind of choice based on race.
That was the error of racists in the past race
based judgments, So that is not going to be the
(19:45):
solution for moving forward to the future. That's his whole claim.
So I heard his Ted talk, I thought that was
pretty convincing. And then I also read his book, The
End of Race Politics. I don't know if I'm a
broken record at this point, but I don't think I've
talked about this specific thing, which is the the farmer
Stimulus Plan from March of twenty twenty one. So I'm
actually just gonna read the passage from the book because
(20:08):
at the time I highlighted it, I found it very convincing.
I was like, oh, my goodness, this changes my mind.
Is not a nice quality of mine. I learned new information.
It changes my mind. Well four years later, well, actually, no,
this book is not from twenty twenty one. This is
probably from twenty twenty four. One year later, I had
to research an article on this very thing, and it
(20:30):
changed my mind again. I became unconvinced of his argument.
But I'm getting ahead of myself, Okay. The end of
Race Politics, chapter three. He gives this as an example
of racism in government, and he means race conscious policies
are racist, and I quote. In March twenty twenty one,
(20:51):
Congress passed a one point nine trillion dollar stimulus package,
the American Rescue Plan. The plan included four billions of
aid for farmers with debt, but not just any farmers,
only non white farmers. White farmers with debt were to
receive zero dollars of aid. Some of these white farmers
(21:13):
faced foreclosure during the pandemic recession. They reasonably expected that
if their government was going to distribute aid to farmers,
it would do so according to who needed it most.
They were understandably angry to learn that the government was
distributing it instead according to skin color. Some of them
sued the government, and a court ruled in their favor.
(21:35):
Distributing aid accord to race, it said was unconstitutional. So
twenty twenty one, the huge stimulus package happened. Of that
huge stimulus for billy to black farmers, until white farmers
sued and they shut it down before the black farmers
got any of that eid reading on, he says, the
(21:57):
New York Times coverage of this episode didn't blame Loungers
or the Biden administration for passing a bill that was
both racist and unconstitutional. It instead spun the story in
a way that blamed the indebted white farmers, portraying them
as angry conservatives who had ruined a noble government program
and left black farmers in the lurch. I don't know
(22:17):
what in the lurch means, but that can't be good.
He concludes. It is unreasonable to expect people of any
race to sit idly by as laws get passed that
openly discriminate against them on the basis of the race.
That's fair. That's fair. I agree with that. That's why
a colorblind legal regime is the best option for a
multi racial society in the long run, if the Biden
(22:41):
administration had passed a race neutral bill aimed at helping
all farmers with debt and if necessary, triaging them according
to some objective measure of need, such as the size
of their debt, it would have been more helpful and
more just. Okay, that's the end of that passage, and
maybe it easy to can but reading that I was like, oh,
(23:01):
my goodness, he's right. That is terrible. White farmers should
not be discriminated against. I don't know why they did
this package based on race. It was twenty twenty one, so,
you know, a very successful time to get racial causes
off the ground. But I immediately came into agreement. Now, he said,
if only they had done it based on income and need,
(23:21):
which is what Then the replacement bill ended up being
not based on race, but based on debt allegedly. But
then November of this year, so a month ago. Wow,
this was only a month ago, seems long. I wrote
an article for the Preamble Sharon McMahon's publication, many of
your subscribers and readers, and they said, we're going to
(23:44):
do an issue on food and farming. So I said, well,
I could write about black farmers. I know that's kind
of niche, but I could do that, and they're like, no,
that's great, and oh my goodness. I learned so much
about black farming, about black land laws. I learned why
it is a niche. It is because of discrimination. I
became like an evangelist for this cause. And there is
(24:08):
so much history that mister Hughes did not put into
that book to explain how black farmers had been discriminated
against for two centuries. And I really think if it
weren't for that discrimination, specifically from the United States Department
of Agriculture, we would see farming as like the main
(24:28):
profession among black American state That is. Maybe it's an
unsupported claim that I'm making, but that is how I feel.
