Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has pledged to make good on a failed Biden administration plan to pay Black American farmers more than $5 billion in “reparations” once taking office, further promising to “get rid” of government workers who stand in the way of the payments. The program, first implemented under President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan, was previously struck down by a federal court as an illegal form of discrimination.
Kennedy’s endorsement of the plan came during an April 24th episode of the RFK Jr. Podcast with John Boyd Jr., founder of the National Black Farmers Association. Boyd, a farmer-turned-activist who owns a combined 1,500 acres of farmland in Bakersville, Virginia, has provided advice on agriculture policy for local and state governments since founding the NBFA in 1995. He also served on President Bill Clinton’s tobacco commission from 2000 to 2001. Boyd and other farmers’ rights activists argue that Black farmers (who make up just 1.4 percent of the country’s farm workers) have been historically victimized by discrimination in government farm aid payments.
When the Biden administration implemented the American Rescue Plan in 2021, it included a proposed loan assistance program of roughly $5 billion for “socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers” who “have been subjected to racial or ethnic prejudice” and suffered financial losses during the COVID-19 pandemic. The plan would have paid back “up to 120 percent of direct or guaranteed farm loan balances for black, American Indian, Hispanic, Asian American or Pacific Islander farmers,” but specially excluded White farmers.
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The program was put forward by the US Department of Agriculture with support from Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack but received intense pushback in Texas, Florida, and the Midwest. Jacksonville Federal Judge Marcia Morales Howard issued an injunction against the plan, saying it “appears to create an inflexible, race-based discriminatory program,” effectively halting the program.
In response, Boyd and the NBFA sued the Biden administration, claiming that “they broke their promise to black farmers and other farmers of color.” The proposed amount was eventually split into two separate funds for distribution under the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, but Boyd still accused the USDA of “dragging its feet” on distributing the funds to 16,000 eligible recipients.
However, according to Kennedy, the plan should never have been subjected to a legal challenge in the first place. Rather, Black farmers are owed the money as reparations for what was “stolen” from their ancestors—and as such, any federal employees that block the plan from taking effect should be removed.
“When I’m in the White House… I’m going to get rid of those people in USDA and get that money,” Kennedy said during the podcast. “That $5 billion is not money, that is an entitlement. It’s money that was a loan that black farmers were entitled to way back when and was stolen from them through discrimination.”
“It was given to every other farmer, but if you were black, you wouldn’t get it, and that’s wrong,” he continued. “I don’t think anybody who believes in the values of this country thinks that that’s a good idea.”
Related: RFK Says “Set Federal Dollars Aside” in Reparations for Black Americans
RFK’s campaign website further pledges to “end USDA discrimination against Black farmers, and protect current landowners from further land loss.” This is just one of several reparations-based programs that Kennedy has proposed or endorsed during his campaign. Other suggestions have ranged from “canceling student debt” to giving out “low interest microloans to invest in approved business plans with flexible repayment terms.”
The website also previously declared that “During Jim Crow, Black banks, businesses, hospitals, schools, and farms were targeted for destruction. Racists knew that without these, the Black community had no chance of building wealth. We must set federal dollars aside to rebuild Black infrastructure.” However, after negative feedback on this proposal, the Kennedy campaign updated the verbiage to apply to “devastated communities across the country,” not just Black ones.
In response to RFK’s statements during the podcast, America First Legal, one of the groups behind the lawsuit that blocked the original program, stated: “Any public official who thinks it is the government’s role to pick winners and losers based on the color of their skin does not belong in public office.”
“This is the 21st century, and we need to stop living like we are in the 19th century before the Civil War.”
The full episode of the RFK Jr. Podcast can be listed to below:
Connor Walcott is a staff writer for Valuetainment.com. Follow Connor on X and look for him on VT’s “The Unusual Suspects.”
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