Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa, 5th District), arguably one of the most radical white-racist bigots in Congress, showed his complete and total contempt for African-American descendants of slaves this week when he tried to label a court-ordered settlement to Black farmers as Reparations for Slavery.
The above video clip is from Rachel Maddow's Nov. 30, 2010 segment known as "Debunction Junction," and the portion dedicated to Steve King starts at 3:15 if you want to skip the first two stories.
The gist of the story is that Black farmers had been systematically denied farm subsidies that white farmers were getting on a regular basis, so they sued. Yesterday, the final battle (mentioned in the fourth paragraph at the link above) was ended by Congress freeing up the funding for the court-ordered settlement. Finally, the Black farmers will get their $1.25 billion for damages. It was a battle against the USDA and its employees who had systematically favored white farmers over a period of decades.
In spite of the fact that even Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack called it a "sordid chapter in USDA history," Rep. Steve King still could not swallow the idea that Congress, or the courts, had found that white folks had violated any kind of law in favoring whites over Blacks. I guess in his mind that is just how things ought to be in America...an idea that "might is always right."
This plight of the Black farmers is what put Shirley Sherrod on the map before Andrew Breitbart cherry-picked her out-of-context quote and Fox News re-broadcast it.
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