So I'll just walk you through what I learned from
that research process, that writing process, and learning about black
land laws all the way up to this twenty twenty
one policy that I had just been convinced was wrong.
(24:49):
It shouldn't have been based on race. When I researched this,
then I learned about the whole history of discrimination against
black farmers and black landowners, and I changed my two
n so for context, we all know after the Emancipation Proclamation,
there was the whole forty acres and a mule thing,
and that got mixed. So how did enslaved people who
(25:13):
started from nothing build up wealth and property and kind
of verise in the rinks. They turned to agriculture, and
it took decades because their sharecropping arrangements and those were
really exploitative. Those often prevented black people from having any
real ownership. But black landownership and agriculture is how black
(25:36):
Americans saw unbelievable advancement shortly after the end of slavery.
So it was only nineteen ten. The Emancipation Proclamation was
just like fifty years prior, and in nineteen ten peak
landownership for Black Americans. Black Americans owned about sixteen million
(25:57):
acres of land in the United States sixteen million. But
the crazy part is that between nineteen ten and nineteen
ninety seven, black farmers lost more than ninety percent of
their land. When the American Bar Association gathered these experts
to calculate the total value, and they said, let's calculate
(26:17):
the value of that land today if it weren't for
black land loss, they arrived at a conservative estimate of
three hundred and twenty six billion BIBB a billion dollars.
They said, to put this figure in perspective, if this
represented the GDP of a country in twenty twenty, black
Americans wealth would have been in the top twenty percent,
ranking ahead of South Africa, Finland, and New Zealand. But
(26:40):
as it stands today, black Americans have eighty five percent
less wealth on average than white Americans. Now, to just
zoom through it, what happened was blackland loss. There was
all of this corruption with bankers people at the USDA,
and there was so much discrimination against black farmers. The
USDA is super involved in managing crop prices and dealing
(27:05):
with credit programs and things like that, but they were
consistently discriminating against black farmers. And no farmer could have
made it through the twentieth century weather changes and recessions
and different things without significant help from the USDA. All
successful farms needed the USDA to survive, and black farms
(27:26):
were not being given the same level of support from
the USDA. And that's not just speculation, that's a fact
in that quote. In nineteen sixty five, the US Commission
on Civil Rights determined that the USDA's loan programs had
discriminated against black farmers, leaving them out of payouts that
their white counterparts had received. So basically it was proven
(27:49):
in nineteen sixty five that black farmers were being discriminated
against at the grand level. Then in all of these
different presidential administrations, they had this little branch with the
USDA that was supposed to deal with discrimination claims, but
every president had a different agenda. One president would come
in and they'd close that office. The next president would
come in and open that office, but they'd be like
(28:10):
two years behind on the claims, and then it would
roll over into the next president and they'd be like,
actually we're going to redo the office and we're going
to change it, or no, actually we want to close it.
And so they were never dealing with these discrimination claims
in the seventies, the eighties, the nineties, which brought on
a lawsuit. It was the biggest civil rights lawsuit in
(28:32):
all of US history. Did you know this? Do you
know what this lawsuit is the biggest payout, the biggest lawsuit.
It is called Pigford versus Glickman. Pigford versus Glickman. It
was a long overdue lawsuit in the nineties, so black
farmers could finally settle for funds that they had been
denied and loans they had been denied in all these things.
(28:54):
And the issue is when you're denied alone, or when
your loan is delayed, you missed the season as a farmer.
You can't get seed, you can't get the machinery you need,
and so you missed the profit potential for your entire year.
That's a big deal. When some people get the loans
that they need and some people don't, it's a huge difference.
