(Headline USA) Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said this week that he would support giving black farmers $5 billion in reparations if elected—once again confirming his leftist political views, despite having made early appeals to right-wing voters with skepticism over vaccine mandates and other government excesses.
“When I’m in the White House … I’m going to get rid of those people in [the U.S. Department of Agriculture] and get that money,” Kennedy told John Boyd Jr., the founder of the National Black Farmers Association, in an April 24 episode of his podcast, as reported by the Daily Mail.
Kennedy went on to claim that the $5 billion reparations payment should not be considered “an entitlement” or even just “money.”
Rather, he said, it would be considered a “loan that black farmers were entitled to way back when and was stolen from them through discrimination.”
Kennedy’s $5 billion reparations proposal was initially a part of President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan Act, but it was thrown out by the courts as unconstitutional.
The policy would have created a loan-assistance program of roughly $5 billion for “socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers,” defined as those who “have been subjected to racial or ethnic prejudice.”
Federal Judge Marcia Morales Howard slapped down the program after it was challenged by white farmers in Texas, Florida and across the Midwest, who argued that it would “create an inflexible, race-based discriminatory program.”
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack defended the policy, claiming the disparity between black and white farmers needs to be addressed.
“For generations, socially disadvantaged farmers have struggled to fully succeed due to systemic discrimination and a cycle of debt,” he said in a statement at the time.
Although the issue rarely comes up publicly, reparations is a significant component of the far-left agenda outlined on Kennedy’s own website, and the former Democrat has been candid about it when speaking to particular audiences.
Last October, for example, his campaign proposed offering “targeted community repair” for black Americans, including money to “rebuild black infrastructure” as well as “direct redress payments or tax credits.” The policies would benefit “descendants of the victims of Jim Crow and other victims of persecution,” it claimed.
