John Boyd, Jr. absolutely nailed it when he opened his piece with this:
If Washington, D.C. is good at one thing, it’s making policy in the Beltway bubble that ends up hurting Americans in rural communities — communities like mine, here in Virginia.
Boyd, a fourth-generation farmer in Virginia with a 1,600 acre farm and more than thirty years of experience growing tobacco, is the founder and president of the National Black Farmers Association, and yesterday, The Hill published an essay he wrote exposing the federal government’s “misguided” actions against the black community, but especially the black farmer—after all, agriculture and the farmer are the lifeblood of America. As Boyd notes:
Few workers have been hit harder in recent years than Black farmers. Black farmers in this country, at the turn of the century, owned over 20 million acres of land — today, that number is less than 5 million acres of land in this country. We previously represented 1 million farmers in this country — now, we’re down to 50,000 Black farmers in this country.
Boyd then writes that through the federal bureaucracy, black farmers have historically suffered severe discrimination; he highlights actions taken by the USDA in years past, but specifically rings the alarm on the FDA’s current goal to implement a “prohibition-style ban on menthol and other flavored tobacco” as it will harm the black community in a number of ways, rightly making the claim that these are the tobacco products are “preferred” and “grown” by black farmers. According to the American Lung Association, more than three out of four black smokers opt for menthol cigarettes, while less than one of four white smokers do. From Boyd:
[M]ost disturbing are the consequences for Black tobacco users across the country. The FDA ban … would criminalize the sale, distribution and possession of menthol cigarettes under federal, state and local laws. If this ban goes into effect, all 50 states would treat possession as a crime. This criminalization could result in mandatory minimum sentences, revocation of parole, fines, the loss of one’s right to vote or even deportation, among other criminal legal consequences.
Because the majority of people who smoke menthol cigarettes are Black, this would further criminalize a population that is already over-criminalized. Black people and other people of color have historically borne the brunt of disproportionate consequences in the criminal legal system.
Well, I don’t know what else you could expect from a government that finally succeeded in upending the state-over-federal system handed to the citizenry by the Founders and consecrating a new structure, the federal-over-state system under which we now exist. Boyd, despite his great essay which condemns the tyranny that flows down from the top—although he doesn’t quite call it that—doesn’t make the most crucial connections. Spoiler alert: This man is a Democrat.
I assume Boyd’s intention was to make a case that “institutional” or “systemic” racism is the problem (given one of his hyperlinked sources), which may very well be accurate considering who the people are in the these institutions and systems, and his call for more money into “education,” but he (unwittingly) makes a stronger case for less government.
Unconstitutional agencies brandishing an unchecked bureaucracy against the people?
A federal leviathan imposing diktats on the ordinary American to rob him of his life, liberty, and property?
These are big government problems buddy!
The bureaucracy has long been used to tread on the individual, and under Joe Biden and his leftist comrades with their proposed menthol ban, the discrimination has hit the absurd. Yet… Boyd still proudly displays his meeting with Barack Obama as his profile image on X, and as I said at the outset, claims that these policies are “misguided” instead of the very obvious truth that these policies are are calculated, intentional, and consistent with reality and history: the federal government hates the black man and his family.