The U.S. Department of Agriculture is seeking public feedback on how its programs can best advance racial justice. The request is meant to help implement an executive order President Biden signed on his first day in office that aims to promote racial equity in underserved communities. The deadline is July 15. Click here to read more about why USDA is seeking feedback, and click here to leave feedback.
Teresa Purcell, a consultant who works primarily in rural America with people of color, writes for The Daily Yonder that most people don't learn in school about the racist policies that have long held back non-white Americans. "Our family is an example of what some people think of as “living the American Dream” — the ability to lift your family out of poverty in just a few generations due to things like public education and effective government programs," Purcell writes. "The mythology of the American dream passed down in families and in history classes is that if you worked hard and accessed things like the GI Bill and other government programs, you could achieve anything. While that was true for white families like mine, most families in communities of color were not able to live this same dream."
Such policies factor into modern rural poverty, she writes, citing USDA data showing that every U.S. county experiencing extreme poverty in 2018 was rural, and that a disproportionate share were in areas with large populations of racial minorities.
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