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Friend,
By any definition, Kendall Rae Johnson is an exceptional child.
It all started when her parents saved some collard green stems and planted them for a garden in honor of her great-grandmother.
“A week later she came in and said, ‘Hey, we got something growing,’” said her mother, Ursula Johnson. “Then she was inspired. She planted cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers. She watched it, touched it, made sure there were no bugs. That was the beginning.”
Now, at the tender age of 6, Kendall Rae is the youngest certified farmer in Georgia history, fulfilling those requirements last fall.
“I like playing in the dirt,” she said.
What sets Kendall apart from other children is her fascination with – and passion for – learning about raising plants and animals. A century ago, that would not have been so unusual for an African American child. Then, Black farmers made up 14% of the producers in the United States. As of 2017, that number had dropped to just 1.4%, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA’s) most recent agricultural census. They also lost 90% of their property, some 16 million acres worth up to $350 billion, during that time, compared with just 2% for white farmers.
Like all people who work the soil, Black farmers have had to contend with Mother Nature and her whims. But unlike their white counterparts, they have had to fight a war on two fronts. While the federal government has provided loan and subsidy programs on a large scale to farmers, studies have shown that the bulk of that aid has historically gone to white farmers and has been largely withheld from Black farmers.
And that is not just an issue from days gone by. Even today, government programs intended to help farms survive the market effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have largely missed Black farmers. In fact, efforts aimed directly at socially disadvantaged producers – those who have been subjected to racial or ethnic prejudice or cultural bias within American society – are tied up in a Texas court, where a trial judge ruled that programs aimed at rectifying more than a century of discrimination are in and of themselves discriminatory.
“(T)he Government puts forward no evidence of intentional discrimination by the USDA in at least the past decade,” according to the court’s opinion on the matter. “To find intentional discrimination, then, requires a logical leap, as well as a leap back in time. In sum, the Government’s evidence falls short of demonstrating a compelling interest, as any past discrimination is too attenuated from any present-day lingering effects to justify race-based remedial action by Congress.”
Basically, the court has ruled that there is a time limit on how far back Congress can go to remediate intentional discrimination by the government. This has enormous implications for other kinds of reparations as well.
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In solidarity,
Your friends at the Southern Poverty Law Center
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