So finally Pigford versu. Glickman happened. All of these black farmers,
(29:17):
about twenty thousand got involved in the lawsuit, and in
the end there were fifteen thousand who had sufficient evidence
of discrimination, and they got settlements of fifty thousand dollars
or more like many were in the ballpark of fifty
thousand but times fifteen thousand, and the total payout was
more than a billion dollars. Lots of black farmers missed
(29:40):
out on the first Pigfords. Then Pigford two happened, which
was another seventeen thousand claims for more than one point
two five billion dollars. But then people still talked about
it and considered it a handout. Now, if you think
about it, and I'm really going into this because I
care about this a lot, and I care about how
just a short little persuasive argument of like, oh, this
(30:01):
USDA program that was for black farmers only, it was discriminatory,
it was racism, racism shouldn't happen anymore. I didn't know
the whole history of proven discrimination from the USDA. I
didn't know that it was known in nineteen sixty five,
proven in nineteen sixty five, and for decades black farmers
couldn't actually have their claims heard. I didn't know that
it was the largest civil rights settlement in history around
(30:24):
two thousand and then again in like twenty ten, and
these settlements for fifty thousand dollars for black farmers. That's great,
But also think about a livelihood if you missed the
profit season, if you weren't able to plant and harvest
your crops for years because of denied loans, delayed loans,
consistently smaller loans. Fifty thousand isn't going to come anywhere
(30:49):
near close to make up for the livelihood you could
have had. It's a tiny fraction of your lost profits,
and it clearly doesn't compare to just getting equal and
fair treatment all the way through and being able to
do your job and make a living. Nobody wanted to
be discriminated against. You would rather have that than be
(31:10):
discriminated against for thirty plus years and then get a
relatively small settlement. I think anyone would agree. So that alone,
I read this case of like, oh, in twenty twenty one.
At first, there's going to be four billion dollars to
black farmers specifically, isn't that terrible? At first I'm like, oh, yeah,
that's strange. Why would they do that? And then I'm like, oh,
my gosh, there's such a history of racism in farming
(31:32):
that has pushed black farmers out of farming almost entirely.
Like I said, ninety percent decrease in black land ownership,
and the vast majority of that is because of a
Pacific policy known as Air's Property not super relevance. So
I'm not going to get into that. But when you
fast forward to today and the policy that was proposed
(31:53):
in twenty twenty one, from doing my research, I had
a very different view of things. An initial COVID farm
aid bill that went up to farmers, and the Agriculture
Secretary made a real point to point out that black
farmers were not getting proportionate aid from the COVID support
So initially and I quote, only zero point one percent,
(32:18):
So one tenth of one percent of COVID farm aid
went to black farmers, that is one thirteenth of what
would have been proportionate, whereas ninety nine percent went to
white farmers. So then in twenty twenty one, when Congress
passed a much larger, multi billion dollar targeted debt relief
package for black farmers in an attempt to lessen racial inequalities,
(32:40):
it was shut down by a lawsuit alleging that white
farmers were being discriminated against. Then in twenty twenty two,
the replacement was a two billion dollar race neutral program
based on financial distress. But this still significantly decreased and
eluded the aid for black farmers, and pr even found
that presently black farmers still get a lot less aid
(33:02):
from the USDA. When they apply for loans from the USDA,
their acceptance rate is about thirty six percent. White farmers
acceptance rate is exactly double that, seventy two percent. Their
rejection rate is four times that of white farmers, and
their applications end up being withdrawn twice as often as
white farmers. Then, also under Trump, the USDA has said
(33:25):
they're pulling all of their language on racist history or
disparities or anything acknowledging racial inequality. They're like, that's all mixed,
that's all dead, that's all done, no more of that.
They're completely done with race conscious policies. They're race neutral
from here on out. But in being race neutral, the
outcomes are so different. And this ties back to what
(33:49):
I was saying at the beginning. People feel that the
fair thing to do is to have a fair process
that leads to fair outcomes. If you have a targeted processor,
you say this is based on skin color, this is
based on this, that and the other thing. People generally
don't feel that it's fair because it's selective. It's discriminatory,
so to speak. And when I read those arguments in
(34:10):
the abstract, I agree, But when I read about this
specific case study, I'm like, whoaa W whoa, whoa. We're
eliminating anything race conscious at a time when this organization,
the US Department of Agriculture, has only ever discriminated against
black people all throughout their history, and even today, black
(34:32):
people are half as likely to have their requests approved,
to have their loan applications accepted, half as likely thirty
six percent versus seventy two percent. And we're saying race
shouldn't be considered as a factor because it should be irrelevant.
