Building Black Farm Wealth Requires Addressing Structural Racism at the USDA

Caius Z. Willingham and Abril Castro urge lawmakers to pass legislation that would protect black farmers from structural racism.

In March, the National Agricultural Statistics Service released new numbers that revealed black farmers ran only 1.52 percent of farms in 2017, a slight downtick from 2012, when 1.58 percent of farms were operated by African Americans. The picture gets bleaker when compared to the fact that in 1910, black Americans made up 14 percent of this country’s farmers.

As we demonstrate in a recent Center for American Progress report, the history of black farming in the United States serves as a prime example of how structural racism—the discrimination against and the exclusion of people of color by institutions—has robbed black farmers of the opportunity to build wealth.

The above excerpt was originally published in Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity. Click here to view the full article.

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