In one of the best reports I’ve read in a long time, Texas Tribune reporter James Pollard writes that Sid Miller filed the lawsuit as a private citizen in order to prevent Black Texas farmers from receiving debt relief from the USDA. The debt relief is part of the reckoning the USDA is attempting to resolve after a century of excluding Black farmers from aid offered to white farmers nationally.

Miller’s complaint against the U.S. Department of Agriculture says the definition in the program fails to include “white ethnic groups that have unquestionably suffered” because of their ethnicity, such as those of Irish, Italian, German, Jewish and eastern European heritage.

Sid Miller, the Texas Agriculture Commissioner is suing in his capacity as a private citizen to block aid for Texas farmers. I try to say it and write it in different ways and there is just not any way that isn’t racist AF.

Really, the report is worth reading. I’ve included a small excerpt pertinent to the main point but the background information included in the article is top notch. The whole piece is well researched and well written. Pollard can’t call Miller a nasty sumbitch, but he provides all the facts anyone will ever need to prove it to be the truth.

For Black Texas farmers, Sid Miller’s lawsuit increases mistrust | The Texas Tribune

Nationally, Black farmers have lost more than 12 million acres of farmland over the past century, according to the Washington Post, due to biased government policies and discriminatory business practices. In 1920, there were over 925,000 Black farmers in the United States, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. But by 1997, their numbers had fallen to just under 18,500.

Recent data suggest the USDA continues to disproportionately reject Black farmers for loans. According to a CNN analysis, 42% of Black farmers were rejected for direct USDA loans in 2021, more than any other demographic group.

As agriculture commissioner, Miller leads an agency tasked with “advocat[ing] for policies at the federal, state, and local level” beneficial to Texas’s agriculture sector and “provid[ing] financial assistance to farmers and ranchers,” among other duties. In a statement to The Texas Tribune, Miller called the debt relief program “facially illegal and constitutionally impermissible.”

This sumbitch thinks if you challenge a law with big words and invoke the constitution you can just be as racist and discriminatory as ever. The fact that he filed the suit as a private citizen tells you all you really need to know. He’s campaigning 100% on being a good ole’ boy racist and shame on Texas for electing this scum.