Black Farmers: Agriculture Dept. failed them: Racial Bias Settlement

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http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/21/politics/21farmers.html?th=&pagewanted=print&position=



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July 21, 2004
Black Farmers Accuse Agriculture Dept. of Failing to Live Up to Racial Bias Settlement

By LYNETTE CLEMETSON

ASHINGTON, July 20 - Five years after a landmark discrimination settlement, black farmers say the Department of Agriculture has failed to make gAgriculture Deptood on the terms, denying restitution to roughly 9 in 10 farmers seeking compensation and spending millions to thwart their claims.

The accusations are laid out in a report issued Tuesday by the Environmental Working Group, a public interest watchdog that conducted a two-year investigation with the National Black Farmers Association. The report is the latest contentious turn in the class-action settlement, reached in 1999, which sought to redress the Agriculture Department's systematically denying black farmers loans and other assistance available under federal programs.

Of the 94,000 farmers who sought relief as a result of the settlement, the report said, 81,000 were denied restitution. More than three-quarters of the denied claims were rejected because of a court-acknowledged mistake in which the plaintiffs' lawyers misinformed them of the deadline for filing. The others were turned aside on the ground of insufficient documentation.

"The settlement has been a complete failure at making whole the African-American farmers who suffered decades of discrimination," said the report's author and lead researcher, Arianne Callender, general counsel of the Environmental Working Group.



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