But there’s a measure in that bill that most of us don’t know about—a measure that puts $5 billion into fixing what America did to Black farmers. It forgives the crippling debt that caused Black farmers to lose 90 percent of their land over the last hundred years, and sets up a racial equity commission to deal with the racist government policies that made it happen.

Republican Senator Lindsay Graham of South Carolina feels some type of way about that. So, he went on Fox News and said, “In this bill if you’re a farmer your loan will be forgiven up to 120 percent … if you’re socially disadvantaged—if you’re African American [or] some other minority. But if you’re a white person, if you’re a white woman, no forgiveness. That’s reparations. What does that have to do with COVID?”

Well Lindsay, if it is reparations, it’s long overdue, and here’s how it’s connected to COVID. Black people die from it at three times the rate of whites because we have more preexisting conditions like diabetes and heart disease. That’s from living with racist policies that leave Blacks in Jackson Mississippi with undrinkable water, leaves unarmed Blacks being shot by police, and leaves Black farmers in so much debt they lose their land to racism.

That should matter to every Black American, because our ancestors farmed whether they liked it or not, and when they got to the point where they could own land, they were cheated, or killed, or discriminated against until that land belonged to white people.

That’s wrong. And if Black farmers get reparations because of it, Joe Biden is doing what’s right for America. Joe Biden is doing his job.

Photo: Joe Biden speaking at town hall. By. Gage Skidmore

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