“He owes us an apology,” says John Boyd, founder and president of the National Black Farmers Association.
His statement was in response to recent comments by Republican Vice-President candidate JD Vance about $2.2 billion payout to farmers under the Federal Discrimination Financial Assistance Program.
Vance described the payout to farmers who were discriminated against by the United State Department of Agriculture as “disgraceful,” suggesting that it is racist against White people.
Here are Vance’s full remarks on CBS’s Face the Nation. He was responding to a question about racist attacks against his wife, who is Indian.
“I frankly think that unfortunately, a lot of people on the left have leaned into this by trying to categorize people by skin color and then give special benefits or special amounts of discrimination. The Harris Administration, for example, handed out farm benefits to people based on skin color. I think that’s disgraceful. I don’t think we should say, you get farm benefits if you’re a Black farmer, you don’t get farm benefits if you’re a White farmer. All farmers we want to thrive, and that’s certainly the President Trump and JD Vance view of the situation.
Boyd said Vance’s comments were “disgraceful, deplorable, dumb, degrading, and disrespectful.”
Certainly, Vance’s summarization of the Discrimination Financial Assistance Program was not correct.
The federal program established through the Inflation Reduction Act was not limited to Black farmers. Any farmer who experienced discrimination by the US Department of Agriculture was eligible to apply. Discrimination was not limited to race, but also included discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity, religion, age or disability.
In July, the USDA announced it had distributed more than 43,000 people in all 50 states through the program
The USDA has not released information on the racial breakdown of farmers who received money through the program. Boyd says 85% of the funds went to Black Farmers which is reasonable to expect based on the USDA’s long history of discriminating against Black Farmers in receiving loans, credit and support compared to White farmers.
Still, that hasn’t stopped some White people—including Vance and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.)—from trying to claim federal aid to Black farmers perpetuates “reverse racism.” White farmers have also filed lawsuits against promised debt relief for Black farmers that Congress approved in 2021, claiming it discriminated against them.
In the meantime, Boyd is still waiting for an apology from Vance—but he’s not holding his breath. “We got the money,” Boyd said. DFAP, he added, was “a huge victory for Black farmers.”