That's more equal, that's more fair. I think that in
(34:53):
a perfect world we should have race neutral policies. The
issue is when, and race neutrality doesn't seem to play
out like race neutrality. You would expect for race neutrality
to not have such stark, severe differences between people of
different races, And so maybe policies and programs that don't
(35:16):
account for race are still somehow being affected by race.
Because clearly your race, if you're a farmer and you
got a lot of reliance on the USDA, your race
is gonna have predictive power over whether you get the
support you need. And so yeah, I just think about
that passage in Coleman Hughes's book, because I spoke very
(35:36):
highly of the book when it was released, I've read
many flattering passages saying this was a good point, this
challenged my thinking, But that one in particular, is one
that I took. I read, I was also convinced of that,
Oh yeah, discriminatory policies. What was the Biden administration doing?
And then I later came to realize, No, I don't
think that that was a solid argument. I don't think
(35:57):
that they accounted for the full history of discrimination in
the past. I don't think that they accounted for the
continuing discrimination in the present, or the fact that they
had already done a COVID relief package and black farmers
got one thirteenth of what would have been proportionate support.
You know, I'm not gonna say black farmers should get
equal aid to white farmers. If white farmers get one billion,
(36:20):
black farmers get one billion, because there are way fewer
black farmers, so then each one would get way more
than any individual white farmer. That's not the issue. The
issue is that if it were proportionate, black farmers would
have gotten one point three percent of the aid, but
they didn't. They got zero point one percent of the aid,
one tenth of one percent. And so that's why the
(36:42):
follow up bill was supposed to be this targeted package
to make up for not even past discrimination from like
decades prior, past discrimination from like the decision a few
months prior that ended up being discriminatory. So this whole
thing as I was researching it, It's just that's an
example of why I can't make up my mind about things.
(37:03):
On principle, I think that race blind things are really good,
but then I think of my own life and how
race conscious things have benefited me tremendously. But I also
do see the issue with how race conscious programs cast
doubt on people of color. But I don't think that
the doubt cast on you has hurt me as much
(37:25):
as race conscious policies have helped me. So I'm fully
a beneficiary of those things. That's how I was able
to get a college education and a college degree, honestly.
But just because I benefit it doesn't mean it's right.
It's not like I benefited from this thing that you
didn't benefit from, so therefore I think this thing is
morally right. Like, no, maybe it is a problem that
(37:47):
I got a program that a white student would have
killed for but they didn't have the opportunity to get.
I'm open to that being like racial unfairness in the
reverse direction. From an abstract argument standpoint, I'm like, yeah,
I can see that. But at the same time, if
we just make these blanket statements that these programs that
(38:07):
are just for racial minorities are so unfair and they
give them such a leg up, like how that black
farmer aid program was being represented, I think we just
end up with such a silly little view of the situation,
because is that really like the one example we should
focus on. Oh my gosh, black farmers were going to
(38:27):
get targeted relief for COVID. That's terrible. What about the
white farmers who got the aid the first time around?
They got more than their share in the first COVID
relief package, and then when we made a race neutral
they got more than their share again. And then with
every loan program from the USDA they get more from
than their share. Again, they have more than their proportion.
(38:49):
What I'm trying to say is that if we see
the whole history usually the race conscious program, that's like
trying to set things right. Even if and I really
appreciate Colman Hugh's argument, like in his Ted talk and
in his work where he's like, we shouldn't allow for
any racism, and he thinks that the anti racism movement
and race conscious policies and all of that are this
(39:10):
late stage reinvented racism, And on principle, I think that
he's right to advocate against that. If you see how
race based judgments and race based decisions created a history
of racism in the past our country, and you want
to move forward and you want to move past that,
you say we should get rid of race based stuff altogether.
