Discrimination Against Native Americans

Few details on USDA discrimination claims program

About two dozen people turned out Thursday night to learn more about a claims-settlement program USDA is undertaking to compensate Hispanic and female farmers who were discriminated against by the agency because of race or gender in the past.

The compensation program is mainly related to discrimination suffered in the process of seeking low-interest, USDA farm-related loans, or after receiving such a loan. The time period covered in this program is limited to incidents occurring from 1981 to 2000.

There was little in the way of information about how the process will work, as that is still being finalized. But the agency gave out three important phone numbers and website addresses related to the discrimination claims process for Hispanics, females, African-Americans and Native Americans.

Potential Hispanic and female claimants must use them in order to receive the information they will need during the 180-day period in which they can make their claims. The period for making claims has not yet been set, but agency representatives said it would likely be in the late summer or fall of this year.

Claimants who contact the agency by phone or through the website will receive information once it is available. The information is currently scanty; for example, the claims forms have not yet been prepared.

Representatives of USDA urged potential claimants to call or contact through the web as soon as possible, so that they can get the information they need and start working on documentation required to file a claim.

The phone numbe for Hispanic and women farmers is 1-888-508-4429. The website is www.farmerclaims.gov.

Unlike settlements already reached or being reached through the courts with African-American and Native American farmers and ranchers, an independent adjudicator will determine on an individual basis which Hispanic and female claimants are due money.

African-American farmers who did not go through the court in Pigford I, one of the previous court settlements, still have an opportunity to investigate whether they can file in a possible addendum to the Pigford II settlement. Pigford II began after more African American claimants surfaced at the conclusion of Pigford I. An addendum has been proposed to Congress but has not been acted upon at this time. The phone number for Pigford claims 1-866-950-5547. The website is www.blackfarmercase.com.

The Energy Problem In Education | ChristianObserver.org

We hear continually about our energy problem in the world and in our nation, but right before our eyes here in America we have a terrible waste of energy that is even worse than the power problem.  It is intellectual energy!  We have no problem using mental energy for entertainment, as there are all kinds of electronic equipment to use to pass the day, but the question comes, “How much is real learning and the type of learning that ultimately leads to constructive lives?”   We use our mental energy in all kinds of ways, but how much of it is used in ultimately learning that which is of little of consequence or things even with negative consequences?

Samuel Blumenfield in his book, Is Public Education Necessary? observes that:  “American educators can be divided into two groups:  There are the “progressives,” who view public education primarily as a tool for social and cultural reform to be achieved through the remaking of human nature, and the “traditionalists,” who view education, public or private, primarily as a development of an individual’s intellectual skills in combination with moral instruction based on Judeo-Christian ideals,” (p. 200).