Critical Analysis Of The Black Farmer's Racial Discrimination Settlement Should Not Focus On Individual Acts Of Corruption

Black Informant on the "Black Farmer's Settlement" : Where Is The Money Really Going?

My conservative brother in arms - Black Informant - puts forth evidence of misappropriation of federal funds to those who should not have received any money from the settlement and the windfall payment due to the lawyers.





My personal opinion is that this is not the appropriate angle by which this entire "struggle" should be appraised with.

Any "give away" is going to have a mix of heartfelt individuals who believe they are due the money as well as opportunists. Those seeking to obfuscate the issue will simply point to the Department of Defense to show the enormous amount of federal cash that flows through that cost center.

The most relevant perspective on this money is:

After The National Black Farmers Association Had About $2,000,000,000 Flowing Through The Hands Of Its Members - What Did They Do Collaboratively And Strategically With The Money That Improved The "Food Security" Position For Black Americans And Others In The Diaspora?

Anyone who listens to Atlanta's WAOK.com will hear a daily carpet bombing of public notices made to Black farmers, telling them to "check in" to determine their qualifications for the settlement money.  After this go round there will be no one who claims that they were unaware with the dispensation being considered after the specified interval of time has passed.

We should not get caught up on the mechanics of the distribution and the bogus claims.  The process should filter these out sufficiently.

For me - the biggest challenge to the Black Farmer's Association - and all of the Black Americans who "lived vicariously" through this settlement as some sort of evidence of "Black Respect" having been restored after those who assaulted us were made to pay - the question is not:

• "Did they get their money and are now made whole?"

but instead:

• What did they do with their money in aggregate that will position them to expand and/or dominate a market segment - providing for the needs for more people?

In the second video the farmer can be heard speaking of a "Co-Op".   

Chance are that if you drink orange juice - you have used the produce brought to market by "Florida's Natural", a cooperative which grows commodity citrus produce and sells it to the market in the quantity and price to the advantage of the growers. 

With the racial grievance as the primary "struggle motion" for the Black Community I know of no strong voice that suggested that the National Black Farmer's Association  yield on an individual payout and instead choose to leverage these $2B for use to address:

• Underserved markets in the USA (Food Deserts)
• Markets in the Diaspora which American "Corporate Farmers" have neglected

Instead we have lumps of $50,000 of public money paid to INDIVIDUALS to settle a racial grievance.

The proper analysis of this situation is to consider the miss opportunity that slipped through due to visionless leadership, a cabal of Black Press advocates who promoted this as merely "Justice Coming Due" and a larger portion of the Black Rank & File who lived vicariously through the settlement but forgot to ask that their support be translated into something that had mass benefit for the community.

There are plenty of signs seen in their protests but not much evidence of insightfulness.