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My research falls within the feminist geography and critical nature-society studies.  I have studied gender and land access in Mali, municipal climate politics in the US and, most recently, the relationship between race and local food activism  read more

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NY Times Letter to the Editor

A version of this letter appeared in print in The New York Times on May 4, 2013, on page A20 of the New York edition with the headline: Bias and a Settlement With Black Farmers.

To the Editor:

“Federal Spigot Flows as Farmers Claim Bias” underplays the history of racial dispossession, uses cherry-picked examples, and creates needless antipathy to the lawsuit and the settlement with black farmers. Focusing on fraud and invoking familiar, racially freighted stereotypes of undeserving opportunists serve to throw into question all payouts rather than explaining why they were ordered in the first place.

The Agriculture Department acknowledges racial and gender discrimination against farmers. The loss of farms we have witnessed over the past 90 years has disproportionately affected African-American farmers. Had the Agriculture Department provided loans and other assistance to everyone equitably, the landscape of the United States would look quite different.

We do not deny the accuracy of the claim that some fraud has occurred. In any sign-up program with tens of thousands of participants and billions of dollars at stake, a few people will try to cheat the system. Those who do should be punished.

The article is not really about those few proven cases, however. It is instead an effort to depict the settlement, without providing any real evidence, as a “runaway train” of fraud.

The settlements, work on them by organizations like the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, and Secretary Tom Vilsack’s support of them, should be lauded, particularly since challenges faced by minority and women farmers persist.

Authors:
Kirsten Valentine Cadieux, Ph.D., Departments of Sociology and Geography, University of Minnesota
David A. Chang, Ph.D., Department of History, University of Minnesota
Tracey Deutsch, Ph.D., Department of History, University of Minnesota
Jess Gilbert, Ph.D., Department of Community and Environmental Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Thomas W. Mitchell, LL.M., University of Wisconsin Law School
Rachel Schurman, Ph.D., Department of Sociology, University of Minnesota
Marilyn Sinkewicz, Ph.D., School of Social Work, University of Michigan
Rachel Slocum, Ph.D., Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin-La Crosse
Monica M. White, Ph.D., Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies and Department of Community and Environmental Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Spencer D. Wood, Ph.D., Department of Sociology, Anthropology & Social Work, Kansas State University

Minneapolis, April 30, 2013

Geographies of race and food ~ fields, bodies, markets
forthcoming from Ashgate
ISBN 978-1-4094-6925-4
Table of Contents

Contact

rslocum[at]uwlax.edu
1725 State St.
La Crosse, WI 54601
608-785-8332 (f)
http://www.uwlax.edu/geography/dept/slocum.htm