Discrimination and the USDA

Washington, DCThe US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has come under fire by the Government Accountability office (GAO) for dropping the ball with regard to discrimination. Sadly, in spite of how far we have come in America and with an African-American currently in the race for the White House, employment discrimination, and employee racial discrimination appear to remain an issue in this country. At the USDA various minorities, as well as African-American farmers have filed employee discrimination complaints that appear to have gone nowhere, and the GAO has urged Congress to appoint an oversight board in an effort to fix the problem.

African-American employees at the USDA have long complained of discrimination with regard to hiring, and promotions—and this doesn't appear to be a recent problem, according to a story that appears today in the Washington Post. In 1999, African-American farmers won a landmark discrimination suit against the USDA. The latter is also defending against class actions filed on behalf of women, Hispanic, and Native American farmers.

Minority and women farmers have issued complaints of being denied access to loans that were granted to white, Anglo-Saxon male farmers. There are also allegations of being shut out from other farm programs.

It has been reported that the USDA approved 15,400 claims filed prior to an October 1999 deadline. The payout was $1 billion. However, the settlement did not include some 70,000 claims that were filed after the deadline had passed, from farmers who claimed they were not aware that a deadline existed.

Civil rights appear to be a priority at the USDA, given a staff compliment of 129 and a budget of $24 million allocated solely to its office of civil rights. Further, according to the assistant secretary for civil rights at the USDA, the GAO did not acknowledge changes at the agency that were implemented three years ago. "It's going to take awhile for us to be able to generate…analyses," says Margo McKay, "but it's light-years ahead of where we were."

McKay made reference to a new Internet-based tracking system that enabled the agency to more effectively track, and handle employee complaints.

However, the GAO doesn't appear to agree with the positives expressed by the USDA office of civil rights, which asserts that the agency submitted a report to Congress in 2007 claiming that a backlog of 700 complaints had been reduced. In the Washington Post story today, the GAO claims that the USDA civil rights officer McKay knew that the backlog reduction was not necessarily the case.

"In fact, before the (USDA) made its report to the public in 2007, . . . officials were planning to hire additional attorneys to deal with the backlog of complaints," the GAO said in a statement.

It seems the GAO has more to say about the USDA—this time with regard to it's reporting of minority participation in farm programs, citing the reporting as unreliable. According to the GAO the USDA office of civil rights produced three reports to Congress between 2003 and 2005 without knowing precisely the race, ethnicity or gender of participants.

It is alleged that USDA workers relied solely on visual observation to make the determination of ethnic origin. According to the GAO, the USDA office of civil rights is capable of only limited strategic planning, and "does not address key steps needed to achieve its mission."

While discrimination continues to be an issue for many minority and women farmers and continues to dog the USDA office of civil rights, the protocols employed to address those issues of discrimination appear to be left wanting.