John Stossel did a special on Freeloaders that included a six minute segment on the Pigford case that I’ve been working on the past few months. It’s worth watching and sharing with people who don’t understand Pigford.
I think there was one major omission, however — the plight of the real black farmers who did suffer discrimination and who were totally abused by this settlement.
Obviously, the fraud of people getting $50,000 checks is a central part of the story. Because of the nature of this settlement, most of them happened to be black although there were some white people who found ways to cash in, too. The part about people getting $50,000 checks they don’t deserve is juicy, easy to understand and Stossel’s piece did a good job of summing it up.
The bigger fraud, however, has been perpetrated on the legitimate black farmers whose cases and stories were hijacked; people like Arkansas farmer Jimmy Dismuke, who was shown in the story. The ‘$50,000 check’ fraud was done on the back of hard working farmers who actually did suffer discrimination at the hands of a huge government organization with no real accountability. In fact, part of the reason the USDA has played along with writing those $50,000 checks to people is to keep the status quo at the USDA.
This may have been a lot to cover in six minutes but I do wish Stossel had gotten in a line or two about it. None of this takes away from a good piece but there’s a lot more to the story.