(39:30):
I'm right there with you. I still think that argument
is very convincing in various settings. But I'm so hung
up on these settings where it's not convincing because in
the grand scope of things, the one little rinky dink
program that was meant to even the playing field for
the black folks that got cut anyway because enough people
(39:54):
complained and made it happen, And maybe it should have
gotten cut, you know, if it was if it's unconstitutional,
yeah that shouldn't happ And if it's not constitutional because
it's racial discrimination, then yeah, I guess it's racial discrimination.
But that just makes me so mad because there's so
much other racial discrimination against black farmers that went on
for centuries, and even they acknowledged it was happening, and
(40:14):
it still went on for more decades until finally this
huge lawsuit, and then it just continued on after the lawsuit,
all the same disparities, all the same discrimination. And so
I think there's even just something ironic and how the
second white farmers are discriminated against by a program, they
get it done. Their voices are heard, they get to
go to court, and they get to make sure that
(40:35):
doesn't happen, and then they get the aid redirected toward
them and their needs. But when black farmers were saying
this and they were raising their voices, it took so
long to make any kind of change happen, so long
for their needs to be met, so long for like
their day in court and their vindication. So yeah, I
(40:55):
don't know. This wasn't a full blown thoughtful argument. This
is just my back and forth rambling on race based programs.
I read arguments against them, and I understand those arguments,
and I think that they make really good points. But
on the other hand, I still think that the history
of discrimination does linger on and it still requires some
sort of repair. Instead, I'm not fully convinced that we
(41:19):
should do away with race based policies and programs just yet.
Of course, this is all just me musing, because it's
not up to me, it's up to the president, and
the President has decided that they're all done and dead
and gone. But I think that it'll be up for
discussion in the years to come. And really where you
land on this is whether you believe that racism in
(41:39):
the past is still affecting the present and so we
still need to be proactively doing things to undo those injustices,
or if you believe that race in the past was
bad but it's pretty much done, it's pretty much taken
care of, and now from here on out, we just
need to be a meritocracy. We need to do things fairly,
(42:00):
need to do things the right way and make sure
there are no more race based policies. And if you
believe that injustice carries on, you'd say, well, the race
neutral programs are really race based because the white people
are the only ones who benefit from them. So you
can call it race neutral, you can call it race blind,
but if those end up being discriminatory against non white people,
then your race blind stuff is very race conscious. Actually,
(42:23):
so maybe we need it to be race conscious, so
it's actually diverse and it reflects the population and it
takes being race conscious, for a thing to actually in
effect be race blind, and for you to have an
equal shot at some sort of benefit program funding regardless
of your race. And I just I have so many
more thoughts, but there's so much to consider. Those are
(42:48):
my sickly thoughts. I so appreciate you all listening to
the podcast being enthused about the relaunch a few months back.
This will be the last episode this year. Will come
back in the new year as always. Thanks for your support,
your listenership, and just the fact that you really take
the time to hear my thoughts on these brainy topics
(43:12):
just because you want to learn and be more informed yourself.
That is awesome. If you want to be a paid supporter,
the link to that's in the show notes, and right
when you join, I will smile at my phone and
send you a little thank you, hello welcome message that
is really truly from me. You'll also gain access to
a bunch of exclusive stuff. And like I said, I'm
(43:34):
still trying to figure out how paid support should work.
I want so many things to be benefits of being
on paid but I want things to be accessible to
as many people want to see them, and I just
have decisions to make, so please be gracious with me
through that. Give me your advice, your feedback, especially if
(43:54):
you're a paid supporter. I'd love to know what makes
it worthwhile for you. Thanks for the listening. Until next time,
M
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